Nope, but I did go to school with a kid whos dad worked at Nintendo.

I was the sysadmin for a local company that mainly did custom ecommerce & CMS site building for local companies. Way before I started they also provided email addresses to local residents, and the first like ~100 people to sign up got a free account for life. We offered like 250MB storage, which was pretty awesome in the pre-gmail days.

Anyway, one of the lucky residents to sign up was a very interesting guy. In and out of homeless shelters, he ran for mayor every election, and at one point built his own three-wheeled Segway-like thing that he decorated to look like a Roman chariot that he would ride around during the weekly farmer’s market.

So yea. One day we get a call and the usual tech support bump it up to me because they don’t understand it. I answer the phone and am met with a barrage of rants about how my company is in league with the satanic monsters at AOL trying to stop him from becoming mayor and how once he’s elected he’ll blow our cover and expose us all.

Dear reader, he was trying to send an email to an @aol.com account that didn’t exist, and was getting a “no such address” reply from their “mailer daemon” - their mail server software.

I didn’t know who he was before then, but that’s how I learned.

Working on the helldesk of an internet provider in the early 2010s.

Dude had our bog standard account and tried to claim he was our biggest customer.

Really mate? You aren’t a university, you are a mum and pop shop that got shafted by our competitor and we came in and rescued you.

My brother had a funny story about this. His friend worked in IT and was doing one of those system things that take all day and take the system down. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone in the building during this. So an executive comes to the door, his key card doesn’t work, he buzzes the bell. The guy inside answers, and says he can’t let anyone in. Exec says “Do you know who I am?” and the employee responds with a tentative “well, do you know who I am?”

“No”

“Ok, I can’t let you in.”

Yes, and I got fired for not knowing. I was new to the city so I didn’t recognize the famous local sports journalist who demanded to see the doctor who also worked with the famous local sports team. Normally no one gets to walk into a doctors office and see the doc immediately, so I told them to sit down and wait - I was gone the next day.

Famous old story. There is a fire alarm in a fancy hotel. Guests are told to go to the front of the lobby (near the exit, in case they have to evacuate) and wait for an all-clear. They do that except for this one guy, who lingers around the service desk or something. Hotel worker goes up to him and says “excuse me sir, guests have to wait over there (pointing)”. Guy puffs up and says “you know you are talking to the vice president?”. Hotel worker goes apologetic and says “oh I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know! Do whatver you have to” and leaves the guy alone.

A minute later the hotel worker returns with a suspicious look, and asks the guy “Wait a minute sir, what are you the vice president of?”. Guy puffs even more and with a chill in his voice says “the United States of America!”. Worker says “Oh! Get over there then (points to guest area). I thought you were the vice president of the hotel!”.

Yes, they claimed their cousin owned the store. The store ower was in their 60s and lived across the country. They, on the other hand, was a pissed off, drunk, early 20s college student at a closed pizza shop at 4am. No, your cousin is not the store owner.

Yup, by a semi-high level military dude working at the Pentagon, I kid you not. I got a visit from his boss who apologized and ordered him with an official document that was verbally read to me to not have any contact with me, a 50 bucks gift card and a few months later they transferred him to some random place in Kentucky or Nebraska or something like that. He had been pulling that line all over Pentagon City, Crystal City and Arlington in general and people complained. Had the nicest wife, but he was just a massive asshole. And all this while I was doing him a solid.

I’ve never had one of these moments, but when I was a manager at my current job years ago, I did have a guy who threatened “he was gonna have my job”. It was ten at night, the weather was shit, I was on my way to take my last break, we had no carts, and he was verbally harassing one of my minor associates, who had come to me about the guy being a complete douche. I told my associate to go on home (he was off), and not to worry about this because he wasn’t gonna get in trouble. The guy took deep offense and made all sorts of claims about how he knew the owners of the company. Sure buddy, you’re friends with the Waltons, and that’s why you’re shopping here late at night alone. 🙄

IT here so “customer service” but internally for a company, and yes I get this one from time to time. More often than its because someone failed their ID check and or forgot their security questions and they blow a gasket when we tell them to open a ticket by email or the portal.

Blah blah blah, do you know how busy I am, blah blah blah do you know who I am, blah blah blah…

Look, I dont care if your some security guard or the CEOs personal ass wiper. Resetting credentials is a critical function that the admins pawn off on us techs because users are insufferable and they dont want to deal with them most of the time. If you cant be bothered to do a little managment of your creds and keys, how the fuck do you still have a job. Get a password manager if its allowed but if we fail an audit because you wrote it down under your keyboard again… Well that problem is above my paygrade.

worked at Walmart. someone pulled that on me. my response, “If I knew who you were, would you have to ask me that?”

they stood there, kind of stunned and asked to see a manager.

evidently they were some distantly related person to the regional manager.

🤷 like that fuckin matters. I still didn’t know, nor care, who they were.

Worked at a shipping and printing store, on campus. The area keeps being developed, so there are architects who get plans printed and such. One of the clients we had usually sent the nicest people in to pick up his father’s company’s print orders.

One day, Junior came in to pick up some bound presentations. You see, his aura was one of importance and power. So when I could not link the order to the account immediately, he busted out a “Don’t you know who I am?”

I looked at him and gave him an apathetic No. I knew exactly who he was, because he dodged my calls when I would have to call him to collect payment for his father’s company. One day, he answered and yelled at me. So yeah, I knew who he was.

We figured it out together at the end. I’d like to say after the journey we had become friends, but…he was the biggest dickhead in the world. So no.

Oh yeah. It’s usually local business owners, they think being above the local median income makes them billionaire celebrities.

I’ve also had the opposite. I worked with a friendly regular guy in his 50s wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and after he left, another customer asked me if I knew who he was. Turns out he was one of the top heart surgeons in the US.

“You don’t know who you are!? Do you have dementia? Is your carer here?

Hey Dave, this lady doesn’t know who she is! Can you get her a cup of tea while I call the police, somebody must be missing her”

I actually had to do this twice to two different customers over a number of years. Both times they backpedaled quickly and stopped being dickheads.

I was working at a music festival, schlepping cases of beer. Some guy hit me with “I’m Gord Downie’s cousin, give me one”, I didn’t know who he was talking about, so I told him that and ignored him.

Later, a bunch of Ontarians told me I did that in perfect deadpan. In reality, I grew up on the east coast, where the Tragically Hip wasn’t nearly as popular, so I legitimately had no clue who he was talking about.