Thar Shaddin

Some of you know this already, but I work at a cyber cafe. It's not glamourous and I get paid a slave's wages, but I meet all kinds of interesting people, some of whom are now good friends... But then there are those whack jobs of human beings who come in and bring with them either a whole crapload of stupidity or a very loose grasp on reality.

I've got a number of great stories. One lady wanted me to photocopy a letter that was printed in black and white by a laser printer "to make it darker" because whoever she was trying to fax it to claimed it was coming up faded on their end. I tried to explain to her that I can't make it any darker because it was already black and white and not faded at all, but she kept insisting that she does "this sort of thing all the time at work." To humour her I made a photocopy with the contrast all the way up. It looked the same. She wasn't satisfied. I told her that black doesn't get any blacker, she flipped out. Crazy. Turned out the fax machine it was being sent to was low on toner.

People who come in and ask if the computers are free. Yes. They're all free. We make money by killing homeless people and grinding them up into burger patties.

Paranoid lady who thinks that the program we use to keep track of who's logged into what computer is spying on her. Another who thought she was being hacked by someone wherever she went. The reason hotmail wouldn't load up at 4:00 pm on a friday was because he was hacking her and reading her mail.

Some lady calls: "My son printed 30 colour pages there last night because he wanted some soccer scores, but then he found out his friend bought him a magazine with the scores in it, can I have a refund?"
"no"
"Oh, I guess not. Also, there is a blue box in the top corner next to a red box and they both have numbers in them and I was wondering what score is for what team."
"... I don't know"
"oh, so you just print things for people without knowing what you're printing?" *disgruntled tone*
"Um... Yes?"
"well, see, my son was trying to get the scores for sweden versus england and the game happened at 12 o clock and it was supposed to be over by such and such time and the scores on the pages don't show blah blah blah blah soccer blah blah blah teams blah blah penalties by blah blah"
OH MY GOD LADY WHAT THE HELL I JUST WORK AT A CYBER CAFE AND I DON'T KNOW THIS SHIT "you'll have to call my manager when he's here and ask him. Bye!"
My manager follows soccer a lot so he actually had answers for her. Amazing.

Worst thing ever was that we kept finding shit covered toilet paper all around the floor in the bathroom. Someone was wiping his ass and throwing the paper on the floor. Eventually, my co-worker paul caught him and wow, he was totally embarrased in front of his friends. Whack job.

At least, though, I haven't had to deal with some of the stuff here: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3885

Dude, that lady going on about the soccer was an idiot, the game was a draw man, 2 - 2, with no penalties, lol.

I've had both a lady and a guy straight-up fighting with me about whether 1. their loans had actually DEFAULTED and they'd been with the guarantor in REHAB for the past year, or if 2. some MAGICAL MYSTICAL company with AMAZING ABILITIES contacted them with a BETTER PAYMENT PLAN FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!!!

Ugh.

The man finally got it, and understood why we can't offer him a payment plan that's about 10 bucks a month for 10 yrs on his 10000 amount loans. The lady absolutely refused to believe me, and said she'd find out who that other company was and call us back with INFORMATION.

Here's a breakdown of that call:

Me: Thank you for blah blah social blah.
Her: Hi, can I negotiate how much I pay back to you?
Me: ...No ma'am, we can't negotiate the amount of money owed back.
Her: AJFLSEEEJL LIAR!!! This other company in New York let me negotiate with them ajdesajlsjkf!!!!
Me: ...I'm sorry ma'am, we cannot negotiate the amount of money you owe back to the government(usually this makes people back off, Uncle Sam sure is scary!)
Her: I'm gonna call that company and find some information for you and then you'll be sorry! Your company are CROOKS etc. etc.
Me: *checking NSLDS, which has all this woman's loans listed and clearly states that the ones in New York fuckin' DEFAULTED* ........Ma'am, per the NSLDS, the Department of Educations website which lists all student loans, your loans defaulted in New York and you were negotiating with the guarantor, not the lender. Once you have shown that you cannot pay back the full amount of your loans, the guarantor, who is basically a collections agency, can negotiate how much you will pay back and take up the difference. We are a lender, and don't have this ability.
Her: .........oh. Well is there anything I can do to negotiate?
Me: Yes, default again.
Her: .......................I'm gonna call and find out EXACTLY what program that was and I'll call back with all the information and you people will do what I say!!! *click*
Me:

Boy have I got some special ones. But about 99% of the people I get are actually sweet and kind. Thank you Jesus.

Hmm. 99%... That's pretty good. I would have to say about 80% of people at the cafe are well behaved, with about 20% of those people just waiting for a reason to flip out and snap over something. I don't count the kids, who can be little hell-spawns, but are allowed to be that way because I remember being like that once too.

I learned a lot more about human nature working than I ever did in psych class. Not to say I learned nothing useful, but there's nothing like actually talking to a wide variety of people to see just how varied and bizarre human nature can be.