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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Was a cab driver. A relatively famous singer stepped in. Said where he needed to go, didn't say a word otherwise. It was a 5 minute drive. I stopped, said.. that'll be 15 euros. Or something like that. And got hit with the 'dont you know who i am?' I answered, "Well 'his name' , Im 'my name' and you need to pay".

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes. It was a cousin on my mom's side who I definitely should've recognized. Oops.

Well I've got to drop Ronnie Pickering

https://youtu.be/hg5cJNXWEpk

My friend was working front of house at a posh hotel in Edinburgh and Irvine Welsh (the author of Trainspotting) tried to pull the "Do you know who I am?" as he was being thrown out for being rowdy. My mate responded, "Yes I know who you are that's why I'm chucking you out!"

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.

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.

I was a bouncer. A lot of people claimed to be someone important. They mostly weren't. I pulled Jess Gower (a local celeb) and her friends out of the queue years ago because I knew she was a bit famous. She seemed a really nice normal person.

Not quite but I got, " eats dinner at my house!" I don't know why they didn't just talk to the owner over dinner

Yes, I did get hit with a "Do you know who I am?". It's not an exciting story and it took place about 20 years ago so my memory is faded. However, it was a bit weird.

This was a 50 or maybe 60 year old white man and he was neurotic about everything but also felt as though the policies that cover every other customer did not apply to him. For example, he was a habitual "I'm going to park right in front of the entrance to the store in the no parking zone" customer. But at the same time, our company policy is that we were supposed to greet customers a specific way (ex: like the chickfila people who are supposed to always say "my pleasure" instead of "you're welcome"), and if we didn't greet him that specific way, he'd ask to speak to the manager and tattle on us.

He was mean, nasty, rude and super arrogant. Apparently, he was also a lawyer, so management would basically concede to this guy's every whim and request, no matter how absurd.

This guy was a regular customer at the main store that I worked at in a town about 25 miles from where I lived. When I switched store locations to be closer to home, I noticed that he shopped there, too. This guy lived in the same town as me. Yuck.

His "Do you know who I am?" spiel came about when I was calling customers about bounced checks, which was part of my job at the time. I had no idea what the guy's name was at the time (and I've forgotten it now all these years later). But when I called him about the bounced check, he insisted it didn't bounce and yes, pulled the "Do you know who I am?" line on me. This is also how I learned that he lived in the same town as me, since his address was on the check.

The weird part of this story is that I was telling my dad about this guy because he was such an ornery cuss, and my dad knew who he was because this guy also shopped at a store my dad was working in at the time. my dad lived in a town and worked at a store that was over an hour away from either location I'd worked at.

It honestly sounds like the "Do you know who I am?" guy spent his days driving around and shopping at different stores all over the state simply being an irritating and infuriating asshole of a customer. Like whether or not he actually was a lawyer, I could see him being the type of person who intentionally tries to cause trouble in order to give himself opportunities to sue people/companies and that's how he makes all his money. I don't know that for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Not exactly what was asked, but I once worked as a personal banker at a bank branch that served multiple of the Washington Redskins (at the time), including many of their most valuable players. But I don't care about sports, so I never knew who any of them were until I'd have to ask them occupation questions by regulation. A ton of them kept coming to me and told me that they loved that I didn't know or care who they were and that I would never ask them a single football question.

Closer to the topic at hand, I also had another unrelated customer who had a doctorate, not a medical degree, and I accidentally called him "Mister" one day instead of "Doctor," after which dude literally spent an hour of his day waiting to talk to my boss to ream him out for being "disrespected" by not using his title. Any time after that when he came in I made sure to include "doctor" in literally every sentence when speaking with him. 😁

yup, I knew exactly who she was, problem was, she didn't know who I was. Crazy bitch was my next door neighbor. I exited the situation just before she began throwing wine bottles, knowing that things would devolve quickly. Sorry Alan, I left you with a real shit sandwich but you didn't pay me enough to deal with that kind of mental health crisis and it was time for my break.

State senators are pretty easy to overlook. I know one and he's not super recognizable, he just looks like a well-dressed guy.

I worked at a now closed greasy spoon directly across from University of Kentucky in Lexington about 25 years ago. We would put your name on your ticket, so that we could call your name when your order was ready. Apparently I thoroughly insulted several of the basketball team because I had no freaking clue who they were. I went to Transy. I don't know your sportsball teams.

I think it's happened about twice for me and not once did I recognize them... but I have issues recognizing faces as is