Whether you’re there for a month or for decades, there’s no forgetting the time you spend working in customer service.

It’s a wild ride to say the least. One day might blur into another as you follow the same working pattern, stack the same shelves, collect the same wayward shopping carts. But then a succession of weird days will come one after another, where it seems like the customers have gone wild and oddly unique event after oddly unique event comes your way.

And since you can never know what to expect when working with the general public, it follows that every day could be the platform for a story that you’ll be telling until your final days. Whether it’s an angry customer or a downright odd one, there are occasional interactions that make you question reality, question humanity as a whole, and in that moment, you know that you’re never forgetting them.

For the former museum assistant manager in this story, one of those events came when they were approached by a customer who looked like any other. But their request left the employee scratching their head for a long time afterward.

Read on to find out what happened.

This is not the place, my friend.

In the past I was an assistant manager in the box office of an exhibition space in Times Square, thus super accustomed to the more unique citizens with which we share the planet.

This exhibition space had many investors. One was a popular cable television network from which the space took its name.

One particularly sleepy afternoon, a relatively normal-looking customer approached my window.

Let’s see what happened when the customer spoke to the employee.

I greeted her, “Hello! How can I help you?”

She didn’t respond and I noticed that she seemed on guard, kind of surveying the surroundings. Real nervous like.

I asked her, “Did you have any questions about the exhibit?”

To which she replied, “Um, yes.”

Again, there was a pregnant pause, so I said, “Okay… go ahead.”

But the question had nothing to do with the exhibition space.

The customer asked, “YES! I was wondering why you took away my [aforementioned cable network] channel. I can’t understand why you would do that. My children and I really enjoyed learning about the things that we saw. It was good!”

I replied, “Ah, I see. Well, even though [cable network] is our namesake, we’re not at all affiliated with their programming. I’m sorry. I would recommend calling your cable provider to see if there were any changes in your service.”

But the woman didn’t seem to understand.

She said, “No, but yes, but NO. I can’t understand why you would do this! Because you see it’s my CHILDREN. It was something that we enjoyed TOGETHER.”

I replied, “Yeah. I hear ya. Unfortunately, that’s not us. We’re a museum space.”

Then, her voice dropped to a whisper before she said, “Is this because of Oprah?”

She wasn’t even sure how to respond to that.

Taken aback I responded, “So, like I… what?”

The woman continued, “OPRAH. I know she was changing some things around.”

All I could say was, “Uh…”

She then continued, “I can’t believe you took this away from my children just because Oprah told you to.”

Yikes! Let’s see how the employee reasoned with the confused customer.

I said to her, “Ma’am, I can assure you that we have nothing whatsoever to do with Oprah.”

She turned to leave, saying, “I just can’t believe Oprah would do this to her black brothers and sisters. They were LEARNING.”

I replied, “Um, right. You have a great night.”

Finally, she turned and yelled from across the lobby “So this wasn’t the place?”

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I confirmed, “This was not the place.”

I don’t usually miss it there, but I miss the stories.

This was undoubtedly confusing for everyone involved.

It’s probably a drawback when you’re associated with a major brand – even though you’ve got very little to do with them, you still somehow end up having to deal with repercussions from their service.

It’s understandable the woman had a gripe, but she really didn’t understand that this assistant manager was not the person to take it out on.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who gave her phone number to be friendly to a guest, but immediately wished she could take it back.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

Clearly, this person thought that the situation would’ve benefited from a little more comedy.

There was certainly a few ways to deal with this situation and, given the circumstances, this assistant manager did the best they could. They stayed calm but firm, giving the customer a consistent message without causing a scene. It’s a masterclass in customer service, since the customer clearly left feeling like they’d got something off of their chest, even if it wasn’t actually pointed in the right direction.

Sometimes customer service is just this – giving people a place to speak and then redirecting them, once they’ve got their grievances out, to a more suitable audience. Because while this woman has every right to be upset that her favourite show was cancelled, and she has every right to complain about that fact too, this museum staff member really had nothing to do with the scheduling, and so speaking to them was a fruitless endeavour.

But perhaps it was cathartic? And when we’re upset, maybe just getting that off our chest is what matters (so long as it is done respectfully, of course) even if it doesn’t actually lead to the change we might’ve hoped for.