Imagine working at an airport checking in passengers, but one customer has a ticket for a different airline. What would you do if the customer seemed confused and insisted that your airline was the problem?

In this story, several employees are in this situation, and two hours later, the customer is still complaining and still doesn’t seem to understand the problem.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

“I’ve given you my money, now do your job.” “Sir, you’re not our customer.”

This is not a clear-cut “I don’t work here, Lady” story, however it’s about a man who refused to believe that he was not our customer.

I work for one of the largest Scandinavian airlines at the check-in desks. I encounter some of humanity’s worst on a daily basis, but this one in particular stood out to me.

OP listened in on a coworker’s conversation.

It started when I noticed that my coworker at the desk next to me was being berated by this older man.

There were no passengers waiting to be checked in at the time, so I ended up listening in on the “conversation”. I

n a strangely calm tone, this man was letting out a steady stream of accusations mixed in with total nonsense.

Man: “I will be contacting all the newspapers and let them know about how you are scamming people out of their money. This is your responsibility to fix so you will have to fix it.

The coworker had it under control.

CW: “I’m very sorry, however, due to this ticket-”

Man: “I gave you my money, so you are going to fix this.”

This conversation kept looping pretty much exactly like this over and over without my coworker ever getting enough time to explain the problem to the passenger without being cut off.

I quietly ask CW if he needs me to call for a supervisor, but to my surprise he responded that everything was going great with a grin on his face.

The coworker was finally able to explain.

With me butting in into the conversation, it finally created enough room for my CW to finally explain to the passenger what the problem was.

CW: “Sir, you are travelling with R air (established Irish low-budget airline), we work for S air, what do you want us to do?”

Without hesitation, the older man continues to tell CW off.

Man: “It is S air that got my money, so it is your people who are going to fix my ticket.”

OP finally intervened.

CW: “There is nothing we can do with this ticked as it is for a different airline that we have no affiliation with. If you want our help, you will have to visit our ticket office.” He points in the direction of the ticket office.

Man: “I’ve already given you my money, why would I give you even more?”

At this point it’s been over 20 minutes of this and both me and CW are starting to get fed up by this mans antics and I walk around the counter to stand next to the man.

I gesture towards the ticket office and as politely yet forcefully as I possibly could, I shut down the conversation by telling him that there is nothing we can do for him at the check-in counter and that he will have to go to the ticket office for help.

OP thought it was over.

He grumpily starts walking towards the office while continuously telling us how bad at our job we are.

And that was the end of it.

Or so I thought.

The man returned.

About an hour passes by and I’ve switched over to helping people out with the self check-in machines. I’m having a conversation with my supervisor about nothing of any importance, when suddenly the Man returns.

He immediately makes a b line to my supervisor and starts his rambling again, with the only addition from the previous ramble being him telling her how he had apparently managed to talk to “the boss” (he made air quotes as he said this) about something (he started to become illegible at this point, but he pretty much regurgitated the conversation we had earlier.)

My supervisor immediately realises what kind of situation it was and pretty much ended up ignoring him, helping another passenger who was an actual customer of ours leaving him to continue complaining to the only other worker there. Me.

The man’s rant continued.

Man: “This is nothing personal towards you, but…” and the previous beratements continues on loop again with another addition that airlines should not be allowed to sell tickets through mobile apps and that he is going to contact politicians about it to change the rules and that he is going to speak to the president of the S air, so that he (the president of S air) can talk to the president of R air, so that he (the president of R air) had to speak to his employees about how to treat their customers.

Again, everyone he’s spoken to up until this point works for S air.

Turns out, this man had bought a ticket with R air through a travel agency without checking which airport the departure was from.

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Here’s the real problem.

The airport I work at does not have ANY R air departures or arrivals, at ALL.

This man was at the wrong airport, demanding us to check him in at a different airline, refusing to believe us when we told him he’s not our customer.

In the end he ended up just leaving.

There were other options.

The funny thing is, he was only going to Copenhagen, which there are many, very easy ways to get to.

He ended up spending almost two hours at the wrong airport telling us to do someone else’s job, when if he had just bought another plain ticket or gotten on a mush cheaper train, he would have been well on his way by then.

I feel bad for that man. He was clearly confused. Hopefully he understands that next time he needs to make sure he’s at the right airport.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this post about a hardworking employee whose management refuses to give them one single break.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

If confused people listened, they would no longer be confused.

It was a lot of wasted time.

This person shares what they would like to say.

Apparently, other passengers are also confused.

Double checking ticket information is super important!