A Zoo Visitor Demanded an Employee Personally Escort Them to the Exit—The Busy Worker Said No, Until the Standoff Escalated Into Something Bigger
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Isn’t it insane when some customers or visitors think they own the employees working in an organisation?
This zoo employee shares how a Karen wanted him to assist her to the exit when she could have navigated it herself.
Check out the full story.
Karen wants out NOW! Doesn’t want to follow the one way path to the exit.
So, today was pretty hectic, between training staff loaned from another local venue, putting out literal fires and my normal stand lead/breaker workload, but this Karen took the cake.
I work food service at a zoo, where I am basically a front end manager. For once though, this is only a tangentially food related story.
This is where things started crippling…
I was in the middle of giving someone a lunch when the manager radioed that I needed to cut off the line at one of the food carts ASAP. They were supposed to close at 4:00, but they had a big line and needed me to stop people from walking up.
It was 4:15 by the time I actually got away from this lunch break to do this.
On my way to the cart, one of the aforementioned loaner employees stopped me, she’s standing with a middle aged lady and a small child, saying she needed me to get this lady a “quick way out, right now!” I can literally see the line growing at the cart I’m supposed to close, and I’m supposed to do the impossible for this Karen.
I tell her it’s not going to happen and that I am needed elsewhere, but the employee insists that I help this lady. *sigh*
I stop, put on my best manager voice and say, “I’m sorry, the only way out is to follow the one way path through the African section.”
UH OH…
“No, I want out now, I don’t want to go any further,” Karen demanded.
“There is no faster way,” I replied, diplomatically, “Due to COVID, we have a one way path. I can’t get you out any faster.” It’s worth mentioning that we are approximately half way through the one way path, even if I could let her go backwards or cut through staff paths it would take just as long.
At this point, loaner employee totally undermined me with a the customer is always right, “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to get you out.”
I tell the loaner employee that we can’t do that, and reiterate to Karen that there isn’t a faster way out.
“I don’t want to go through Africa!” Karen tells me, waving a print out of the zoo map in my face (not even the current version, because it doesn’t have the one way path labeled) “I came to see the [native wildlife section], and it’s not even open! Take me to an exit now.”
She was being very annoying…
“Once again,” I reply, “The only way I can get you out is through Africa.”
The loaner piped in again, “We’ll call someone to take you out, don’t worry.” She pointed to my radio, “call someone who can pick her up, or something.”
At this point, I really just wanted someone else to deal with this, so, with malicious compliance I agreed to call security.
The loaner of course spun it as “we’re getting security to show you the way out.”
I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I just wanted this lady dealt with, so I called security and told them that I had a guest that was insisting on a “quick way out” and refusing to follow directions down the path, I told Karen to wait here for security then I walked off toward the line that I was supposed to be capping.
She was not taking the hint!
That wasn’t enough for the loaner employee though, thirty seconds later, just as I’m getting in line, she called me back over, and asked what she was supposed to do with Karen while she waited. I told her to wait for security to get here and let them know what was going on.
Loaner didn’t seem to hear me though, as soon as I turned around, she walked off to go back to what she was doing, so I ended up having to wait with Karen while she stared daggers at me, until security arrived, and I briefed the officer on the situation.
As I suspected, he did not escort Karen out.
That’s INSANE!
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While I was finally getting to the line I was supposed to close, he had a nice long chat with Karen about the importance of our restrictive measures and why we could not get her out any faster, it must have taken five minutes of arguing with the officer before she gave up and stormed off.
I had to spend the next 20 minutes making more people upset by explaining to them why I couldn’t let them get in line for “one quick little thing,” because these poor staff were supposed to have been closed for half an hour already and needed to go home.
Sorry Karen, arguing doesn’t open any secret doorways to the exit, even if the employee that doesn’t actually work here agrees with you.
YIKES! That sounds like a lot of drama!
Why didn’t that employee just escort Karen out?
Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a longtime bank customer who walked away after the teller gave them a hard time.
This user shares how Karen incidents at their workplace have taken a weird turn.
This user knows this employee didn’t have to go this far!
Somebody needs to keep an eye on their customers!
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