Imagine working at a state park, and a visitor at the park decides to complain about one of your coworkers. Would you let them finish talking even if you realized they had nothing to complain about, or would you shut them down right away?

In this story, one state park supervisor is in this exact situation, and she lets the angry customer talk.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

I’m a park supervisor, but not this park’s supervisor

I’m a retired state park supervisor, so this story is from a while back.

Every Monday, we had to turn in weekly reports at our headquarters. There are a lot of things we’re supposed to turn in then, but the important one was our weekly financials. That is, account for how many camping permits we sold, rentals, picnic or beach passes, etc., and how much money we took in. We did one for each day, and one for the week.

I was known as being OCD about them, so mine were always right, and I’d often walk other park supervisors or assistants through any issues they had.

Her boss asked her to do one more task.

On this Monday, I turned in my reports, no problems, and starting putting our supply order into the truck. That’s when my boss came out and said “Hey, Cendax, can you stop by Dee’s park on your way back? She can’t print out her financials.”

I replied “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”

The reason I was asked is that I used to be a systems admin, and owned a computer shop before this, and our IT people were notorious for slow response times. As a result, I frequently got called first to see if I could fix it.

I didn’t mind , because Dee was not just a friend of mine, she’d been my boss when I’d started, and I’d learned a lot about running parks from her.

The problem was obvious.

I stopped by and Dee was getting frantic.

She told me that everything had worked until yesterday, and while she was able to put the information in, the system wouldn’t pull up the report page for printing.

I told her to show me what she did.

She pulled up the browser to access our reporting system, and right away I saw the problem. “Why are you using Chrome?” I asked.

Dee replied “What? What do you mean? I just clicked on the icon to do my report.” she said.

Dee understood how the problem happened.

Now, I have no problem with Chrome or Firefox, but the “official” browser was Internet Explorer. The system we used for reports had browser-specific scripts, so you couldn’t use any other browser.

I explained this to Dee, and she growled.

It turned out that yesterday her daughter and grandson had come for a visit, and while Dee had been out taking care of something, her daughter had decided to “upgrade” the computer by installing Chrome on it. Of course, one of the things it does is to ask if you want to make it the default browser, and she’d clicked “yes,” hence the difficulty in printing reports.

It was an easy fix, I just had to change it back, which I did. I then said “Now try it,” to Dee, and lo, the report popped up.

She thanked me, and I said “No problem, glad it was a simple fix, but tell your daughter to not “upgrade” the work computers.”

She even goes to state parks.

I left the office, and was headed to my truck when this woman came charging up to me.

Late 40’s or early 50’s, sort of chubby, blonde, short hair.

“Are you the park supervisor?” she said.

“Um, I’m a park supervisor, but not..” that was all I got out.

She proceeded to start yelling about how “my park ranger” had “ruined” her family’s weekend.

She had actually broken a lot of rules.

Now, this park didn’t have a park ranger, she was talking about Dee. I tried to get a word in edgewise, but, nope, she was on a tear about “that witch.”

I realized I was going to have to wait her out.

She proceeded to tell me all about how Dee had ruined her weekend, while I started mentally adding up the various park rules and state laws this woman and her family had broken. By the time she wound down I’d counted 5 park rules, two misdemeanors, and a probable felony, and thinking that Dee must have been in forgiving mood.

She finally ended with “and I want her fired!”

She put her in her place.

I said “I can’t do that.”

She yelled “Why the hell not?”

I said “Because she’s the supervisor of this park. I’m the supervisor of a different park. I can say that I wouldn’t have ruined your weekend.”

She said “Really?”

I said “Absolutely! If you’d been at my park, I’d have had the police in to give you tickets, and then evicted you. I’d have ruined your life.”

She didn’t let her have the last word.

She stared at me for a second, and said “I’m going to call your headquarters about this!”

I said “I’m sure you will when you get home,” and then I smiled and in a cheery voice added “now have a safe trip!”

She huffed, turned around and stormed back to her car.

I waved as she left.

Dee heard the whole thing.

As her car was disappearing, I heard laughter coming from behind me. Dee had come out of the office and had tears in her eyes from laughing. She said “I can’t believe you just did that!”

I said “Well, I figured I should show her just how much worse it could get.”

Dee said “I always thought people from (my former park) were exaggerating when they called you the supervisor from hell. I thought you were really easy going, but I can see now why they called you that.”

I said, “I don’t like doing it, but when the situation calls for it, well, I release my inner jerk.”

We laughed, and I went back to my park.

No, she never called, or if she did, it never made it back to us.

I wonder what she and her family did wrong!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

One person complains about technical issues.

Another person would’ve reported her to the police.

This person knows their dad would’ve loved this story.

This is what I’m wondering too!

At least they can laugh about it!

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.