On a busy car ferry, space is precious, but patience and manners even more so.
When one irate passenger insists on extra room, his stubbornness steers him straight off the boat in a perfect case of getting exactly what he asked for.
Read on for the full story!
Need more space?
I work on a car ferry and am one of the crew members responsible for the loading of the vehicles.
Before we load vehicles onto the car deck, we receive a loading list of booked traffic for the sailing. If someone is not booked, they can wait on standby to see if we can fit them on.
With the deck loaded and the boat almost full, I said we could take a small MG if they didn’t mind the squeeze.
Then came a small MG.
On came the Green 1974 MG-B. (A very nice small car.)
After some gentle and slow guidance, it made it on with the smallest of margins.
But this gentle guidance was lost on the driver of the vehicle.
Cue the shouting from a man in his late 50s/early 60s (I’ll call him entitled ***, EA): “You there….I can’t get out of my car.”
There was enough room to open the doors but not all the way, admittedly.
This was beside the point, though, because he was standing next to me a few cars away from his when he said it.
The worker gave him a chance to ask again more nicely, but EA doubled down.
“What are you going to do about this? It’s a disgrace!”
I had to ask him again to repeat his complaint and hope that he would realize how absurd his statement was.
He said it again.
Trying to remain professional, the worker put themselves in EA’s shoes.
I tried to stay composed and remembered that he might have had a bad drive or even a bad day up to this point.
His wife was trying to tell him to be quiet and just to be grateful….but no.
We were (myself and other crew members) doing our best to help them.
But then enough was enough.
As soon as he said to one of the sailors, “I’ve paid for my ticket, I demand a full space, you ******* morons!”, my mind was made up to help this gentleman.
(Cue malicious compliance.)
The worker made EA think he had changed his tune, but was really setting him up for a reality check.
I said to him, “I’m very sorry for your inconvenience, you are of course right, sir. If you would like to get back into your car and just back up a little way, we’ll be able to get you all the space you need.”
EA: “About bloody time.”
Once he was ready, I got one of the sailors to start guiding him from the back of the car.
The sailor understood the plot immediately and went along with it.
Op: “Keep it going,” as his car backs up.
Sailor guiding the car: “Keep it going.” (He definitely knew what the plan was.)
The car was backed off of the boat and heading back for the car park.
At this point, EA figured out what was going on and demanded to know what was happening.
They had a very simple explanation for him.
The sailor said that he would have all the room he needed waiting in the car park for the next boat.
After EA lost the plot and came out with the usual threats of, “I know the managing director, and I’ll have you sacked!!” and we didn’t look concerned, his wife snapped and went ballistic at him.
She finally got through to him and he came back with his tail between his legs.
Following a major dressing down in front of everyone, she made him apologize and ask politely if they could re-board.
We said that because his wife was so awesome, that would be fine, but to listen to her advice in the future.
Thank goodness his wife was there to reason with him.
What did Reddit think?
This redditor loves a good role reversal.
This commenter empathizes with the treatment these workers have to endure.
Kudos to the author.
Surely EA isn’t too kind to his wife behind closed doors either.
Thanks to his wife’s intervention, he was able to re-board.
But he learned a valuable lesson in humility, whether he wanted it or not.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.