I work at a restaurant near a tourist hotspot and while most have been cordial, I’ll sometimes get rude and entitled tourists (usually European, usually French or German tourists). What rude or strange tourist stories do you guys have?


31 comments

  1. I worked in Newport RI where there were a lot of international and people from all of the US. I worked for about 15 years waitressing/bartending.

    The only people that were really out of line were US military guys.

  2. I used to work at a restaurant in my town that used to get a lot of European tour bus groups.

    Holy shit, I don’t know what it is about those bus tours, but everyone in those groups were always just the absolute rudest, most demanding customers I had to deal with.

    They were even worse than the after church crowd.

  3. Not really tourists, but when we get folks from England visiting for work, they love to list off all the things we do wrong in America. Thanks for sharing, but I can’t do anything about our food dyes, and I’m not changing what we call football.

  4. They aren’t rude really, like just following different norms, but the bus etiquette of some tourists stress me out.

    Like either rushing ahead of everyone else or not really giving any personal space

  5. I had a Chinese exchange student (he had a pin) come into the pizzeria I used to work at. We mostly sold slices and he said his order in Chinese. When I asked again, in English, and said I did not speak Chinese he got irate and then spoke again in Chinese very loudly and slowly like I was an idiot.

    I remember thinking afterwards “oh fuck this is shit us Americans get stereotyped as when we go abroad”

  6. British girl comes in and orders a beer, check her passport and inform her that because she’s under our drinking age I can’t serve her. She (rudely) spits out the drinking age for England. She wasn’t prepared for me to say “the judge won’t care what country your from when he sends me to jail” before nearly tossing her passport back at her.

    I love most British people but these ones who come over and act like they’re related to the king get annoying.

  8. Europeans are far and away the rudest and snobbiest tourists I bump into. They seem to think that it’s socially acceptable to rattle off their opinion on American politics the moment they meet you. Talking badly about the United States is like a hobby to them. My roommate in college during Fall semester of my sophomore year was a foreign exchange student from France. He was complaining about the United States the day after he moved in. They tend to lack basic social etiquette. It’s normal for there to be a cultural shock when you meet someone from another country, but I don’t think there’s a single country on earth where people would find it acceptable to be bad mouthed by visitors.

  9. This is something everyone has experienced around the world, but Chinese tourists in a group frankly take the cake for being “poor” tourists.

    It’s not even a specific location, I’ve seen these crowds in Boston at the various tourist destinations/universities and just anything in general where tourists like to go. They tend to crowd everything, are loud, and I think this probably stems from foreign travel being a new thing for most Chinese citizens and the fact that Chinese culture is tolerant of things like crowding, pushing, noise, etc… and it’s not like we as Americans are particularly quiet people.

  11. I was working a harbor tour in Boston. We had charters with Chinese tour groups. One passenger walks up and said “Take my picture, I’m on vacation”. He then held out a camera and didn’t smile or anything.

    I’ve been treated as “the help” before when landscaping but at least those people had thinly veiled courtesy.

  12. Some Euro tourist family started freaking out when they saw some chili peppers being sold outside of some small Asian grocery store. They knocked them all down claiming that they were “artificial chemicals” and other rants.

  13. Lol it’s almost always French or German tourists. Chinese tourists are often rude but it’s usually accidental.

  14. Anyone who insists on trying to talk to you in their own language when there’s no indication you’d speak a word of it.

  15. My sister used to work in an outlet mall that got a lot of international shoppers. There was one Indian family where the man initially refused to speak to any woman working there, and also refused to let any of the women in his family speak. He also tried to aggressively haggle over every item they bought, saying things like “But how much is it for me?” and then saying that the product that he intended to buy was a worthless piece of junk and he wouldn’t pay that much.

    She had a lot of stories about Indian people trying to haggle with her, but that guy really stood out.

  16. I remember one German tourist couple asking for directions to a place in English. The guy asked if I spoke German in German (I knew enough rudimentary German tourist words to understand that). I said “no I can’t really” in English.

    He just looked disgusted and said “we can continue in English.”

    I have no idea if we had some major miscommunication or he just expected some random helpful American on the street was expected to speak German.

    It was just weird. They left in a huff even after I told them exactly where to go.

  17. Was in NYC and saw a tourist couple giving a thumbs up and posing with a distressed homeless person passed out on the curb

    I chewed them out good for being inhuman garbage as they scurried up the street

  18. I was at Disneyland once and was walking to the bathroom when these two girls walk into the girls bathroom and very loudly say, “stupid Americans!”

    Or maybe the rude German exchange student who would call the teacher stupid in class.

    Or maybe that [pedo Brit](https://youtu.be/AR90vOtWKkw?si=L-7pJs6k8XPlilSu) who was trying to touch little girls at Volcano Bay in Orlando then proceeded to talk shit about our country as he was being threatened with being arrested and eventually got arrested.

    Or maybe those [idiot Germans](https://abcnews.go.com/US/3-german-tourists-deface-national-park-paintball-slingshot/story?id=112702257) who were recently cited for shooting paintballs all over Joshua Tree.

    They’ve got no class.

  19. I lived in FL as a teen (14-15 at the time), and my friend and I were swimming at the beach. There was a family with (to my teen ears) a British accent. I wanted to be friendly because I loved listening to their accent, so I said hello and asked if they were from England. The older man (Dad bod, ruddy complexion) kinda flipped out. He ranted at me, saying things like, of course they were from England and where the hell else would they be from? His wife said something to him that I didn’t hear, but he loudly went on about how ridiculous it was to ask and how stupid I was. That was my first experience with people from the U.K.

  20. I used to couch surf and host couch surfers frequently. One time I was hosting a Turkish guy who had traveled quite a lot on every continent. He was hanging with me and some friends brewing beer when someone asked him what country was most similar to the US and he said Iran.

    In my mind, I thought I was going to get insight into how were not so different throughout the globe. But when asked to explain why, he said because in both places you have to watch what you say, and you can get locked up for talking badly about the government. That was it. He was convinced that in the US, people speaking badly about Obama would be thrown in jail.

    To disprove the point, we all yelled out the window into the street about how Obama was terrible (not our actual opinions, but hey trying to prove a point). Didn’t matter to him, he was unconvinced. We were all going to jail.

    Totally bizarre guy.

  21. Not tourists, but exchange students, when I was a high school teacher.

    Girl from Italy came in late one day with Starbucks, complaining how hard it is to find good coffee in the US. I reminded her she had to come to class on time, as the school had a strict policy about being on time, and would issue detention for repeat offenders. She groaned and rolled her eyes, and said “that’s so stupid” She continued to come in late, WITH STARBUCKS at least 2-3 days a week, and when she hit number and got detention, she was baffled. “I was never more than 15 minutes late! That’s nothing!” (That’s literally 30% of a 50 minute class!) She also wore perfume so strong that kids two periods later could still smell it, and got sent home for multiple dress code violations. (Not the kind that are stupid, like tank tops, more like dresses cut down to her belly button and short enough that I could tell she was either commando or wearing a thong.) Her host family ended up kicking her out for bad behavior, and she was sent home early.

    Another girl from Norway told me she was leaving halfway through the year because she “had a great opportunity to split her experience between the East and west coasts” I found out from the counselor that she had called the placement agency and demanded they send her to a school where she “wouldn’t have to deal with all these other races.”

  22. Nothing in particular, but when I worked at a mall in NH we would have a lot of tourists from Quebec. Not a single one of them were friendly.!

  23. Living in one of the major/hotspot cities in California, we get plenty of tourists! And In my experience, mainland Chinese and your usual arrogant and blissfully ignorant Europeans!

    I’ve worked at a few touristy spots in my town over the years as well as volunteering at the local zoo for like about a decade. And the bus tours of mainland Chinese we’re easily the worst. It’s like they had no idea how to act outside their own country, or even in public in general! You could not pay me enough to be a tour guide for them!

    The behavior I’ve seen with them, and just the lack of common courtesy, or social awareness and everything honestly makes me feel like life in china must be like a Life or death rat race where its survival of the fittest free for all so nobody else matters but you!

    And then after that, you had your usual snobby but clueless Europeans, who think we’re all trigger happy brainless hillbillies and who will Happily lecture you on how everything Americans did, said, ate, drank, and breathed was wrong compared to the “European way“ of doing things.

    Just your absolute stereotype, smug Blah blah *smells their own farts* blah blah type person.

    And yet these same people (at the same time) were ironically so uneducated and misinformed about the US that I would hear them having conversations about their travel plans apparently thinking our country was so small (like in Europe) they could take a day trip between cities on different coasts like Los Angeles and New York! Without even breaking a sweat! Lol

    I got asked multiple times “what’s the best way to get to ________?”.

    And the look on their faces when you would tell them (as politely as possible, since I was working), the reality of how far away their supposed destination was or how they would spend most of the day, if not their entire vacation in the car driving there…..

    Was often times something I wish I could’ve taken a picture of! Lol

    Anyway, sorry for babbling. I know I am ranting about Europeans and others and I’m fully aware that there are American tourists who are just ignorant, but even then, I still say the Europeans need to realize it’s not just us that act that way! They are just as guilty!

    Though that said, thinking back to what I saw with some of the tour groups I seriously can’t decide if the Chinese are also guilty of this or if they legitimately just don’t care!

  24. When I worked retail in high school, an Israeli guy came in claiming he didn’t have to pay sales tax because he wasn’t a citizen.

  25. We had a woman from Denmark come to visit. She was so curious, never condescending, and just a joy to be around. A month later a woman showed up from Chile and we showed her around the same city. For a solid week she did nothing but make sarcastic comments and was just negative, like we would be better off if we could be more like Chile (a place I’ve been to). She seemed pretty miserable in general.

    You would think the Scandinavian would have looked down on things but no. It just goes to show that attitude really does count for something.

  26. Not sure how many were tourists and how many were international students. I worked at a gas station for a while in a town with an international university. The worst (not counting regulars) were some variety of middle eastern or Indian. Mostly because they treated you rudely. For example, one guy came in and said “Gas.” and tossed his card on the counter. So that sort of behavior was about the worst I saw. To be fair, I am a man and a large one at that. Between that and the good ol’ customer service attitude, I rarely had problems.

    For those curious what my response to the man was, I simply pushed the card back towards him and asked “How much?”. A quick clarification that he had to give me a dollar amount (I could use math and figure it out from a gallon amount but fuck him) and he was quickly on his way.

  28. Most have been pretty positive. Tourists and immigrants are a self selected group of people who want to come here to be here. I have some French American friends (kids who are now in their 20s, are born here, parents are French immigrants, all have dual citizenship) and I have known them since like 2008 or so. They would have friends and family visit while we would be hanging out (we would be staying at their home) and everyone of them was generally pretty cool. They had one group visiting and one of the kids (think high school age, as where I would have been in my early 30s at the time) who seemed a bit like a walking reddit meme. He was bragging about how his Huawei phone is super amazing and how you have to be an idiot to buy an Apple product (mind you, this was in the Bay Area, where my sibling worked in Apple Corporate at the time) and just general shit. I thought it was more cringe than anything else. He was trying to have this over exaggerated British accent. But you know… teenagers.

    I recall one who was visiting and he started going off about Trump. I didn’t like Trump, I don’t support Trump now. I never voted for Trump. So I ask the guy, “What do you hate about Trump”. I wanted to hear his reasoning it was just a general “He is an asshole!” and I responded with something like “Is he an asshole like Marine LePen who millions of French people voted for or he is not that bad?!”. The dude sort of shut up and wasn’t expecting me to have any idea who Marine LePen was. Other than that he was a really cool dude.

    Another thing I remember was about 20+ years ago. We were at some restaurant somewhere in the central coast. There was a table full of Europeans (if I had to guess, Germans) who were all smoking. And it wasn’t some sort of quick smoke a cigarette and be done with it, but they were just sort of hanging out with lit cigarettes. People around were coughing and looking super upset and they either did not care or were totally obtuse to it. I remember my dad sort of shouting at them “Hey, those cigarettes fucking stink!” and they just didn’t care.

    Smoking around people eating in an outdoor restaurant is illegal in California, but even before that, it was usually prohibited and extremely socially unacceptable. The Europeans seems to drastically underestimate how much Americans despise smoking. We were all at an event (college graduation for the kids) and one of them was from Denmark and he had his family visiting. They were all super tall and sort of shy, I could see how people would say they are a bit cold, but to me it came off more as shyness. They had their cousins/siblings show up. Figure at the time I was like 34, and these guys would have been 22 or so. They were standing around smoking cigarettes asking me if I smoke “I said I did not”.

    “Oh… you will someday”. Lol. Dude. I am a dozen years older than you guys and I am from California.

  29. In Yosemite, some tourists decided to throw (I think) rocks at the deer. I screamed at them, they stopped.

  30. The Chinese, with the Indians being a close second for the line cutting and littering. Europeans for asking questions/ giving strong opinions on US politics and religion. Like I dont GAF about your opinion.

  31. Not necessarily a tourist but I was coming through the Montreal airport to the U.S. which makes you go through U.S. customs in the Montreal airport (a fact unknown to many) and naturally there were lots of people running late or cutting it close because they had been planning to do customs in the U.S. when their flight landed.

    I let about 3 groups of people pass me because who cares, my flight leaves in 3 hours I’m going to just sit at the gate anyway.

    Apparently not the same opinion of these Chinese tourists. The third time a woman passed saying her flight was boarding right now, the Chinese couple turned to her and said “At this point we are close to the end of the line, it will not make a difference to you. Next time you plan better and you will not be late”. And refused to let her go in front.

    The entire family of 5 then proceeded to go to 5 individual border patrol desks, clogging up the whole line.

    Most ridiculous interaction I’ve ever seen, and I then saw that same group strolling around the airport 2 hours later looking at shops.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like