Ask Lemmy

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.

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!".

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.

At my job about 15 years ago we had some sales rep who thought he was hot shit. He was old and i think he did bring in decent sales. He was also an olympic gold medalist from a soccer team like 50 years sgo. So whenever he called our help line for IT support he would blast that line off basically every single time. Everyone knew and it was basically a huge joke because you knew it was coming. Everyone hated that guy, thankfully he was old so he ended up retiring i think several years ago. As far as i know despite him threatening people with that line i dont think he actually got anyone in trouble, probably because its not like we didnt help him and was treated the same as everyone else.

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'

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.

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.

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.

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"

Yes. Running sound for a concert in THE shittiest sounding room (concrete cube). I warned them how bad the sound is and I'll do everything I can but in the end the room is awful and there is no way around it, we will do the best we can without getting screaming feedback.

Singer of this band was a real cock. Literally said (not jokingly) "I'm famous you know". Wanted a monitor pointed directly at him blasting obscenely loud (louder than the mains) while he played acoustic guitar and did vocals. If any of you have dealt with a stage monitor pointing directly into a guitar sound hole, you know how bad this is. And he wanted it louder.

Walked right past me at the end of the show , totally ignored me. At least the rest of the band was decent. But that guy was really full of himself.

I'm not a pro mixer. But ive heard pros in that space and it sounded just as horrible. You can't fix a bad room with tech.

I knew a guy whose dad was a high-up at a well-known snack company. We got some rotations of experimental beef jerky.

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.

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.

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."

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

Always were respectful to us.

I work for the NHS. I'd lose my job if I told anyone what famous people I've worked with.

Not that I have met anyone famous at work.

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. 🙄

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.

I've avoided that that by knowing, in advance, who they were. But I worked a desk where I called them.

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.

Yes. No. Local rich guy.

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.

I had a colleague say something like "we are bit short staffed so thanks for being patient" which just pissed up this entitled woman who then started spouting about how she worked in HR and she wanted to know who the manager's name was. Just going on and on and eventually I just yelled out who the name of the manager was, which somehow short circuited the diatribe. Somehow she was one of those people who could become offended by a genuine "thanks for the patience".