JoCo Cruise Crazy 2 Fancy Photo Comic Part 4

Ewok Stare Shirt, Ewoks Carebear stare t-shirt, funny star wars shirts, empire strikes back parody

EWOK STAAAAAAAAARE!!!!!

My “2 or 3 JoCo Cruise Crazy Photo Comics” plan has evolved into a “stop when you run out of photos” plan. Luckily, I am nearly out of photos. I have one more proper Fancy Photo Comic planned for tomorrow and perhaps a special Dolphi-jinks photo comic for the weekend. THEN I can return to crafting actual comic’d laugh panels from raw pixel ore and pen sweat.

I thank you all for indulging me during this unusually long stretch of irregular HE content. It really helps me to process the JoCo Cruise Crazy experience by getting it out in these comics. And, for those of you that appreciate them, it’s a way to give you something back for allowing me to take the trip in the first place.

John Hodgman was actually trying to photo bomb (Hodg-bomb) our “prom pics” on the stairs. That in itself should be the recruitment slogan for JCCC3. “John Hodgman tried to photo bomb us! Oh, the whole boat is sold out now because of how fantastic that slogan was? Ok. Neat.”

I really wish you could have seen David psyching himself up to ask for DOUBLE THE LOBSTER MEAT with his dinner. “It’s supposed to be unlimited, right? I mean how can they say no? I PAID TO BE TREATED LIKE A SPECIAL BOY GOD DAMNIT! SPECIAL BOY WANTS TWO LOBSTERS! SPECIAL BOY WANTS TWO LOBSTERS!” When he finally got to pop the shameful question and the waiter just kind of shrugged an “of course you want two lobsters you piece of shit” shrug and nodded his head in apathetic acknowledgement that every action in his life had lead him to this point, I’m pretty sure David’s boner exploded. He really did tear into it like a bear cracking open a turtle with a river rock. He was sucking every pore of that bottom feeding creature for any remnant of succulent butter-meats. It was like dinner and a freak show.

COMMENTERS: What’s the craziest request you’ve ever been obliged in a service situation? It could be a restaurant, hotel, vacation, car dealership, etc. Anything that proves, “You’ll never know until you ask.” Do you work in service? What’s the craziest request you’ve ever received? Did you do it?

UPDATE: Here’s a closeup of the TARDIS fezzes my wife and I made. 

Handmade TARDIS Fezzes

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74 Comments

  1. I once ordered a bigger at Red Robin with 3 patties, 2 fried eggs, and bacon added to it. The waitress said it was the largest burger she'd ever seen anyone order, let alone eat all of in one sitting. Sadly I lack the powers of Willis and did not get her number. Though I also didn't ask 😛

    Clearly I live in the danger zone!!

  2. Man, I checked just to see the awesome comments. No one?

    Well, I've got some years of service industry under my belt, so:

    Once I had a guest tip me an extra $20 on their credit card, and then I handed them a $20 bill. I'm an ATM!

    Once I had a guest send back 2 steaks that he ordered at this Tex-Mex place. First off, who orders a steak at a Tex-Mex place? Secondly, the manager went and cooked the second one, and he was something of an amateur chef. Gorram if that wasn't the best looking steak I've ever seen. Sent back.

    I had a whole table of Indians, maybe a family of 8 or so, all tell me that they didn't want any meat in their food. Which is fine, I respect your beliefs and whatnot. But after the 8th person told me for the second time, and they were ordering a bean & cheese burrito? Yeah, I get it, you can stop telling me now.

    I had someone ask me to help them scalp some tickets. I've jump-started cars. I could go on, but I'd be verging further into "nightmare customer" and less "strange requests".

    Love these photo comics, I won't complain if they keep coming! 8D

    • "Man, I checked just to see the awesome comments. No one? "

      The comic has literally been posted for 15 minutes.

        • That may be true but there is no huge cast of characters here and the controversy level is much lower key [ is that right?] Besides there is no MIKE here. Every web-comic needs a shot of MIKE in it every once in a while and it will only cost you a nickle. Think of how many nickles mike could have collected. He could have his own nickelodeon or build a house out of them.

          • You forgot the mass of shipping characters and different derivative of "did your mom for a nickle" jokes.

            Though Willis, if you ever do another guest comic here you should totally bring in Mike

  3. I make eyeglasses for a living. I recently had a customer call me on the phone and say that he needed a pair of bifocal glasses, but since he doesn't need glasses to read that I was to put nothing in the bifocal. I asked him if he wanted a pair for just seeing far away, and he says no, I need a bifocal but I don't need my glasses to read so I need nothing in the bifocal. We never did get to a point where I understood what the hell he wanted. He said he was going to have his wife call back and explain. Fortunately I didn't answer the phone that time.

    • OK, I can explain this one. The request was not as crazy as it sounded. I'm somewhat nearsighted, and need glasses mainly to drive and watch T.V./movies. I used to get mono-vision lenses in my glasses, but my distance prescription got strong enough that I found it difficult to read the instrument panel in my car while I was driving. Try controlling your speed while driving when you can't actually read the speedometer in your dash because of your glasses that you need in order to be able to see where you're going. I broke down and got bifocals with no distance correction in the bottom, and it has been a real boon when I'm driving. Also they are helpful for reading restaurant menus while sitting on a sunny patio without having to take my prescription sunglasses off to be able to read.

  4. While not necessarily over-the-top, thanks to being a Rifftrax fan I have had to ask Blockbuster and used video store staff where the Twilight movies are. That is followed immediately by, "OK, you remember MST3K, right?…."

  5. As mentioned in a previous comment, I co-run the technical services department at a local science fiction convention here in Silicon Valley. Off the top of my head, in the last three years I have had to provide an overhead projector (yes, the kind where you write on sheets of transparent film), a working iron and ironing board, a disco ball, a thermos full of liquid nitrogen, and 100 feet of bubble wrap to various presenters.

    I love my job.

    • Interestingly, I have worked helping academics (archaeologists) set up for conferences and our experiences sound… very similar. Things like, "Here, can you hold this box of human infant bones while I load up power point?", "My dog is just going to sit on stage while I talk… can you get me a bowl of water?", and one older gentleman who brought in actual slides in one of those round things and asked me to "put them on the computer".

      • In my normal (sort of) life outside conventions, I'm a computational linguist. I would hereby like to apologize for all the academics who don't know squat about computers, for they are my colleagues and I wish to beat them with my iPad on a regular basis.

  6. First order of business! WTF is going on? Fezzes…. Fezzes everywhere. Second order of business: Let's see…. Ah yes. I once was crawling under some lady's house fixing a large hole in the duct. As it so happened, a raccoon was living in the duct. I told her, and she told me to kill it and was then having some kind of a panic attack. So, I went back under the house and drew my .45 (I love this country) and shot the damned thing. Then I had two holes to fix.

      • What do you mean? I shot a raccoon while under a house. I don't see how that would make me a badass. Or any cooler. Or how I was cool in the first place. I just exercise my right to open carry a firearm. And know how to use it.

        EDIT: Although it WOULD have made a nice hat.

        • I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Because everything you just listed makes you cool in my book.

          • Well, I wasn't being sarcastic. Secondly, Thank you. I am cool in someone's book. I wonder if he actually has a book of people he thinks are cool? Note to self: Make a book of people I think are cool.

  8. Well, when going to an upscale restaurant, I make a routine of asking for weird modifications to my meals and ordering shit that just isn’t on the menu. I tip really well, so I bloody well expect to get what I REALLY want. However, in a case where I paid NOTHING for the service . . . .

    At my grandparents 50th anniversary, real upscale hotel, everyone had to RSVP months in advance, open bar, all expenses paid.

    Best prime rib I ever had. And one family of guests (one of my third cousins or something) didn’t show. So I call over a server and say, “so, will the absent guests be refunded?” She goes, “No, their meals were prepared, we can’t refund the cost.” I go, “Hey, is anyone claiming their meals.” Server looks at me funny, says “Uh . . . no, not that I know of.” I say, “Well, I am. Bring me all your prime ribs!”

    I ate the first one on the spot. I took the other three home. Ate like a king for a week. No one said a thing about it.

  9. While working as a bartender I once had somebody order an Irish coffee without the booze. "So you want coffee & cream then?"
    Also had somebody try to create their own dish from the bar menu by mixing & matching from 3 different dishes. I was not very accommodating.

    • When I worked at McDonald's, I'd have people come up and order bacon cheeseburgers without the bacon. Not realizing that they could have saved fifteen cents and ordered a damn cheeseburger.

      After the fifth customer who did this, I stopped correcting them.

      • Yeah, all to true but nobody gives a refund or a substitution if you don't want [ie can't / don't dare have] cheese on the darn things. [ where is the tolerance for those who can't tolerate lactose? ]

    • I often order drinks by ingredient since I dont always know what they're called. Im sure it's as frustrating for the bartender as their scowl's seem to make it out to be.

      What do I call a vodka, Sprite and that Lemon sour stuff?

      • In ireland we tend to order by ingredients. Bartenders tend to be a grumpy breed over here. Anything with more than 2 ingredients is considered a cocktail. I once had a slightly embarrassing situation with some tasty american girl ordering a fuzzy navel. I showed her my belly-button, she wanted peach schnapps & oj.

  10. I went on a cruise over xmas, and got 5 lobster tails. each lobster tail came w/6 shrimp so i also ate 2.5 dozen shrimp. most nights i got an app, 2 main courses and dessert.

  11. A building I once worked in experienced a slight infestation of rodents due to some nearby construction upsetting the vermin's usual haunts. Traps were sent. I was working late when my boss came to me all flustered and chagrined to report that one of the traps had caught one of the critters and would you mind taking care of the problem. The thing was, the trap was a very sticky piece of paper/cardboard and the entrapped creature was still very much alive and writhing away. A broom and a few vigorous whack later dispatched the problem. Certainly one of the oddest bits of service I have performed in my job.

    • ugh, glue traps are SO inhumane and terrible. Never in life would I ever recommend them.

      That said, my ex used to use them, and he kept a BB pistol purely for the purpose of dispatching the mice as efficiently and painlessly as possible.

      • I take my meat tenderizer mallet, put a plastic grocery bag over it, and give it a good, firm whack on the head. Kills them instantly, the bag sticks to the glue, the mallet is still clean (I still wash it anyways but I'm not picking hair and glue off it), and then I just invert the bag with the trap inside, tie it shut, and toss the lot.

        These days I use a spring trap though called "The Better Mousetrap" which works like a dream, is super easy to set, easy to clean, and very effective. I dislike glue traps. I hate seeing something alive in there that I have to deal with.

        When I was working at the wheat pool though I used to stun rats with my broom (if I could corner them) and then stomp on them with my work boots. I honestly can't think of a faster way to kill anything than crushing its head in one go. Can't do that anymore, thouh; did it once while pregnant and then felt all guilty.

  13. In my early 20's I was working as an overnight server in a late-night diner and my co-worker called in sick. So I had a full restaurant of drunk people clamoring for food as I ran from table to table. One group of very drunk businessmen sat down, and as I took their drink order, one said "I'll give you $100 if you can get me Eggs Benedict in less than a minute!" I knew I had Eggs Benedict already coming up for another table, so without even taking the rest of the table's order, I turned, ran to the kitchen and came back with his order in like 20 seconds. All the other guys at the table were like "Oh shit now you HAVE to pay him" and he reluctantly bowed to their peer pressure. I finished that table's order, went to my boss and told him I quit.

    Ahh the good old days, where $100 was enough to last me long enough to find another shitty job.

  14. In the late 80's I was working at an outdoor center, and a group rented the property for the weekend in the late fall. They were some sort of social group of Russian emigres, and they were running an "educational" program for the children of emigres so that the kids would understand what it was like to have grown up in Stalinist Russia. As far as I can tell, it involved a lot of older men with thick Russian accents chasing teenagers through the woods in the dark. The two things they asked me for were oil barrels that they could light fires in to stay warm (managed to find a couple in the barn), and they wanted me to open up the outdoor pool house so that they could use the shower room as an "interrogation center". Visions of terrified teenagers strapped to chairs in a concrete room under a single flickering light bulb danced in my head, and I declined. I ended up throwing them out the following day after I could them running around the property with firearms and live ammo.

  15. The only way I'll watch Twilight. Even then, after seeing them, I'm now a firm believer of monitoring what your children read.

  16. I once worked at a liquor store in the evenings. One time an elderly gentleman asked me to help him hide his mickey of Vodka in his trousers because the nurses at his home wouldn't let him keep it and he needed something to help with the morning pills.
    It fook a couple of tries but we got it. He was very thankful when he came in two days later for another one.

  17. In college, I worked at the school's phone fundraising drive calling alumni and basically begging them for money. We called out of the basement of one of the buildings. One day, a guy walked in and said he wanted to donate. No one really knew what to do, since we'd never had anyone be able to FIND the basement room (seriously, half the training was figuring out where the stairs were), much ask us to take their money. We couldn't process a donation ourselves, the system didn't work like that, but we also didn't want to turn down his money.

    So my manager gave him directions to the fundraising office, offered to walk him there, everything. He started to leave when one of my coworkers, who'd been having a rough day with a lot of people hanging up or yelling at her, muttered "man, I wish I could call him." He wasn't out of the room. Then he wouldn't donate until she called him, so he left the building, since we had no reception in the basement, and she called him from the landline. They talked for almost an hour. Guess he was just lonely or something.

    We had another guy my freshman year who offered to tack on another $100 if anyone in the room could recite the first line of "The Iliad" for him. (Someone could.)

    • "Sing, oh goddess, of the rage of Achilles, Peleus's son"

      Yes, from memory. Now where,s my hundred bucks dammit.

  18. Some of my more nerdly compatriots and I were attending a certain convention in the midwest, as we did yearly, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that, yes, you can just call down to the front desk and have a pound of butter and a drop-cloth sent up. The only comment they had was, "I'm sorry, we don't have a drop-cloth, will a large tablecloth do?" Yes, my good man, that will do nicely.

  19. First off, these picture comics are fantastic and I am enjoying the hell out of them and wishing I could come along someday too. Also now I am craving lobster you bastard.

    Second, I once (while pregnant, surprise) almost made a waitress barf by ordering Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and a large side of Hollandaise. It was fantastic.

    Now I want Hollandaise. And lobster. ooh, Hollandaise WITH lobster!! Damn, I ever go on one of these things I am gonna come home like 300 pounds heavier.

    Oh also I take a great deal of pleasure in asking for vinegar with my french fries whenever I am in the States just to enjoy the poor server's confusion. They never have it!! In Canada you can either get little packets same as ketchup, or a bottle (sometimes a variety: white, malt, balsamic, cider) on the table. Because salt and vinegar on french fries is awesome.

    What? You guys have salt and vinegar potato chips; it's the same thing.

    • Perhaps it's a regional thing, but here in Maryland Vinegar with French Fries is very common. Only we do it with Old Bay (aka crab seasoning) and Vinegar, not just salt. Most restaurants in the state don't think it's funny if I ask for it. If a restaurant doesn't have Old Bay available, then it's good enough with salt and vinegar.

      They looked at me strange in Belgium when I wanted it on my fries though (they all like mayo), but thankfully had vinegar packets available.

    • I live in WNY and, while it's not super common, it's not all that strange to find some sort of vinegar as a condiment. Pretty much every drive-in I've ever been to has vinegar. The fries need to have salt, vinegar, and ketchup to be complete.

  20. I work in a small hotel that gets international guests as well as a handful of the redneck locals. While most of the requests I get are rather mundane they sometimes come in interesting packages.

    Seeing someone in the pool after it had been closed I was obligated to escort them out. I got the obvious question "Can't we swim a little longer?" The fact the attractive young woman that had just risen from the hot tub was naked and hugging me while asking made it quite memorable and unique.

  22. I used to work in an adult toy store. One night I was about an hour away from closing up and this guy walks in with about a dozen or so recently used vibrators and dumps them on my counter, asking me to clean them for him. After explaining…a good long detailed explanation that took about a half an hour… that we do not clean your soiled toys, he then asked if he can return them. After another long explanation on why I wasn't going to accept them as a return, he threw one of them at my head (thankfully missing) and left. I was left with a pile of used vibrators and wishing for something stronger than bleach for my eyes. 10 years later still the strangest request I've ever gotten.

  23. Worked at a Braum's Ice Cream & Dairy Store (Joel, you should be familiar with those around the Big D. Closest one to Houston is either Lufkin or Ennis) during the first part of my college days, flipping burgers and dipping ice cream. Had a regular customer who would come in on Wednesdays about 10 minutes before close and order a 2/3rd pound hamburger (which wasn't on the menu, though we did have price for it) with *every piece of onion we had left* on it, but grilled, not raw.

    Then Braum's started carrying bacon in the packaged goods side. They had a contest for the employees to see how much bacon we could upsell as a way of getting the word out. Well, I was leading the district despite only working 3 days a week, and the contest ended on a Wednesday. The district manager and I did not get along at all, and he had been pushing (okay, helping) someone from another store to take the lead… but they weren't working that last night. I wanted to pad whatever lead I might still have, so when my burger man came in with 10 minutes to go, I suggested he might want to try some of our new bacon on his burger.

    He bit. Hard. Went to the case, got a pound of bacon, and brought it over. "You want 3 or 4 slices?" "Cook it all, put it all on there!"

    So, 2 1/3 lb burger patties. 2 slices of cheese. About an onion and a half's worth of grilled onions. And a POUND (pre-cooked weight) of bacon. On one bun. I had to put two wrappers together to contain it all. Customer was a very happy man.

    And I won the bacon upselling contest by one package. Don't even remember what the prize was. Probably cash. At that point, I was in it to win it just to see the look on the district manager's face when he awarded me the prize.

  24. There's a drink I really like called the Rum Dinger, which was supposedly invented by one Bruce Campbell. No bartender I've ever encountered has ever heard of it, but they've all made it for me—even the one bartender who, when I told her what was in it, went, "Ew." (It's approximately equal parts rum, Kahlua and ginger ale, over ice. Lime wedge optional.)

  25. When I worked at Bugaboo Creek, which is a Canadian-themed chain restaurant with animatronic talking animals, I was asked by a non-customer if she could leave her very small child in there, by herself, "just for like an hour," while she went and "got her hair done."

    I declined.

  28. I had a guy come into the restaurant/bar where I was working and order "The fried green tomato sandwich, no egg, no ham, no bacon (this sandwich was out of control delicious and deadly), add avocado, sub cheddar, sub sweet potato fries, side of ranch." His wife had a similar order, to which I said, "There's a Safeway like a block away or a menu right in front of you." One of the benefits of being a long-time employee of a job with mostly idiots. If you're competent, you can get away with a lot.

    Also, at the same place, I had a creeper essentially corner me at the server station (after staring, unblinking at me for most of the night) to REALLY AWKWARDLY ask if he could have a picture of me taking a bite out of his sandwich. It was one of the most absurd things I've ever been asked (by a stranger) and I obviously said no. It wasn't until I was telling my boyfriend later that it was pointed out to me he would probably photoshop a dick into that picture. At which point I took a blazing hot shower to try and feel clean again. I never did.

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