Believe it or not, difficult customers come in all shapes and sizes.

This former park ranger spent years working in an area that saw its fair share of problems, so he thought he had a pretty good idea of who would cause the most trouble.

However, the two customers he remembers most weren’t the people anyone would have expected.

In fact, they seemed perfectly pleasant right up until he explained that he needed to inspect their boat before they could launch it.

That’s when these older ladies turned it into a battle of wills.

Read on to see what happened next.

My feistiest two customers in an area stricken by poverty and crime: two old ladies.

I used to work as a park ranger. The park was a reservoir and a nature preserve adjacent to a large undeveloped hilly area. But on the side opposite the hills, the area is surrounded by a developing urban zone.

Standing on the border where the hills meet the homes is like looking at two different worlds. It’s like when old people tell you about how the mall you’re shopping in “used to be all orange fields,” and all you can think to say is, “Yeah, grandpa. Take your pills.”

The surrounding city isn’t world infamous or anything like that, and it’s certainly no Detroit, but with bulbous urban development comes the usual set of problems. Locally, the area is known for not being a great place, and working at this park on busy days, it’s not hard to see why the park district has their own internal police force.

He’s worked there long enough to see a lot of issues.

For the six years I worked here, I had a number of run ins with less-than-pleasant individuals. Nothing serious, but a lot of citations for public drunkenness, drugs, customer-on-customer feuds that rarely escalated into physical fights…that sort of misbehavior.

Working the admission gate, you saw it all and sometimes you could just tell when things were going to get rowdy.

There were a lot of working-poor in the area, and a large population of immigrants (many of whom were likely illegal). But, let me tell you, they were often the least of your problems. In fact, I dare say that many suspected illegals were downright friendly, pleasant, church going types.

Then, he met the worst customers.

Here, the two worst customers I ever had in my whole time working there were two crotchety old ladies in their 60s or 70s.

As a ranger, one of my duties was inspecting boats before they got into the water. Many parks are concerned about invasive mussels: quagga mussels, zebra mussels, etc. that can do a lot of local economic damage with their infestations. They wreck boats, pipes, and pretty much everything else they attach to.

So, these ladies were cordial at first. Until I start talking about inspecting their boat.

Making it clear they didn’t give two ***** about “barnacles,” they let me know that they had been on a long trip and just “wanted to get in the ******* water.”

They refused to listen.

After a few minutes of telling them that I was required by law to inspect the boat, they refused to submit to an inspection and demanded to talk to another ranger.

Ultimately, my supervisor told them the same thing, and she even assured them that we could “waive the inspection fee” (8 dollars) to appease them.

Unhappy and irrationally angry, the two ladies decided to simply pay for parking for general park use. I thought that would be the last I heard from them, but sadly it wasn’t.

Somehow, the two older ladies roped one of the newer laborers into getting their two-person rowboat down to the water near one of the fishing docks. The newer employee didn’t know regulation about boat ramp usage and the two “sweet old ladies” assured them that I said their boat had passed inspection.

At this point, they really got themselves into trouble.

So, their boat (which would have passed inspection if they had simply yielded to it) got into the water, but after trying to board from the dock and almost falling into the water the new employee wisely decided to involve more personnel.

So, a game warden pulled them out of the water and with my statement, evicted them from the premise. They were not cited (I suspect because they were old ladies) but at this point I was just happy they were gone.

Days later, I got a message from one of the higher-ups about a complaint that the ladies filed with the parks. But when the game warden and I told him about the two old bats, all he did was laugh.

Wow! You’d think ladies that age would know better.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about this whole situation.

This is so true.

Here’s a good point.

Too funny!

Good question.

You almost have to admire the commitment.

These two women could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and frustration by simply letting the ranger inspect their boat. Instead, they spent more energy trying to avoid the inspection than the inspection itself would have required.

Obviously, they were completely in the wrong, and the rules existed for a reason.

But good for the ranger for keeping his cool through all of it. Some people would’ve lost their patience long before the ladies got kicked out.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a waitress who refused to return a tip after a party returned to the restaurant with a complaint.