It’s hard to feel sorry for people who think the rules don’t apply to them.

What would you do if a group of rude customers showed up late, laughed through your instructions, and still expected to be treated like VIPs? Would you brush it off and let them have their fun? Or would you follow company policy and let the clock do the talking?

In the following story, one escape room worker finds themselves in this exact situation and decides to stick to the rules. Here’s how it all happened.

Show Up Late to Your Reservation? Enjoy Having Your Time Docked.

So, I work at an escape room. We have set times for each room because they run for 60 minutes, and we need at least 15 minutes between to reset, get waivers filled out, and read the rules to the next group going in.

There are only 5 rooms total at our location, and there are days we have every single one running at the same time, even though start times are staggered.

Start times are available online, and we take reservations through the website and over the phone. If you’ve played with us before, you know all of this. And if you’ve done multiple escape room experiences, you would THINK you’d be more considerate of the workers and other patrons.

The policy is there, but they’re pretty lax with it.

Now, we have a policy. If you arrive over 10 minutes past your scheduled start time, you can either play with docked time (however late you were subtracted from the hour) or reschedule for a different room or different time/day.

We are very generous with this policy. And if we don’t have the same room scheduled right after your time slot, we have even been known to give players back their time because why not? It’s just good customer service and we want people to have a good time.

However, there have been a few times where the group is so disrespectful that I do not, in fact, give them back their time, even if we’re dead slow.

Some people just don’t know how to be polite.

One instance happened 2 weeks ago.

A group was late, so I called them and told them about our policy of subtracting time.

I was told, in a rude tone, “We’re only 2 minutes away,” and then hung up on.

Nine minutes later, this group of teenagers ambles in. I direct them to the waivers. They take their time using the restrooms.

The teens kept making it worse for themselves.

By now, I already knew I would be docking their time and had already warned them I was going to do so. But they either didn’t think I was serious or hadn’t been paying attention.

I went over the rules and stumbled over my words at one point; they snickered and smirked.

I decided in that moment that, even though we were slow and had no other bookings, I was taking their full time away–which, by that point, was roughly 25 minutes.

They didn’t notice he was docking time off the clock.

I started them and then began subtracting a minute or two every time they looked away from their clocks until their timers ran out exactly at the time they would have if they had shown up on time, giving them roughly 35 minutes of play time instead of 60.

They were actually really good at the room, zooming through most of the puzzles without any help. They were on the last puzzle when time ran out, and probably would’ve set a record if they had had full time.

I went to get them, as cheery as I would anyone, saying a mournful, “Too bad! You were soooo close!”

Too bad they ran out of time.

Well, I found out in that moment that they had beaten all of our other escape rooms so far, EXCEPT that one. They were cursing at each other, saying they were super mad and depressed, and they couldn’t get out because this was one of our easier rooms overall.

No one said anything about their time, so I assume they really did completely disregard my original warning, and I wasn’t about to remind them they were playing with a severe time penalty anyway.

Too bad, so sad, though. If they’d been to us before, they could’ve told me so I didn’t go through all the rules again, at least. It would’ve saved them some time, but looking back, it seems like they were just being haughty.

Yikes! It’s crazy that they didn’t notice that much time off the clock.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

According to this person, that’s life.

As this person points out, it’s their own problem.

This person loves how the tables have turned.

It is a generous policy!

They got what they deserved.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.