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Awesome / Not Always Right

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While some of the customers that the employees have to deal with can be infuriating, frightening, and downright bizarre, there's more than a few stories about karma coming back to bite a bad customer.

Please note, when adding new entries, that Weblinks Are Not Examples. A brief synopsis of the link's content should be added along with a link to the story itself.

For moments from Not Always Working, see here.

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     Not Always Right 
  • A doctor calls to confirm a patient's insurance coverage. She's insistent that she urgently needs information on the patient's coverage, to which the submitter retorts that she should worry about treating the patient first.
  • A father is unapologetic about his five children's unruly behavior. A group of eight men take matters into their own hands, telling the father they're prisoners out on parole and have no qualms about killing a whole family. The unruly bunch leave quickly.
  • A customer gets irate for not being served immediately, but when he gets very threatening, the next customer in line grabs him in a choke hold and forces him out of the store.
  • A cashier overhears the customers insulting their intelligence. When one of them comes up to try and outsmart them, the cashier flawlessly answers each question and stumps the customer in the process.
  • A man claiming to be a lawyer threatens to sue the store, only to be defeated by someone experienced in law using the details of the store's policy.
    • In the same vein: a customer claiming to be a lawyer and threatening to sue gets exposed as a fraud by an actual prosecutor.
  • A teen tries to rob a pharmacy, and the cashier (the submitter) just points him to the pharmacy storage. The manager is confused over the submitter's nonchalant response, only to see the same teen flee the store, chased by the new hire, a buff 35 yr old trained boxer technician.
  • The submitter is buying tampons for his mother, and is mocked by other customers for it. The female cashier catches on, and acts like the submitter's girlfriend in order to embarrass the mocking customers.
  • A customer tries to return a game that doesn't fit the store's return policy, and threatens to beat up the cashier when he gets turned down. The cashier's best friend jumps in with a subtle burn that causes the customer to back down.
    Best Friend: Hey, really quick, could I get your name and if you have any severe allergies to pain-killers? ...I’m his wrestling and sparring partner, and I’m calling you an ambulance.
  • A customer is insistent on a type of antivirus but isn't willing to pay. He comes up with the idea of downloading it (likely illegally), to which another customer suggests a likely malware-ridden porn site. He takes it hook, line and sinker.
  • A customer tries to get the cashier in trouble by accusing them of racism. He gets quickly called out by a bigger, imposing customer, who also happens to be African-American.
  • A customer tries to steal an extra bag for himself, only to be cornered by "gangsta ushers."
  • This barkeeper quickly lectures an unruly customer on the meaning of "on the rocks":
    Submitter: Do you know what "on the rocks" also means?
    *Customer gets thrown out by the doorman*
  • When this customer finds out the store is out of wasp spray, he buys materials to improvise a flamethrower.
  • This restaurant worker has enough of a kid's unruly behavior and threatens him to get him to leave. He comes back with his mother, who threatens to file a police report. The submitter says that she has nothing on the numerous witnesses who can testify.
    Submitter: “So, do you want your can of whoop-ass here, or shall I serve it to you in court?”
  • A rude customer thinks he can act how he wants just because he's a lieutenant. He gets found by his superior, a rear-admiral, who promises to punish him severely when they get back to camp.
  • A customer attempts to attack a cashier over an expired coupon, but gets pulled away by the manager who smacks some sense into him.
  • A prank caller reaches a gun store. They get scared off with a Dramatic Gun Cock, and a reminder that the Caller ID can identify their location.
  • A hotel gets prank-called, but calmly and politely tells them to never call back.
  • A five-year-old yells at an irate customer to behave herself, causing her to leave in embarrassment.
  • A customer threatens the cashier with The Easy Way or the Hard Way, an ex-boxer coworker gleefully takes up the offer, scaring him away.
  • A customer tries to get a refund over a very trivial matter. When she tries to escalate the issue, the technician bluntly tells her that it's not happening, and disconnects the call after she is reduced to begging for the refund.
  • A customer who's defaulted on his electrical bills threatens to kill the submitter. The response:
    Submitter: “The difference between you and me, sir, is that I know where YOU live.”
  • This selfish passenger is annoyed that he has to wait on the plane because another passenger had a heart attack and needed the paramedics to transport him out. When he starts kicking up a fuss, a different passenger tells him off, asking him to put himself in the patient's shoes.
  • This mother learns from her daughter that her son has been smoking weed in secret. She decides to order some extra fragrant food to torture her son and his friends when their cravings set in.
  • By sheer coincidence, this submitter's workplace and her home have very similar phone numbers. An insistent caller tries to make an order on a day when the restaurant is closed, and when her father picks up, he decides to settle the matter personally. Not only was the caller forced to eat his words, he followed up at a later day with a tip and a letter of apology.
  • A bigoted patient requests that another nurse attend to her, due to prejudice against the submitter's sect. The coworker comes in, explains that the submitter is more of a model Christian than the patient thought of her, and also exposits on her own less-than-ideal-Christian lifestyle.
  • A customer is adamant about not needing to show his ID. Another customer intuits his insecurities and embarrasses him about it.
  • This lady's fiancé intimidates a rude customer into backing off.
  • A customer snatches away another customer's pre-order copy of Skyrim. A tall man catches on to what's happening, and rams the fleeing thief into the arms of security with a "FUS RO DAH!"
  • This worker at a comic book store gets called to attend to a faulty bathroom bulb, but he's well aware of the time it takes for the bathroom lights to come on. He has a little fun with this, and fits in a well-timed "STRUN BAH QO!"*
  • This security manager reprimands a client for unsafe security practices, and when the client is unapologetic about it, he brings the issue with the client's own manager, and both agree to punish him by removing his computer.
  • A pair of suspicious customers walk in and the cashier recognizes one of them, who has been blacklisted for selling stolen merchandise. As the cashier stalls for time, a police officer comes in and corners them until they are properly arrested.
    Officer: “If you take one more step, I WILL taze you!”
  • A bigoted customer refuses to let women handle his tech support. So when the male manager intervenes, he immediately hands the phone over to the female submitter, who's the only one among who knows how to fix it, and puts the customer in his place.
  • This employee is a real Cunning Linguist, engaging a customer with their limited grasp of Spanish before managing to flawlessly take the order in Japanese.
  • A security guard catches a camera thief between a rock and a hard place. "Sir, I can either charge you with stealing, or I can charge you with stalking and pedophilia, since this lady is obviously a minor. Which one is it going to be?"
  • In the war against rudeness, a reward for politeness can work wonders.
  • Say cheese! A female supervisor persuades an aggressive and misogynistic customer to let her take his photo and contact information, ostensibly "so we can contact you about your complaint", really to report him to the police.
  • When this cashier gets hit on by a sleazy customer, she calls up a stock personnel to scare him off.
  • An aggressive customer gets taken down by a smaller woman, who also calls out the apathetic manager.
  • When this bigoted customer gets aggressive towards the female workers, one of them plays up her reputation of a "man-beater" to scare him off.
  • That time when Batman, Master Chief and Pikachu saved a Japanese Restaurant.
    "I am vengeance. I am the night. I am ... Batman."
  • Good to know it's never too early to instill manners and chivalry in a person.
  • This employee foils an attempted robbery with Politeness Judo without even realizing what was happening.
  • A pair of elderly ladies subtly insult the gay submitter with a book on how homosexuality is an abomination. When the manager catches wind of this, he stands up for his employee and shows the ladies the door.
    "If you cannot handle him as a gay man, then you do not deserve him as a straight man!"
  • A police officer, dressed as Batman, apprehends an unruly volunteer dressed as Spiderman without breaking character.
    “When crazy Spiderman went crazy and Batman took off his costume and he was an actually real hero and made crazy Spiderman go away!”
  • The little girl in this story gets one for calling out her nutjob father.
  • This girl calls out a bigoted old woman while smiling the entire time.
  • A racist customer drags the submitter into her manager's office, and proceeds to threaten with a swiss-army knife. The manager draws her own knife, scaring him into obedience.
    "That's one. I'm carrying nine. Let him go."
  • A customer insults a bagger with a mental disability. The cashier, who's witnessed the whole exchange, only has this to say to her:
    Cashier: “Refusal of service for massive discrimination towards a valued employee, as well as a regular customer. You may leave your items here; we’ll shelve them later. Please leave.”
  • A student jumps queue, only to find out that he's done so in front of the Governor.
  • This tired and irritated submitter forces a bus-rider to pay his fare.
  • This bookstore owner showed why he won so many fencing awards.
  • This manager knows how to deal with a person bigoted against gays and lesbians. Bonus points for getting her fellow managers to do the same.
  • This manager frightens a fraudster into turning himself in.
  • Sometimes, it takes real guts for a daughter to stand up to her mother when she's being a homophobic bitch.
    Daughter: “Can you please just stop? This guy’s been pretty d*** helpful and probably has better taste in men than you!”
  • When this girl gets accused by an angry drunk for "stealing her boyfriend", she knocks out the drunk in one punch when the situation escalates. Even the bouncer was impressed!
  • This vicar comes face-to-face with a Hollywood Atheist, and hams up a spontaneous conversion to piss them off.
  • A bunch of patients in a waiting room all start singing along to "Bohemian Rhapsody"
  • This nine-year-old karate student floors an adult who's threatening him over a toy.
  • Two unruly customers get scared off when a customer recognizes them. The reason?
    Customer: “They tried to mug me about two hours ago.”
  • The woman in this story saves a worker from harm, but the kicker is that she just goes on with her day like it was nothing. Perhaps the only sad part is that the worker never got to thank her for it.
  • Sales representative vs. racist caller.
    "Why don't you get a dictionary, and look it up? While you're at it, look up 'inbred' and 'bigot', and call back when you figure out why I suggested it."
  • The submitter in this story. Two kids are throwing stuff everywhere in the supermarket. The cashier asks them to stop, but the kids' parents accuse her of being a Fascist for ordering them and threaten violence on her. The submitter, a six-foot-tall guy who has injuries on his face from a sports match earlier, takes one of the cans the kids have thrown and tells the father that it caused his injuries and asks if he'd rather deal with him personally or talk to the police. The terrified father is forced by the submitter to apologize to both him and the cashier for his kids' behavior.
  • This woman manages to completely turn the tables on a robber.
  • This DJ gets a request for a song, but has to delay playing it until they can find the right opportunity to do so. The requesting customer isn't having any of it, gets aggressive, and has to be hauled off by security. Just as she's getting pulled away, the DJ puts on her requested song as a parting gift.
  • Patient slaps a pregnant clerk. Turns out the clerk is married to a security guard, who makes it clear what will happen to the patient if there is even the slightest harm to the clerk or the baby because of what he did.
  • A vandal gets out-trolled.
  • The day Karkat, Thor, and Loki defended the honor of Juliet from two sexist pigs.
  • When an insecure father threatens a sickly girl, her mother, who's head nurse, has none of it and gets him kicked out of the hospital.
  • Well, I guess that's one way to report a guy on drugs.
  • “No, I’m all woman, but a woman willing to kick your a** if you don’t apologize to this girl.”
  • It's always nice when you do your job and potentially save someone's life AND smack down the idiots both at the same time.
  • “If you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico. In America, we speak English.” “Sir, I was speaking Navajo. If you want to speak English, go back to England.” Burn.
  • A stupid golfer gets a burn so hot that it rivals the sun itself.
  • This manager will not stand for people who insult her overweight customers.
  • Kudos go to this daycare owner for dealing with an irate customer insulting her employee.
  • This poor sap gets to be on the wrong end of two in succession. Here's a summary: Drunk guy hits on girl at bar. Girl says she's already married. Drunk guy says he could probably beat up her man. Girl doesn't deny that possibility, and since the guy is there, drunk guy tries to pick a fight. Guy tells drunk guy that he should probably leave "before he gets hurt", then clarifies that he never said he'd hurt him, as the girl floors the drunk with one punch. Drunk guy asks bartender to have girl and her husband thrown out. Bartender refuses. Drunk guy claims to be the owner's brother. Bartender turns to girl and says "Huh. I didn't know we had a brother." Then the bartender/owner bans the drunk guy for life and the bouncer, her husband, throws him out.
  • Occasionally, you find a witty comeback to being told to "go to Hell" or the like:
  • This nosy woman gets owned, hard.
    Woman: You’re a little old to be playing Pokémon, aren’t you?
    Guy: And your son's a little young to be playing Grand Theft Auto, isn’t he?
  • A bank manager gives a recurring problem customer exactly what he asks for.
  • This old guy gives a well-deserved "The Reason You Suck" Speech to a young man who disrespects retired people.
  • Two idiots with an an inexplicable hatred of breastfeeding learn that those Renaissance fair swords are real. For bonus points, the guard never broke character.
  • An ex-colonel from the British army teaches this scammer a lesson.
  • This customer stops a robbery with a fake knife! Albeit after realizing the robber's weapon was also fake.
  • This worker using a racist customer's own logic against him.
  • This teen tells off a virulent religious bigot for making assumptions and also being blatantly hypocritical.
  • This cashier gets shouted at by a rude customer who's trying to rush for an interview. Turns out the submitter's father is doing the interviewing.
  • When someone warns you that they know judo, listen to them.
  • This well-off teenager, despite her appearance, is quite generous with her money, using it to help others.
  • This conversation takes a turn for the surreal when the undead are brought up, but it's all helped by every party being good sports about it.
  • When the owner's addressing a customer's complaints, she hears people shouting to stop a snatch thief. Without hesitating, she smacks the snatch thief in the face with her tray and then goes back to business like normal.
  • "That’s assault, attempted assault, we’ll slap in attempted vehicular manslaughter if you open your mouth again, and on top of that driving while intoxicated. Thank you, ladies. Have a nice day!"
  • "Khaleesi!"
  • Two young men decide to have a lightsaber fight, but have the courtesy to give the cashier prior warning. A lot of fun was had and nobody was hurt.
    "Best. Store. Ever."
  • "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" The ending is a Heartwarming Moment.
  • This guy stops a kid from getting Call of Duty: Ghosts and informs a mother about the ESRB rating system. When the mother then says that adult video gamers are idiots and asks who'd play them, the staff inform her that they do, as does the narrator, and plenty of people who come to the store.
  • This kid, who's about seven or eight, is able to understand percentages better than a fully-grown man. He and his mother receive a well-earned discount in response.
  • Who knew mail ladies could be awesome?
    Mail Lady: "Ma'am. Shut your d*** mouth and leave the poor guy alone! He didn't do anything wrong, and he's already CLEARLY waiting! If you don't stop, I won't give you your mail! You're just a rude old bat, aren't you?!"
  • This Chinese ice cream vendor, having witnessed a Chinese kid get mocked and bullied, struck a deal with that kid to let him have his moments.
  • This guy gives a spectacular "The Reason You Suck" Speech to a bigot who accuses him of trying to blow up the store.
  • This fast food worker, an English expatriate living in New Zealand. Upon working drive-thru for the first day, their first customer is someone who grew up down the road from them.
  • A customer jumps in front of the line. This father shames her via Politeness Judo.
  • Here, a lady suffering from a major case of Small Name, Big Ego tries to get a waitress fired because she was wearing hearing aids (which the lady claims are headphones). The manager gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and asks her to leave the restaurant, and then her husband also tells her off. After the lady leaves, the rest of the table (9 people) all give the waitress huge tips.
    • The husband deserves credit for not falling into the Acquired Situational Narcissism that his wife obviously had — the couple was rich because he'd won the lottery.
  • "In my tribe, I am called ‘Ejects-Bigoted-A**-hole-From-Premises’. Now kindly get the f*** out."
  • A little girl kicks a homophobic jerk in the shins repeatedly. He grabs her, then tries to get her arrested for "assaulting" him, and promptly gets arrested for assaulting her. Several customers offer to buy the kid candy. She wants to buy a 50-piece toolset instead.
  • A customer yells at this operator because his cable TV has been turned off and he can't see a football match with his friends. Not only does she stay calm the entire time and not only does she shoot down all of his "arguments" on why she should turn his cable back on even though he's refusing to pay any of his outstanding fees, but she flat-out trolls him first by telling him that since he hasn't been paying his phone bills either, she'll have to suspend his phone service as well "to make sure he doesn't incur any further fees", making it that much harder for him to call back and yell at them and that she's going to watch the match in question.
  • This customer notices an old man struggling with the self-checkout and decides that'd be a good time to teach her daughter how to use it, giving the stranger a full walkthrough in the process.
  • It may have taken the submitter an hour to lecture his mother about why she was in the wrong, but when she finally had her Heel Realization, it was worth it. For bonus points, the only reason the submitter didn't hook up with the clerk is that he's Genre Savvy enough to know that she would not get along with the mother-in-law.
  • When an anti-Semitic woman spits on a bagger after learning he's Jewish and starts saying racist things to him, the manager calls her out on her actions, pointing out if it wasn't for him and other Jewish workers, their Christian coworkers wouldn't get to spend Christmas Eve with their families and tells her to leave. When she refuses to leave and tries to face another customer who calls her actions un-Christian like, she gets an Oh, Crap! when she learns the other customer is her pastor! The pastor not only tells her apologize to the bagger and leave, but he expects to see her in church in the front row for bad behavior on Christmas Day! Then the cashier she spit on calls her out on not knowing the difference between Christmas and Easter for good measure.
  • A thief punches out a cashier and steals from the register, only for another customer to punch him out on the way out. Said customer proceeds to ask if he can finish his shopping before having to testify, like stopping a robbery was just a minor inconvenience.
  • An Islamophobic asshole is dragged out kicking and screaming after insulting and assaulting a Muslim customer.
  • "Catcher in the Sky." One for the ill-informed customer for a change, because he managed to catch a wild bird with his bare hands. Doubles as a Funny Moment.
  • "Let That Entitlement Slide Into The Bus Lane." An awesome manager remains verbally polite with a customer but delivers a metaphorical "Up yours!" by tearing apart the customer's ridiculous complaint before her very eyes. His response against any potential fallout? Worth It!
  • Don't try threatening the Taliban on these guys.
    Manager: “Ma’am, I am from Iran. I watched the Taliban kill my two sons because they wouldn’t join. You want me to issue a credit after making that kind of a threat? No. I’ve flagged your account. You will receive no further credits. Pay your bill through the automated system before the fifteenth to avoid a late fee, which also will not be credited. Goodbye.”
  • One day, a very rude customer accuses a 12-year-old of not needing the money he’s trying to earn for his low-income family by playing music in front of a store, then takes his violin and smashes it on the ground. He then proceeds to beat up an employee and another customer trying to defuse the situation. The kid ends his reign of terror by taking the broken violin neck and hitting him in the crotch with it. The pain subdues the asshole long enough for the police to show up and arrest him for assault, and the kid gets a new violin with the fine the guy's forced to pay.
  • Damn, you've got balls of steel!
  • If there ever were a Cool Old Guy, this guy (who helps a mother who has a seizure in the check out line get medical attention and shrugs off the broken wrist that he gets while doing so) would be it.
  • Never disrespect the elderly or Man-Bear will kick you out.
  • This guy found out why it was a bad idea to insult the mechanic doing an oil change on his car, courtesy of the shop owner.
  • The groom in this story managing to combine Tranquil Fury with a Big "SHUT UP!" after his Momzilla mother caused havoc right before his wedding by basically destroying the submitter's professional makeup case in an attempt to "correct" her work.
  • This Australian manager implements a policy that allows his workers to outright ban and tell an especially unruly customer to "Fuck off!" once a year each.
  • A woman attempts to steal a hearing-impaired person's service dog at a grocery store, hurting it in the process. The hearing-impaired person responds by punching her in the stomach and face to protect their dog, just in time for the police to show up and arrest the woman for assault and attempted dog theft. And then the hearing-impaired person presses charges against the woman and easily wins the case due to all the witnesses and the security cam footage in the store; the woman winds up in jail and is forced to pay a huge fine to the hearing-impaired person.
  • Scrawny and timid retail worker VS. A gigantic and hot-tempered biker dude. Scrawny and timid retail worker wins!
  • A pair of teens managed to hide every copy of the Twilight series in a bookstore in its ceiling. While the OP had to report them to the manager, the manager rewarded them with gift cards.
  • The Pizza Avengers. A pizza parlor received a call from a sobbing young mother whose boyfriend had taken their last 20 dollars and her car in order to pick up the pizza order, even though the two-week-old baby was almost out of formula. The pizzeria staff rose to the challenge. The driver hurried to the closest store to buy formula and other necessities. When the boyfriend arrived, the pizzeria took his money, blacklisted him from the place and chased him out with a threat of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and Curb-Stomp Battle (via Death Glare, and one of their chefs had her knife in hand). The driver arrived at her house, bringing the pizza, the baby's things, some containers of pasta enough for a few days that the chef threw in, and a note from their boss potentially offering the young mother a job if she decided to dump the boyfriend. He found out that her family has pulled an awesome moment of their own: having finally had enough of her abuser, she called her well-to-do parents, who her boyfriend had forced her to cut contacts with. Her father and brother immediately raced over and packed the boyfriend' stuff into bags. The young mother burst into tears when the driver gave her the food and the baby's things, upon which her father pressed the driver to take (more than enough) money for what he bought. The family became regular customers of the pizzeria and tipped handsomely even though the submitter is in Australia which doesn't have a tipping culture, and the mother and child seemed to thrive without "Mr. Gangster".
  • While seating tables at a hotel restaurant, a guest slaps the hostess on the behind, and she reflexively hits him in the throat with her clipboard, edge first. Everybody in the restaurant says he deserved it, including the guest himself, who tips her a hundred bucks as apology.
  • A man makes a big show of being generous and kind to a restaurant's staff to impress a date, spending almost $300 on food and giving a $100 tip... However, once his date is out of earshot, he tells his server, the submitter, to mark the tip down to $20, admitting he was "just playing it up", and becoming angry when they ask him to repeat what he'd said. More concerned with the customer manipulating his date than the money, the submitter catches him and the date outside, revealing his deception under the guise of needing him to sign the new receipt with the $20 tip for bookkeeping purposes. The customer does sign the receipt, meaning the promised hundred dollar tip is not received, but his date at least sees some of his true colors.
  • When a breastfeeding mother in a café is harassed by a sleazy guy who wants "a taste", a nearby waiter lifts his own top and tells him to "have a suckle on this! Otherwise, you can f*** off like the creepy little saddo you are!" The sleazeball blushes and storms out. The mother gives him a huge tip and later puts in a word for him with his manager; the waiter subsequently gets a promotion — and his own superhero nickname, "Boob-erMan".
  • This sister is one of the most noble women in NAR history. As OP reveals, she is a sweet woman who never curses or raises her voice. However, she also doesn't like when anyone gets picked on. And that is shown when a man in front of her in line begins harassing a cashier with Down Syndrome. She, again, without cursing or raising her voice, dresses the man down and shames him in front of everyone, causing him to leave the store with his tail between his legs.
  • This old woman tells off another female customer off for spraying her sweat all over the store during a heatwave. When the customer insults the old woman by saying God wasted a good opportunity to not kill her off with the heatwave, the old woman responds in kind.
    "God wasted a good a**hole when he put teeth in your mouth!"
  • A cranky customer reduces a 17-year-old cashier to tears by laying into her over something scanning incorrectly. The new assistant manager, whom the cashier has never even met before now, proceeds to loudly but calmly deliver a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him, finally telling him to leave until he could behave like a human being, before giving the cashier a hug and a break. She subsequently continues to go to bat for the store's employees, until they barely get any more bad customers.
  • Another story about an Obnoxious Entitled Housewife reducing a teenage employee to tears, but this time it's the employee herself who ends up doling out justice. The woman was buying a large quantity of gelatine to glaze her cakes for a school bake sale, but the girl, knowing that she advertises her cakes as being vegan (she attends the same school as the woman's daughter, who is the local Alpha Bitch and gets away with everything she does due to her mother bullying the principal) and that the brand she's buying is collagen-based, asks if she's baking for vegetarians. The woman proceeds to explode at her, call her an incompetent child, etc., before storming off to find someone else to get her gelatine for her. However, the girl later reveals the truth about the cakes on the school's Facebook page, bringing a wave of outrage from the woman's vegan customers. The woman tries to get her expelled — and later fired — over this, even making a complaint to corporate, but since she hasn't broken any school rules and the store wasn't involved, her efforts at retribution come to nothing.
  • This mother attempts to throw the OP under the bus by blaming them for her son not being allowed to eat any candy. OP promptly flips the script by giving the kid permission to get candy, even paying for it themselves, which then forces the mother to be an even bigger bad guy in the kid's eye by having to take the candy OP gave them. OP points out that it's her own fault for dragging them into parenting her kid.
  • This bookstore was harassed by proselyte preachers, and corporate prevented the workers to ban them. One new employee, described by the submitter as a geek, then shows up wearing robes, a mask, carrying pamphlets about the tenets of various fictional religions (from various Eastern RPG video games), and starts proselyting the various preachers. Once they get the hint and try to go when the guy isn't working, another employee replaces him with the stack of pamphlets and her own disguise. The story concludes by stating there were no preacher's visit for the last five months, but the bag of faux-religious pamphlets is still "sitting behind the front desk, just in case".
  • This waitress, when one of the other waitresses gets harassed by a group of sleazy men, proceeds show the men just how gross they are being without having to outright say it. Namely, by noting that her dad has the same name as the ringleader of the men (he doesn't, but he didn't need to know that) and then by revealing that she's the same age as the ringleader's daughters (again, she's not, but she's only a few years older).
    As soon as this sleazy a**hole realized that I was the same age as at least one of his daughters and our dads had the same name, he was suddenly well-behaved, and so were his friends.
  • This manager proves able to stand up to an entitled customer who was trying to make a fuss over nothing, but also the regional manager who came in to tell him off, simply by giving one word answers and not giving in to their demands.
  • The entire "Managers With a Spine" tag for the bosses and managers who stand up to overly-entitled customers and often do so in style.
    • The submitter in this story has dealt with a small crowd of drunk jerks who didn't leave a tip. After closing, a man asked about them and if they tipped. Upon hearing they didn't, the man revealed himself to be their boss and wrote a check for a 200% tip to be taken out of their paychecks for being rude. The group learned their lesson and tipped on their next visit.
    • Doubling as a Funny moment, one manager decides to put up some creative signs to deal with many of a Never Heard That One Before situation with the example being the classic, "If it doesn't scan, it must be free." The cashier simply points to the sign.
      Sign: "In this store, ‘It must be free’ is a request for ritualistic combat to the death."
  • This manager has to deal with an entitled "platinum member" guest, who repeatedly goes out of his way to harass the staff (even at one point bullying a first-day employee into quitting and being happy about it) and gets away with it since Corporate would rather retain his business. He demands to be upgraded to the Presidential Suite for free, implicitly threatening the manager's job on being denied due to hotel policy dictating that upgrades are assigned on check-in and based on availability. After hanging up, the manager then proceeds to give a complementary upgrade to the Presidential Suite to a family of six that checks in and leaves instructions for the submitter to do the same to make sure that every single premium room is filled. As a result, the entitled guest is forced to settle with the regular room he checked in with and the hotel manager decides not to punish the lesser manager and gives him a raise for all the positive reviews from the upgraded guests. The hotel then repeats this every time the problem guest is scheduled to stay with them until the problem guest finally stops booking with them.
  • One for the customers in this story as they're all ahead of a particular Irate Customer who is complaining that the first person in line is paying with cash. After that outburst, everyone else in line puts their cards away and gets ready to pay with cash instead. The cherry on top is the man in front of the Irate Customer who opts to pay with a personal check! The Irate Customer promptly storms out of the store while passing by the original cash payer who had stuck around to enjoy the show, and the man who had been in front of him taps his debit card on the reader and goes on his way.

     Not Always Romantic 

     Not Always Related 
  • The submitter's school enemy quickly eats her words when she learns a substitute teacher she tries to insult is the submitter's mother.
  • What to do when your older sister tries to impose on you? Why, knock her out!
  • A grouchy rich German wants to own the submitter's father's five-acre plot of land. When he is caught moving the property line stakes farther into their land, the man swears to them in German that the land should be his, not theirs. Unfortunately, the submitter reveals she can speak German and tells the grouch in German to leave their land or she'll call the police, and if he ever trespasses into their land again, she will shoot his ass with a paintball gun. The grouch quickly leaves!
  • Two lewd Frenchmen make obscene comments about the attractive but "stupid Americans"... one of whom lives in Paris. She tells the "inbred sons of syphilitic wh***s" that if they don't stop harassing her baby sister (who can't understand them), she'll cut off their pathetic excuses for manhood and feed them to the pigeons.
  • This story shows what happens when you mess with the son of a tough old man. Especially if he also has an older brother.
  • A rude, sexist kid learns the hard way what being a true gentleman means. Even more awesome is that he actually did try to be a better person after that.
  • The "ninja brother" embarrasses a bully with his agility and an Old Spice reference.
  • This submitter, at age twelve, is made of awesome towards their stepfather. The guy steals gold-plated cards from the submitter and sells them on eBay, and the submitter calls them out on it, and then tells them off for threatening a child and dares them to hit them. Several years later, the submitter is living on their own, and tells their mother that they want a birthday gift from their stepfather. They want the stepfather to gift them those gold-plated cards, which have gone up dramatically in price since their creation.
  • This five-year-old girl would make a pretty kick-ass mayor:
    "I'd make all the boys and girls be scientists. And all the rest be mothers, except for the ones that want to be firemen or firegirls."
  • Meet The Germaniac Family. A group of Germans in a WW2 town are about to be attacked by Russians in 4 hours and they've just finished cooking dinner. So...
    "They... they finished dinner, and then washed, dried, and put away the dishes."
  • This guy moves in with his kept-secret boyfriend, and decides to say goodbye to his family — including his homophobic father — by blasting songs about non-heteronormative ways, kisses his boyfriend, and drives off. The father went catatonic for a while... and when the younger brother came out as transgender a few years later, he did the same thing.
  • This kid gets mocked by their stepfather and mother for their immature hobby of playing video games and collecting Pokémon cards, despite the stepfather collecting baseball cards. Mom says they should get mature hobbies, so, in a perfect example of malicious compliancenote , the kid returns the next day with their backpack full of weed, pills, and dirty magazines and says they've taken up 'mature' hobbies, and will raid mom's liquor cabinet if they get bored, too. Mom is stunned into silence, but backs off of letting them play video games.
  • This entry tells of a young woman who had to deal with a very, VERY entitled, mentally stunted cousin on occasion. One day, years later, her boyfriend proposes to her, but the happy moment is cut short when said entitled cousin goes ranting and raving and throwing a childish tantrum about how she has to be the one to get married first, not the original poster. Obviously, the OP isn't having any of it and tells her off for being a grade-A bitch. What happens afterward isn't pretty, but good for OP for refusing to put up with her cousin's bullcrap.
  • "Uncle Yikes": A Creepy Uncle who has an obsession with tattoos — to the point of ranting incessantly about them despite the whole family being annoyed with him— announces that he wants to inspect the OP's body for them during a Thanksgiving get-together, when she's on break from a liberal college. The OP's mother walks in and hears this. She gets mad, and reveals to the family that she has a small tattoo on her back, and asks What Were You Thinking? The uncle is asking to examine his niece's body, as if she is a plaything. He tries angrily ranting, and leaves the dad and OP's younger brother with bruises when they kick him out of the house. As Laser-Guided Karma goes, everyone cuts ties with him except his mother because of the incident, and his refusal to keep his mouth shut.
  • A Christmas Affair To Remember: The homosexual teenager learns just how bigoted his grandmother is about non-heteronormative people during Christmas, where among her first rant about them is that they should get chemical castration. He puts up with the rants for most of dinner for the sake of the family, but the grandmother keeps going and even asks the teenager if he ever 'tried being straight'. The teenager finally snaps and fires back, 'Have you tried not having an affair?' alluding to her repeated cheating in her past. The grandmother is shocked silent, and the mother, upon hearing a cousin's reaction to this, later tells everyone in the family that anyone that thinks the teenager should apologize for what he said, and not the grandmother for what she said, they can get right outta the house and their lives.

     Not Always Learning 
  • A student puts the lid on a bigoted professor when he makes a blatant assumption for the last time.
  • The security guard in this story started teaching himself about electrical equipment because he was tired of his houses burning down from faulty wiring. Not only does he save a tech-inept tech student from himself and fix several other students' busted projects, the last line of the story says that he knew enough to test out of all but the most advanced classes! note 
    • Not to mention, at first he thought the sound of the exploding light bulb was a gun, and he immediately burst in screaming, "THE FUCK WAS THAT? AIN'T NO ONE SHOOTING UP MY SCHOOL!"
    • He also found a replacement light bulb with the correct voltage. He took it from the ceiling. When it was still on. And he barely notices that it's hot.
  • This professor of a hard class offers a deal to the students — a bare passing grade for those who choose to leave without taking the test. Most of the class does. The submitter, who has been struggling, doesn't, as they want their grades to reflect their efforts. Once the remaining attendance is confirmed, the test is revealed, and only asks that the student write their name.
  • This professor is aware of an attendance problem, and rewards those who didn't cut class with a credited but really simple pop quiz.
  • Grade four bully picks fight with grade one schoolgirl. Grade one schoolgirl wins.
  • A somewhat overweight woman is harassed by a smaller patron when applying for a hour-long exercise program. She gives the exercise her all, finishing the hour, AFTER having just come off a half-hour session of the same exercise, while the one that harassed her gives up after 15 minutes.
  • Two whiny Star Wars fans vs. Awesome female Star Wars fan. Guess who wins?
  • This classroom stands up to their bigoted Bible teacher.
    • Similarly, these students stand up to a teacher who won't let them get counseling for a student's death.
  • The site has no shortage of stories involving awesome parents.
  • This bully starts a fight and tries to pin the blame of the fight on the submitter, who stood up for her victim. In an aversion of the typical school's zero-tolerance policy to violence from all parties, the vice principal suspends the bully and lets the submitter off with a short essay.
  • This principal does not stand for bullying. After hearing that a student was savagely beaten by one, he calls the bully into his office, and after an extended period of time (the submitter still doesn't know what happened inside) persuades the bully to apologize and promise to never bother the student again! He really looks after his school.
  • A minor example, but this chemistry teacher crossed his very large lab in about a second because he heard a student scream and thought they were hurt. Impressive and dedicated to his students' safety!
  • "I'm a man, and I demand to be treated like one!" "Start acting like one." Owned.
  • The student in this story is on a field trip to Auschwitz, where taking selfies is disrespectful. When they hear of two classmates doing so, they snatch away the camera and slap both classmates in one fell swoop.
    Teacher: “I saw nothing. But let’s leave it at one ‘nothing’, shall we?”
  • The teacher in this one addresses the effects of bullying using herself as an example. It takes a lot of guts to revisit a history of self-harm (and attempted suicide) to drive home that bullying can have grave consequences.
  • These teachers tell off Islamophobic parents who don't want their students to learn about "Islamic culture". Made better by the fact that this was just past 9/11.
  • This teacher's ingenious plan of teaching his students about the Reformation and getting donations.
  • A student complains about "gays talking about gay stuff". This teacher agrees... and forces the student to stop "talking about straight stuff", I.E. shutting him up.
  • This professor's casual attitude leaves some very good first impressions, and his class learns better with him with that rapport.
  • "You can call now me 'Lady of Flames'." Yes ma'am! Her nickname at that time? Iron Lady.
  • This student takes the mature response to theft... threatening to press charges for grand larceny, since the stolen items included over $2000 worth of rare Magic: The Gathering cards. It works.
  • This student cleverly gets his teacher to cancel the lesson.
  • "I heard you whacked [Student] today! Obviously, you shouldn't do that, but that's brilliant! I've been wanting to do that for years!"
  • When this student has had enough of a classmate playing with her hair, her teacher calls her name while trying to intervene. The student turns to the teacher and unknowingly whips the classmate in the eye with her braid.
  • A girl tells off a bully by whacking him over the head several times with her textbook (which he took from her). The teacher promptly gives the bully detention.
    Bully: "But she's the one that hit me! That's not fair!"
    Teacher: "Yeah, but I've never seen her do that before. You must have done something to deserve it! So, detention!"
  • This professor. As a student, people called him a nerd...
    Professor: But I won. They're all working at [Local Grocery Store Chain], and here I am teaching you guys. I tell a bad joke, 140 people laugh. That's power, right?
  • This student not only calls out a girl who was bullying her, but also a teacher who refused to do anything about it - in front of the school at assembly. Even other teachers thought what she did was impressive, and best of all, the bully didn't bother her again.
  • This chemistry teacher begins the year by sacrificing some gummy bears to the "lab gods" so no one will get injured that year. The best part? It worked.
  • Just because someone has been extremely patient with you, don't think she can't knock your ass out in an instant.
  • A girl's head of year, male teacher, and headmaster decided she was in the wrong for punching a male classmate after he twanged her bra multiple times and the teacher refused to do anything. They and the male student get their asses verbally handed to them by the girl's mother, who goes on to report the situation to the Board of Governors and OFSTED.
    • You can tell it's going to be good from the very first exchange between the mother and the headmaster. The head sarcastically thanks her for "finally" joining them; she responds by sarcastically apologizing for how busy it gets working in an emergency room, giving an abused child over 40 stitches.
  • This story is just a cascade of awesome. The submitter gets stuck in that one group where only one person (her) ever bothered to do any work. After the umpteenth time this happens (with the teammates looking up free condoms on a school computer no less), she quietly snaps and goes to the teacher who agrees to give them the grades they deserve, standing by that decision when they complain. Then, when one of the group members pours sulfuric acid on the submitter's hands, she proceeds to calmly go over to the sink and run cold water on her hands (helped by the fact that it was diluted for school use but still). Then this exchange happens.
    Submitter: *coldly and while giving him an unblinking Death Glare* Thank you; now I have you on assault.
    Guy: *getting uncomfortable because not only did the acid not burn her but also Death Glare* You don’t have s***.
    Teacher: Actually, she has you on either aggravated assault or assault with a deadly weapon with 27 witnesses. Submitter, do you want me to call the police?
    • The police weren't called since the submitter and teacher just wanted to Scare 'Em Straight, but it worked in spades.
  • This class here. An old substitute teacher actively refuses to let the only girl in a class even enter the classroom, because he thinks it's a boys-only class and that her only purpose in taking it was to impress a future husband. On the second day, the entire rest of the class decides to sit out the class with that girl for the entire two weeks that the substitute is there, and when the normal teacher returns, said substitute was forced to retire early by the superintendent and school board. A stand against misogyny indeed!
  • A bully belittles an older lady working in his school's cafeteria for counting his change too slowly. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of insulting her in front of her grandson, who happens to be the captain of the school's wrestling team.
  • Although the narrator admittedly didn't understand what happened until years later, their mother realized that the two "weird" classmates were actually domestic abuse victims and reported them to Social Services, successfully getting them re-homed.
    If you’ll allow me to toot my mom’s horn, I’m really proud of her. The first time she saw (the female classmate), she knew, she verified, and she took action.
  • A boy hatches a Zany Scheme to blow the whistle on a pair of camp counselors (one of whom is bullying him, the other of whom is enabling the first) to the camp director, and it works!
  • This student wore a full suit of motocross armor under his ski clothes - and said armor had been painted bright gold. Unlike his classmates, he remained completely unscathed.
  • The best use ever of the You're Just Jealous comeback when a bully picks on a classmate because of the latter's father being a transman.
    Student: I think you're just jealous I can kill Macbeth and you can't.
  • This clever little turd successfully steals an upcoming test from his teacher, memorizes it fifty ways to Sunday, aces it, aces it again when the teacher inevitably suspects him of cheating, and goes on to ace pretty much every test for the rest of the year on his own merit out of fear of being punished.
    Poster: I ended [up] walking out of that office feeling like Billy Bada**.
  • A student pranks their teacher with origami. It's as awesome as it sounds.
  • This substitute claims to not be physically coordinated, and was given a class of difficult kids. One of the bullies aimed a tennis ball towards her saying, "Heads up!" while several students shouted in warning. Instinctively, the teacher caught the ball with her right arm, to the kids' amazement. When asked how she did that, she said, "That’s nothing. I’m actually left-handed.” This made her the Cool Teacher and she was the only one who could control the designated unruly class.

     Not Always Friendly 

     Not Always Hopeless 
  • Pretty much every story in that category qualifies.
  • Don't make fun of weight issues when this guy is around.
  • Whistle While You Work It Out: This customer service call center rep has a win by virtue of Crazy Enough to Work. He's trying to help a grandfather customer over the phone who is kind and patient but doesn't even know how to use the Internet; his five-year-old grandson does, however, and in fact, has been using his grandfather's computer since they're not allowed to use the home desktop much. (As OP says, "Well, I can keep that secret if you can help your grandfather with something." For thirty minutes the kid takes the instructions from the OP to help his grandfather, all the while whistling while he talks due to missing baby teeth. Even better, the kid didn't know words but he knew letters so the OP could spell out instructions and heard the grandson giving instructions to his grandfather as he was typing. The best part was how excited the grandson was to put his tech-savviness to use.
  • For the whole site's 10th anniversary, they held a poll to determine the best entry of the last 10 years. This Not Always Hopeless story won. Earn Your Happy Ending doesn't even begin to cover it.
    • Most subsequent Roundup Polls exclude Not Always Hopeless stories, because they tend to be so awesome/heartwarming that they always win.

     Not Always Healthy 
  • In order to get some answers on why they are being contacted by a collections agency about a bill they'd already paid, when the hospital staff are too busy to answer the phone or meet them in person, this patient calls the voicemail of EVERY EMPLOYEE IN THE SYSTEM to leave a rant, a process they admit took hours. Turns out one of the staff in the hospital had been double-billing patients' insurance to pocket the money, BUT the pile of rants from the submitter alerts the hospital that while the crook was sacked, those patients he'd conned are still being unfairly forced into collections by an automated billing system.
    Manager: Good morning, Mrs [Name]. I was just about to call you.
    OP: Yeah, I bet you were.
  • A doctor, nurse, and family friend help a patient with a crippling fear of needles when her boyfriend can't be with her during surgery by keeping her laughing so much she doesn't have time to cry.
  • This girl chose to defy her anti-vax mother and get vaccinated as soon as she could legally do so on her own, even though Mom screamed at her all the way to the doctor's office, terrorized the other patients in the waiting room, and disowned her.
  • A diabetic customer, her service dog, and a passing nurse save a woman's life. It starts with the dog pawing at the door to the kitchen. The customer is initially embarrassed, but sees the woman's baby bump and so has her step outside so the dog can do a full check. Once the dog alerts, she immediately has an ambulance called, sits the woman down, and enlists a passing nurse to do a blood sugar check. A few days later, the coworker comes back with a monitor and reveals that had she gone home early and had a nap as she initially planned to, it would have probably been fatal.

     Not Always Legal 
  • How about this woman? She stays calm even after she's almost assaulted by a crazy woman. Her Death Glare was so effective, it freaked the crazy customer out.
    OP: "If your next words aren't 'Have a nice day,' the police will be shown this footage."
  • This crazy woman got what was coming to her in a spectacular example of Laser-Guided Karma.
  • A crazy druggie breaks into a house to kidnap a young boy.Context The boy's stepmother has several Brazilian Jiu Jitsu awards. It ends about as well as you'd expect; the man was probably lucky all she did was break his arms.
  • Another hilarious case of Laser-Guided Karma here, featuring an attempt at invoking Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! backfiring spectacularly.
  • Doubling as Heartwarming, the grandpa in this story comes out of retirement and converts the barn on some property he bought into a mechanic workshop where he fixes up cars for the needy as a hobby. The owner of the local car dealership and repair shop sues him for operating without a business license even though he's technically not running a business. After failing to convince the dealership owner to back down, the grandpa is told by the judge to get the proper license and insurance to continue operations. The grandpa then converts his workshop into a business that drives paying customers away from the dealership and forces the owner to sell. The grandpa works with the new owner on how to keep the shop afloat while the grandpa is able to resume fixing the cars as a hobby rather than a business for several more years until age prevents him from working any further and passes away peacefully a few years after that with nothing but fond memories of running that workshop. One of the comments sums up the whole thing perfectly:
    "Moral of the story: Do not come after rich people and their retirement hobby."

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