Ask Lemmy

I always liked telling those people that I did not know who they were and directed them to social services if they required assistance recovering their identity, and that if this was an emergency they should call 911.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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. 🙄

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 had a "I can't believe you're who you are."
When a very wealthy businessman who's well-known in the city as a traditionally married, conservative senior and founder of a charity gave me his laptop to "update and fix any issues". He had a Chrome shortcut on the desktop, but I noticed it also had Firefox installed.
I routinely check all installed browsers for any issues like add-ons that may have been installed unintentionally or malicious websites with the permission to show desktop notifications.

When I opened up Firefox, links with images to gay bondage, leather and shit-eating fetish sites showed up directly on the start page. And this guy was watching me while I was working on it. The tension in the room was palpable.
I quickly opened the settings, did my checks and closed the browser without skipping a beat.
"OK, found nothing malicious installed, now let's check your update status."
And pivoted to some small talk about his charity.

Got the biggest tip of my life that day.

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.

Worked at a shipping and printing store, on campus. The area keeps being developed, so there are architects who get plans printed and such. One of the clients we had usually sent the nicest people in to pick up his father’s company’s print orders.

One day, Junior came in to pick up some bound presentations. You see, his aura was one of importance and power. So when I could not link the order to the account immediately, he busted out a “Don’t you know who I am?”

I looked at him and gave him an apathetic No. I knew exactly who he was, because he dodged my calls when I would have to call him to collect payment for his father’s company. One day, he answered and yelled at me. So yeah, I knew who he was.

We figured it out together at the end. I’d like to say after the journey we had become friends, but…he was the biggest dickhead in the world. So no.

A decade ago I worked in lumber dept of Big Orange. Had a guy come in one day demanding special treatment, claiming "I spend $1000s of dollars every week here!". That's not the fee l does you think it is, most local contractors spend that much every week here. You aren't special.

side note, it was always funny when Karens would get mad and say "I'm taking my business to Lowe's!". okay do that, I'm sure the $70 you were going to spend here will bankrupt us and then we'll be sorry.

“You don’t know who you are!? Do you have dementia? Is your carer here?

Hey Dave, this lady doesn’t know who she is! Can you get her a cup of tea while I call the police, somebody must be missing her”

I actually had to do this twice to two different customers over a number of years. Both times they backpedaled quickly and stopped being dickheads.

I (also) expeirenced this in reverse. I worked with someone who once casually mentitoned they "play some guitar on the weekend".

I figured out later that I have bought several of their albums. Lol.

IT here so "customer service" but internally for a company, and yes I get this one from time to time. More often than its because someone failed their ID check and or forgot their security questions and they blow a gasket when we tell them to open a ticket by email or the portal.

Blah blah blah, do you know how busy I am, blah blah blah do you know who I am, blah blah blah...

Look, I dont care if your some security guard or the CEOs personal ass wiper. Resetting credentials is a critical function that the admins pawn off on us techs because users are insufferable and they dont want to deal with them most of the time. If you cant be bothered to do a little managment of your creds and keys, how the fuck do you still have a job. Get a password manager if its allowed but if we fail an audit because you wrote it down under your keyboard again... Well that problem is above my paygrade.

Former ISP helpdesk monkey. Had it several times. Didn't recognise any of them.

My theory was that no-one important enough to take that tone needs to make their own helpdesk calls.

worked at Walmart. someone pulled that on me. my response, "If I knew who you were, would you have to ask me that?"

they stood there, kind of stunned and asked to see a manager.

evidently they were some distantly related person to the regional manager.

🤷 like that fuckin matters. I still didn't know, nor care, who they were.

I was working at a music festival, schlepping cases of beer. Some guy hit me with "I'm Gord Downie's cousin, give me one", I didn't know who he was talking about, so I told him that and ignored him.

Later, a bunch of Ontarians told me I did that in perfect deadpan. In reality, I grew up on the east coast, where the Tragically Hip wasn't nearly as popular, so I legitimately had no clue who he was talking about.

Oh yeah. It's usually local business owners, they think being above the local median income makes them billionaire celebrities.

I've also had the opposite. I worked with a friendly regular guy in his 50s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and after he left, another customer asked me if I knew who he was. Turns out he was one of the top heart surgeons in the US.

I had that once, they weren't be rude or anything they were just genuinely surprised I didn't know who they were.

Turns out there were some famous basketball player from Florida. Still not sure why he was touring a recycling plant in England.

I once had a guy claim he was one of the guys that invented the internet. I googled his name afterwards and it didn't turn up anything and he was incapable of performing the basic tasks required to reset his password to our website so I'm pretty confident he was full of shit.

No, but I did get asked if I knew who someone was after by a coworker. Some actor who has played a side character in a film I saw a decade ago. Along with a lot of other films I haven't seen. I don't watch many films.

I was working security at a port where cruise ships were loaded, and a bunch of dudes carrying guitar cases and music gear came through. They didn't listen to any of my instructions and tried to go through the metal detectors without putting their shit on the conveyor belt thing. I had to send them through several times, and one of them was like, "Are you sure we have to do this?" and I was confused and told him yes. I found out later that they were the Beach Boys.

My grandpa had an interesting twist. He was working bartender for a community charity event (this probably would be illegal today, but in the 1950s), and the other guy starting taking off his apron "I can't work here, those kids coming this way will tell my parents to not buy from my business if I refuse to serve them" (remember, 1950s, it was illegal to serve alcohol to kids, but odds are half the community only cared about that law if they thought the state police would find out, which in this type of event there was reasonable odds of).

My grandpa responded "oh don't worry, if you don't want to serve someone just send them to me"

"oh, is that why you were sending all those kids to me with a 'he's the boss'?"

"Yes. That is also why they put two people who don't know each other on this job - odds are we don't worry about the same kids"

No. Though I have helped multiple celebrities like scary spice and Helen Hunt.

Always were respectful to us.

I have done customer service, and I have heard the phrase used by a customer; though not at the same time. The only time I actually heard someone say "do you know who I am?" in a customer service capacity was a random dude ahead of me crashing out at 7-11 over $0.05 because the asshole couldn't do some simple arithmetic. He claimed to know the owner and threatened a bunch of shit to the teen behind the counter, holding up the line for like 20 minutes. And in a very "that happened" moment, when he finally fucking left, half the people in line literally clapped.

Was asked about making a key for a private plane. It was a high security blank we couldn't get so I told the guy we couldn't do it. The guy wasn't happy with that answer so he then hit me with "this is Dr Phils plane". Told him that still doesn't change the fact that we can't get the blank therefore we can't make a key that will actually work. I have no way to verify if he was telling the truth.

Heh. Not exactly. But I worked retail in college and this really popular chef opened up a new restaurant near us. He came in one day and was being helped and every time his phone rang he stopped the person helping him to go walk off and take the call. This happened A LOT. So, I went out there and said clearly you’re not in a position to be helped today so we’re going to take care of these other people first. Then I paused and looked him right in the eyes. He got it, left then came back in a few days later when he was actually ready. I looked out there and he threw me a nod. After that he’d come in every now and then and we’d talk a bit. We never talked about that day but I think he respected what I did and understood he would do it for his staff also.

I have met some celebrities. Didn't know a single one of them. Have been absolutely uneventful in these conversations. I did get the 'Hey I used to work here you know!' a couple times at my current job at a supermarket. Which is always funny because our turnover is insane so like, yea, you and a thousand other people who tf cares, I'm not looking in the back for your apple juice sir.

My favorite uncle quagmire tells a story. This is from the early '80s.

He's working near the counter of the coastal airline he's working, another pilot dealing with check-in. Just then, a beautiful blonde starlet comes up, quite over-confident, and needs to get on the next flight. It's booked. But she needs to, you know, and she drops that famous line "don't you know who I am?"

Uncle's peer shoots back at her: "lady, if you don't know who you are, I'm not sure you're in a state to be flying anywhere!". He got in trouble after; and my uncle too for some Alan Alda style guffaws from the next room.