15. Too Sacred for a Nookie?
We were in Australia, visiting Uluru. There was a section where it was so sacred that photographs were not even permitted; I leave this couple alone to take in the scenery and I come back approx. Seven minutes later to see them full-blown naked, screwing the brains out of each other.
16. A Relief to Be a Party of the War
Guy peed on the side of an Omaha Beach bunker. Not out of spite or something, he just didn't want to walk back to the porta-potty, started urinating on a piece of history. Obviously not the worst thing that'll be in this thread, but certainly made the rest of our group turn to him and ask what in the absolute heck he was doing.
17. No Touching!
I watched a man run up the side of the platform the Winged Victory statue is on at the Louvre. He threw his arm around it for a photo. Security got him down pretty quickly, I'm shocked he actually made it up there.
18. Guess Who’s Talking?
I'm in the middle of talking and someone's phone rings. Ok, that happens sometimes, and usually they'd just cancel the call or step outside. Nope, this guy answers the call and starts talking on the phone, only a few meters from where I'm standing. I think, "Oh he'll just quickly explain he's busy and end the call." Nope! He starts a conversation...the rest of the group glares at him and I'm put in an awkward position because my workplace put a huge emphasis on politeness.
So, I suggest to him to continue his call in the hallway, just outside the room we were in, to which he replied "no, I'm fine here," and went back to his phone conversation. I'm doing my best to talk to the rest of the group (about 25 people), but he's so loud! Eventually, this Chinese woman yells across the room at him, "Shut up, we want to listen to the lady, not you," which worked. But I just couldn't imagine the nerve to ruin everyone's experience like that, because you're too selfish to talk on the phone outside.
Also, the place I worked allowed photos but had a strict "no photos of the staff" rule for privacy reasons. I always explained this at the start and 99% of people were cool. One day I had a particularly happy snapper who got right up in a staff member’s face to take a photo...like I'm taking centimeters from his face.
The staffer was just some random middle-aged white dude, so I'm not sure why the fascination, but he was livid. It's like I saw it happen in slow motion but couldn't do anything to stop it. That guy was removed from the tour.
19. Not Yours to Touch
Couple of guys I used to play cricket with went on a school trip to Auschwitz and decided to steal a small pair of glasses and some buttons they found half buried in the ground. They were detained by Polish police while they were leaving the site. Hard to know what goes through people’s heads sometimes.
20. Don’t Add Water
I once was a tour guide in high school for a group of young Chinese students coming to the rural US on a sort of “fresh air” trip. They told us beforehand that we had to keep the kids away from water because apparently parents don’t value swimming lessons in China, and there is such little open swimmable water that no one learns on their own. We were also told that the kids think swimming happens “naturally” —like if you go into water, you’ll immediately start swimming.
Anyways, one of our excursions was to a local reservoir and the plan was to hike up a hill nearby to overlook the reservoir lake, get a few photos, and then leave. When we got to the top, it started POURING rain like I had never seen before. I’m talking so much rain you can’t see five feet in front of you. Then lightning starts striking the lake, and I’m still trying to keep it cool even though I had never been so close to lightning before.
The students were taking it well and laughing, which was good, until they started running directly for the lake and jumping in. Apparently, they had also never learned about electricity conducting through water, so I’m freaking out and start pulling them out of the water (they weren’t in very far) and a couple of them complain that their phones were wet... in the rain.
No one got hurt, but it was a crazy day. We got back on the bus and the kids started drinking liquor in the back (they ranged ages 9-16) and I had to bust them for that too.
21. Up, Up, and Your Head’s Away!
Not a tour guide, but I guess you could say that I work in the tourism industry. I work on the ground crew for a company that does Helicopter tours. Number one rule for customers is “DON’T WALK UNDER THE TAIL BOOM, THE ROTOR WILL KILL YOU AND IT WILL HURT.” It’s unbelievable how many people have a death wish out there.
People see the fastest way to the other side of the helicopter and don’t stop to think “Oh hey, that spinning blade may or may not slice my whole freaking head off, let’s see how close we can get to it!”
22. Crash, Burn, and Throw One Back
When my family went to Ireland, my younger brother walked up to the bartender in a small pub and ordered an Irish Car Bomb. The bartender explained that he had just ordered the Irish equivalent to a "9/11 Tower Collapse" in America. He said it was ok because he had bartended on a cruise ship, so he knew what my brother meant, but he also said never to order that drink in Ireland again.
23. Breaking the Glass Walls
Tour guide at a university. We got a lot of guests that really, really don’t want to be there. Mostly misbehaved kids from a poor area of the city. We toured at all times, even during finals week. As many may know, sound can travel oddly in lecture centers. Our lecture centers have windows around them, and like six kids thought it would be hilarious to smash on the windows.
From the inside, it sounds like gunshots are being shot from outside, or at least muffled gunshots. Watched 100+ students flee the classroom during their final exam. We got a lot of flack for that, but it isn’t easy corralling a group of 30+ students...that’s the chaperone's job!
24. Grow Up Before You Apply
I used to give tours at my university. There was a group of middle schoolers I was giving a tour to (to show them why they should want to go to college...yadda yadda). There was this one kid who kept trying to sneak away and was whistling at just about every girl who walked by. Weird. Okay, whatever, he thinks he's a big shot.
Then a very attractive girl comes jogging by us, and he tried to GRAB HER and starts AIR HUMPING while he watches her run away from us. I was mortified. I ended the tour. I was done with him. The teachers didn't even care, that was probably the worst part.
25. Face to Foot Syndrome
I work in the backcountry ski guiding industry, working my way to becoming a lead guide. Guests are always trying to kill themselves, but here’s one that stands out. Right now, I mostly tail guide and pick people up when they fall, which is most of the time. One particularly deep day, I’m sweeping a tree run and all of a sudden there’s a man digging frantically in the snow towards a pair of legs.
His wife had fallen headfirst downslope in a Flatfish area. When she lawn darted, the first half of her body was buried in the snow and only her legs and feet were visible. Her husband thought it was a good idea to stand on top where her face obviously was and start digging near the exposed part of her body. I guess in the moment he forgot about human anatomy and where her head might be!?
At this point I was maybe three minutes behind them, so she’d had her face under the surface for a while. I told him to stop and move, yelled: “STOP YOU’RE ON HER FACE!” I tried adding a couple expletives, but nothing. I finally had to grab him by the backpack and powerbomb him down the slope. I uncovered her face in under 10 seconds.
She gasped for air, had a cry, and then proceeded to tear that man to pieces verbally.
26. Making Themselves Too at Home
Not a real tour guide, and it’s not that bad, but when my family moved into a new house, I was giving my uncle’s family the tour and when we got to my room, they all started rummaging through my drawers and took and ate a lot of my snack stash. They didn’t even say a word. I was just shocked. I installed a lock on my door after that day.
27. Intelligence is Ancient History
I worked at the Visitor's Center at Gettysburg for a while. Here are some of my favorites—some of them personally overheard, some of them passed down via word of mouth. "Do they take the monuments in at night, or just leave them on the battlefield?" "Why aren't there any bullet holes in the monuments?" "Oh, I didn't have any ancestors back then."
28. The Animals at Home
In Wyoming, it is common to buy bear spray (highly concentrated pepper spray) when heading into Yellowstone. One tourist believed it was bear repellent, lined up his family, and sprayed all of them. Chemical burns for everyone! As a raft guide, we regularly got asked whether we would be passing the same spot/going through the same rapid later in the journey. We would reply, "Why yes, this is actually one of the only circular rivers in the world!"
Q: "How deep is the river?" A: "About chest high on a duck!"
29. You Can’t Procreate a Better View Than This
I was on one of those Big Bus tours of San Francisco in the evening. Last ride for the night. The tour guide probably mentioned five times before leaving that it would be freezing up top and that no one could go up or down the stairs during the hour tour because it was dangerous. This couple was at the top with their INFANT (wearing nothing but a onesie with a thin bed sheet over the carrier).
The tour guide suggested multiple times that they stay downstairs since it would be absolutely freezing. Well, it felt something like 30 degrees or less and the poor baby was crying the entire time before we had to pull over (after around 30 or 40 minutes) so the couple could take their popsicle baby inside the bus to thaw out.
Best parents of the year...choosing a better view over their baby's well-being.
30. How “Lucky” for Them
When I was in France touring WWI and WWII memorials, the actual tour guide didn't speak English, so I was commissioned to be the translator for all the British and American tourists. I was Assistant to the Regional Tour Guide, so I hope my story counts. We were at Verdun, and it was a pretty free-for-all tour where the kids could somewhat play alongside the craters' edges, to really drive home the eeriness of a war zone overtaken by normalcy.
Anyway, Middle-Aged American Bimbo says, "Wow, all of the craters and hills here must have been really convenient for the fighting! They're lucky they picked such a location!" LADY ARE YOU FOR REAL?
31. Watery Regrets
My uncle was a tour guide in Iceland some time ago. He once guided a group of Americans around the country and stopped at a glacier in the middle of nowhere. He explained to the group that this glacier had been here for thousands of years and that it doesn't melt. The group then went back to the bus to carry on, but my uncle notices that a woman was carrying a big piece of the glacier towards the bus, so he stops her and says: "I'm sorry, you can't bring that onto the bus, it will melt."
The woman quickly responded: "But you said it doesn't melt." My uncle stood there for a while, dumbfounded by the amount of stupidity that was in that answer, before finally saying: "Okay, but you'll have to put it in your backpack and keep it in there for the whole journey." The woman readily agreed and started to empty her backpack to make space for the big block of ice.
Needless to say, this didn't end well for the woman, as the ice obviously melted in her bag.
32. Dressed to Get Killed
I recently returned from a hiking trip to Yosemite. I was astonished by the number of people who were so unprepared for the strenuous hikes. I witnessed people wearing flip-flops and ladies carrying sparkly high-priced handbags—on hikes! Good grief, surely, they had some idea of where they were going. It's not like they were dropped off by a friend who yelled "Surprise!"
33. Old Wars Die Hard (Especially if You Didn’t Serve)
I'm from just outside of Atlanta, GA. I also had zero relatives who fought in the Civil War. That is important to the story. I interned up in Massachusetts at a museum one summer. It was a great opportunity. A lot of the museum focused on the local Revolutionary War history, as well as the War of 1812. I did double duty as the gift shop attendant and tour guide. We got a lot of interesting tourists.
One of the best stories is one of our many Chinese tour groups. By and large, they were always picture-happy, but generally respectful. We had just changed out an exhibit, and the newest one was focused on the local people who had fought in the Civil War. There were a couple of local folks who had gone to fight for the Confederacy, and we had a mannequin display with a recreation uniform. The mannequin had a Confederate battle flag draped over his arm.
When giving the tour of the room, I often brought up the educational differences between the way modern day schools talk about the war in different parts of the country. One of the tourists piped up and said, "So you are Confederacy?" I said, "No, that was a long time ago, and none of my family was involved. I was just born in Georgia." But they started talking to each other quickly in Chinese, and one of them grabbed the hat off the mannequin.
Next thing I know, half the group is taking pictures, and the other half is trying to get this hat on me and tossing the flag at me. I had to grab both of them back. I tried to put them back in their correct places, ask them not to touch anything, and carry on with the tour. Turns out, as soon as I left the room to take them into the hallway, they grabbed them again and started trying to get me to put them on.
I didn't have the authority to ask people to leave the museum (intern), so I radioed for my supervisor. He instead agreed to finish the tour, but if anything else was touched, the group would be thrown out. Someone picked up a 200-year-old painting that wasn't behind glass yet, and they were told to not come back.
I have so many stories from that place. Tourists are weird.
34. Some Oopsies are Bigger Than Others
Not my story, but coworker's story. He was a tour manager in South America. We tend to work with the older travelers (60ish and above). He and his guests were flying from Lima to Cuzco, Peru which is about 10,000 feet in elevation. This is a group of around 40ish travelers. Apparently, he had one male guest who had IBS or something and, while in mid-flight, pooped himself.
The stench was unbearable as they are all in a small aircraft carrier taking them to Cuzco so high in the mountains. He said he had to help escort this guy to the bathroom in the back, but as he stood up, the shit just came down his leg. So now, he's dragging stuff with him to the toilet. Once he got to the toilet, he cleaned it up with the assistance of the aircraft attendant.
He was very embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as the guy who pooped himself. Once they landed, this guy who shat himself is in the bathroom, apologetic, and was cleaning himself up. The guide went into the airport and bought him some new Peruvian style pants and then came back to the airport to help dress this guy in the bathroom. I would say that was probably one of the worst stories I have heard happen to an individual.
I have also heard of a fellow co-worker, who works as a tour guide in Vietnam, who had to bail out a tourist from jail one time. She received a phone call in the middle of the night from him, in jail, asking for help. She showed up and asked the man what happened? The Vietnamese police said he was caught purchasing Viagra and exchanging money for prostitution.
35. Pics or It Didn’t Happen (or You’re a Jerk)
I was on a tour with my family in Cambodia and we visited Angkor Wat. Now as everyone knows, Angkor Wat is teeming with tourists day and night. There was a long line to climb the Bakan (basically the topmost tower, wherein the steps are very steep). It was a hot day and when it was almost our turn, a middle-aged man took two steps, fell backward and started having a seizure.
People came to his aid immediately. However, one man who was also crowding around him did nothing but pull out his cellphone and start recording. Thankfully, everyone noticed and started yelling at the guy to put that stuff away. He acted like the victim though and he said he was "just trying to help.”
People are saying the guy was probably filming it to show paramedics but a) the victim's family was there and if anyone had the right to collect evidence, it's them and b) recording dude was grinning widely until he was called out so I seriously doubt he had good intentions despite his claims.
36. The Real Sign is Insensitivity
We're pretty good at stopping tourists from doing too much damage. After being in the industry for a while, you get a spidey sense for when people are going to do dumb things and can often steer them away from doing anything too bad. That being said, here's one of my favorite stories to tell, from when I was seven months pregnant. It was the week before I went on maternity leave.
I was driving out to one of our sites and to get there I had to drive (on the road of course) through our penguin colony. This particular species of penguin burrows underground and stays hidden in their burrow during the day and comes out at night when birds of prey and other potential predators have gone to sleep. As I'm driving out to the site, I realize the parking lot up ahead is full and people have started parking up and down the road. And that's when I see a giant SUV pull off the road, drive between the bollards and into the penguin colony.
I pull over as what seems like 20 non-English speaking tourists start to pile out of the vehicle and take selfies with the ocean backdrop. Staying as calm as possible and using sign language, I point out the “no entry” signs of the bollards they drove past, the burrows they have just collapsed, inform them they may have killed penguins, and to get their freaking vehicle out of the freaking colony.
Once I got them out of there, I started digging out the collapsed burrows to check for penguins. The first four were luckily empty, but the final one had a breeding pair. I get the girl out, check her over for injuries, and having nowhere else to put her I follow protocol and tuck her under my left arm against my side.
I get the boy out and put him in the same position on the right side and start to check him over. Remember how I said I was pregnant? Well normally, you hold a penguin down low almost on your hip, but because of my round tummy, I was holding him more at the bottom of my ribcage. So, when I turned my head to start my health check, the bastard reached up and grabbed my top lip with his beak and ripped straight through the middle.
It was about this time that the tourists walking along the road realized this ranger was holding onto two penguins. I had five or six tourists sprint through the colony towards me and start snapping pictures. While at the same time potentially collapsing more burrows. If any internet sleuths stumble across a picture of a heavily pregnant, pissed off looking ranger, holding two penguins with blood pouring down her face, let me know. I've been waiting for that picture to show up for three years and haven't found it yet.
Happy ending, I chased away the photographers, popped the two uninjured penguins in a nearby unoccupied burrow, and radioed for backup to help with the parking situation. My lip healed without a scar, and both penguins left the following morning for a well-deserved day in the ocean. Signage is there for a reason. Rules are there for a reason.
If you don't know what the reason is, doesn't mean you should break the rules.
37. Finding Nemo Becomes Too Real
Tour guide/boat captain in the Caribbean. We had about 40/50 people on the boat, got off. We would normally go feed swimming pigs. People would often get nipped because they were doing stupid stuff, but nothing too serious. Well, the next stop after that was another island where we would hand feed turtles, sharks, and stingrays.
So, we would tell the people to hold the food with their palm open for the stingrays, and they would come over the top and take it out. For the turtles and sharks, they should put it in the water, holding it with their fingertips, and let go when they're coming for it. Well of course, this dingus decided he would be tough and feed this baby shark, no longer than your forearm, without letting go.
Shark proceeds to bite his fingers. He screams and jumps up out of the water and flicks it off of his hand, pulling one of his fingernails off in the process. So that's one I always remember.
38. When You Gotta Go, Do You Really Gotta Go?
They took a big dump in front of the group. So, we tour through streets and parks and make it really clear that the toilets at the beginning of the tour are the only ones for the first 90 minutes of tour. We get to a park about 30 minutes in. Not a big park, mind you, it is basically a big roundabout with a swingset, a bench, and two trees.
I'm in the middle of my spiel in the park when I see a guy at the back of the group, step away, pull his pants down and squat on the grass. Of course, I was stunned and lost my flow which had everyone looking around only to recoil in horror as this guy drops a log like it was nothing. He wasn't even ashamed.
39. Ox Marks the Spot (on Your Son)
I worked at a living history farm museum. I had a kid that was climbing on stuff the whole tour in the farmhouse and trying to get behind the Smith in the blacksmith shop during a demo. After the tour, when people are allowed to roam the grounds, I hear his mom screaming and look over to the barn. This kid has climbed the fence into the field with our longhorn oxen and is trying to poke them with a stick.
I walked over and calmly told him to get out of the field before our lazy oxen decide they've had enough, but this jerk decides to look me in the eye and smack Ted on the ass with the stick like it's a riding crop. Ted, bless him, just kinda jumps a little and whips his head around with a WTF dude look on his face. But seeing as he's a longhorn, he just wipes this kid out with one of his horns when he turned his head. Kid goes flying into the dirt and is having a meltdown. Mom is freaking out. I'm like dude, get the hell out of the pen before Ted actually gets mad.
So this kid is crying and trying to climb the fence out of the field and Bill, who has been watching this whole thing, waits until the kid is almost over the fence and walks up to him and nudges him in the ass with his nose and pushes him off the top of the fence. It was everything I could do to keep from bursting out laughing.
Kid was fine, Ted was fine, but the kid and his mom were promptly kicked out of the museum. Their dad and little sister were allowed to stay because she was well behaved and was just enjoying petting the goats at the petting zoo. So, since the kid had to leave but his sister didn't, there was a temper tantrum in the parking lot that could be heard all the way to the other side of the farm.
But the oxen got some extra grain that night, so I guess they won in the end.
40. Washed Away by Someone Else’s Decisions
Not me, the tour guide my best friend had on an island off the Australian coast. He saw one of the tourists ignore the huge signs warning people not to go to the edge of the water. Predictably, the tourist gets hit by a huge wave and swept out to sea. I know it was the worst thing the tour guide ever saw because he and my best friend both went into the sea to rescue the tourist...and they both died.
Funniest guy I ever met. Miss him most days. The tourist who caused it all? Predictably, he survived. Pretty sure he doesn't feel too good about the whole thing.
41. Diving to Rock Bottom
Led a scuba diving tour. While signing the safety waivers and all that, one very old man kept telling us that he had a DNR (do not resuscitate). We plainly told him that we are not bound to a DNR and if he passed out for any reason, we would attempt to resuscitate by our safety training. Pretty much all the divers are assuming this guy is gonna kill himself down there (prob spit out the reg and go quietly into the night).
Dive happens, pretty much everyone is hawkeyed on this guy. I see him go behind a large coral head and lay down in the sand and spit out his reg. He is only at about 60 ft so I grab him and wrestle him to the surface. He will not take my back up regulator, so I slam it against his mouth a purge air into his face. We get to the surface and he is fighting me nonstop trying to pull all of his gear off. I throw a very hard punch to his jaw and knock him out (actually trained to do this during dive rescues to keep the panicked person from killing you too).
Three weeks later, and he tries to sue my dive shop and myself personally.
42. Grandma Pairs Nicely With Cheese
I used to do vineyard and garden tours for a pretty well-known winery. I had a lady ask to see any merlot vines we had so I walked her over, and she proceeded to dump ash all over them and yell "We love you Nana! Rest in peace!" Needless to say, you are not allowed to dump human remains on food goods.
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