Stories from Night Shift: Entitlement of the Karens

Most people know that if you work a customer service job, you will inevitably run into a Karen. It is impossible not to. I had yet to realize how common it would be to find myself battling a wild, angry Karen at 2,3, or even 4 in the morning. It is an alarming amount of times. These complaints can range from water being lukewarm to yelling at my because they had to serve themselves breakfast. To elaborate further on the latter, my hotel is not serving breakfast. Instead, due to COVID, we decided to serve bagged breakfasts. This includes water, muffin, fruit cup, and a granola bar. Not the most luxurious thing but still something to appease the morning rumbles. These bags can easily take an hour to make if we are at full capacity. This means that I have to make about 200 bags in hopes that, on average, there are only 2 people per room. Well, this one night I was working, I was confronted by a wild Karen. She stormed up to the desk at two am. I smiled the best I could behind the mask I am required to wear. She did not hesitate to start tearing me a new one. She could not believe that she had to serve herself food (once again we give them a bag, so I was lost). She wanted a hot made to order breakfast. In her argument, she was paying 86 dollars a night. We should be treating her better. Yes. She said we should be treating her better. I tried and failed to explain to her that we are making bagged breakfast due to COVID. This is the hotel’s attempt at keeping it guest safe. She was hearing nothing of it. So I was forced to listen to her scream at me for twenty minutes. Once she was satisfied with herself, she huffed and said, “what does it matter. You’re just an unintelligent broke dropout.” I held my tongue and told her I hoped she had a good rest of the night and that I was sorry about breakfast. I spoke with my best customer, service voice I could. She rolled her eyes and huffed herself away. Her words did no damage to me. I know I am not a dropout. I know I am broke. I would like to consider myself smart, but I know that intelligence is not a concrete concept. However, I was baffled. This woman came down at 2 am just to yell at me and berate me. She felt proud of herself for attacking me because of the job I held. To her, she had won a battle. A battle, that contrary to what she may have believed, she was the only one fighting it. No matter how much she yelled, insulted me, complained, I could not change anything. Along those same lines, her attitude did not make me want to help her with anything. I just wanted her out of my lobby. I begin to wonder if maybe she just gets off at yelling at people. If perhaps in her brain, this makes her feel powerful. If yelling and demanding things make her feel like she matters. Who knows, maybe it isn’t that deep, and she just is an entitled Karen.

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