Happened to me once. I did not know who he was in told him so. It’s possible the guy was bluffing. He claimed to be some state senator.
My brother had a funny story about this. His friend worked in IT and was doing one of those system things that take all day and take the system down. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone in the building during this. So an executive comes to the door, his key card doesn’t work, he buzzes the bell. The guy inside answers, and says he can’t let anyone in. Exec says “Do you know who I am?” and the employee responds with a tentative “well, do you know who I am?”
“No”
“Ok, I can’t let you in.”
Yup, by a semi-high level military dude working at the Pentagon, I kid you not. I got a visit from his boss who apologized and ordered him with an official document that was verbally read to me to not have any contact with me, a 50 bucks gift card and a few months later they transferred him to some random place in Kentucky or Nebraska or something like that. He had been pulling that line all over Pentagon City, Crystal City and Arlington in general and people complained. Had the nicest wife, but he was just a massive asshole. And all this while I was doing him a solid.
Yeah, the US military strikes me as an institution that would not like that. They tend more towards performative politeness.
Famous old story. There is a fire alarm in a fancy hotel. Guests are told to go to the front of the lobby (near the exit, in case they have to evacuate) and wait for an all-clear. They do that except for this one guy, who lingers around the service desk or something. Hotel worker goes up to him and says “excuse me sir, guests have to wait over there (pointing)”. Guy puffs up and says “you know you are talking to the vice president?”. Hotel worker goes apologetic and says “oh I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know! Do whatver you have to” and leaves the guy alone.
A minute later the hotel worker returns with a suspicious look, and asks the guy “Wait a minute sir, what are you the vice president of?”. Guy puffs even more and with a chill in his voice says “the United States of America!”. Worker says “Oh! Get over there then (points to guest area). I thought you were the vice president of the hotel!”.
I was the sysadmin for a local company that mainly did custom ecommerce & CMS site building for local companies. Way before I started they also provided email addresses to local residents, and the first like ~100 people to sign up got a free account for life. We offered like 250MB storage, which was pretty awesome in the pre-gmail days.
Anyway, one of the lucky residents to sign up was a very interesting guy. In and out of homeless shelters, he ran for mayor every election, and at one point built his own three-wheeled Segway-like thing that he decorated to look like a Roman chariot that he would ride around during the weekly farmer’s market.
So yea. One day we get a call and the usual tech support bump it up to me because they don’t understand it. I answer the phone and am met with a barrage of rants about how my company is in league with the satanic monsters at AOL trying to stop him from becoming mayor and how once he’s elected he’ll blow our cover and expose us all.
Dear reader, he was trying to send an email to an @aol.com account that didn’t exist, and was getting a “no such address” reply from their “mailer daemon” - their mail server software.
I didn’t know who he was before then, but that’s how I learned.
Yes, and I got fired for not knowing. I was new to the city so I didn’t recognize the famous local sports journalist who demanded to see the doctor who also worked with the famous local sports team. Normally no one gets to walk into a doctors office and see the doc immediately, so I told them to sit down and wait - I was gone the next day.
They fired you over that? You followed their rules! They should have a vip card or something if they wanted to allow some people in. I’m sorry man, they fucked you there.
That’s why you should never go near a business that does the VIP treatment. They will mistreat people over political nonsense.
Worked as the night manager at McDonalds for a while. Some drunk guy comes in and when we asked him to leave he ‘my sister is the manager’ (she was the assistant store manager) we were like so? Next day we told her and she said ‘yeah, my brother is alcoholic, I’d have kicked him out sooner’
Nope, but I did go to school with a kid whos dad worked at Nintendo.
Did the kid in your school have access to experimental kit?
The kid in my school had a special prototype that displayed the Nintendo on the windshield for the passenger of a car. I’ve been waiting 35 years for that product to hit the shelves.
That would have been so cool, but one guess why it didn’t go to market.
Cause the projector would need to be brighter than the sun?
Could be, I guess, depending on how bright a light you could make in whatever year. Also liability for the driver being distracted by it.
If they could do a rear sidewindow version, I guess that would be fine. No guarantee the projector didn’t take up the full glove box, though.
Yes, they claimed their cousin owned the store. The store ower was in their 60s and lived across the country. They, on the other hand, was a pissed off, drunk, early 20s college student at a closed pizza shop at 4am. No, your cousin is not the store owner.
In every case I’ve seen of this, the cousin probably does own the store - and knows very well they have idiot relatives. If the relative says anything it will be “you should have been harder on [censored]”
Working on the helldesk of an internet provider in the early 2010s.
Dude had our bog standard account and tried to claim he was our biggest customer.
Really mate? You aren’t a university, you are a mum and pop shop that got shafted by our competitor and we came in and rescued you.
Working on the helldesk
I like that maybe-typo :)
Coming from someone over a decade past helldesk work, it wasn’t a typo.
My favorite were university parents who were so sure they were legally allowed to look into their (under 18) kid’s grades and shit, and really did not appreciate that we did not give a fuck who they were if we didn’t have sign off from the student (and even then, we told them to fuck off and go to the admin building cuz we ain’t authorized to give you access to a fucking thing).
I’ve never had one of these moments, but when I was a manager at my current job years ago, I did have a guy who threatened “he was gonna have my job”. It was ten at night, the weather was shit, I was on my way to take my last break, we had no carts, and he was verbally harassing one of my minor associates, who had come to me about the guy being a complete douche. I told my associate to go on home (he was off), and not to worry about this because he wasn’t gonna get in trouble. The guy took deep offense and made all sorts of claims about how he knew the owners of the company. Sure buddy, you’re friends with the Waltons, and that’s why you’re shopping here late at night alone. 🙄
I always take some comfort when lying dicks are bad at it, at least. Sorry about the retail hell, though.
Yeah, but not how you think.
I worked at a grocery store that was a bit pricey and we did get some locally famous people from time to time. When someone came in, all the employees would run around whispering about it unless they were a regular.
One day Luis Gonzales (all star baseball player) was in the store. I saw him staring at bread and asked if he needed help. He asked me, “What the hell are pita chips?” I told him my wife loves those and he said he was sent by his own to find some.
We talked a bit about wives while I took him over, and afterward as he was leaving he asked, “do you know who I am?”
I told him yes and he said something like “well thanks for being chill.”
Yup. Supervisor in a call center. Guy didn’t like what I was saying and tried to pull the "My dad owns <local budget oil delivery service>!” Okay, good. You still aren’t getting what you want AND I won’t be buying my oil from your dad anymore.
This was years ago and I found out recently that the company has been folded into one of the larger full service providers who I do use. I can only hope that they were bought out and I haven’t given their family a penny since.
