Am I the Asshole?

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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/DaRealMasterBruh on 2023-07-02 12:23:37+00:00.

Me and my father are the owner of a family ran convenience shop in Rome, Italy.

This morning a lady in her forties came in and explained to me and my father a problem she has: she has a 20 liter (5.3 gallons) tank full of A/C water on a balcony (everyone lives in apartments here) and can’t just pour it down the balcony, yet it’s too heavy for her to lift. She has to get rid of the water without pouring it down.

Me and my dad thought of the same thing: siphoning the water into smaller containers so at least she would be able to pour the water elsewhere in smaller quantities.

So we told her to get a 10 liter plastic tank and a meter (3 feet) long hose tube and siphon the water into the smaller tank and pour it in the bathroom drain.

She asked us, How?

Sure, we somewhat expected such a response, but the next half an hour was excruciatingly painful for the both of us.

We started by explaining to her the concept of communicating vessels, a concept we all studied in middle school here in Italy.

“How are those things even related?” She asked.

Fine, we’ll just explain the practical steps then. We are Chinese but I was born and raised here, but my dad’s Italian is terrible so I had to take the “honors”.

Me: “Start by filling the tube with water and hold the two holes shut with your thumbs.”

Lady: “What? Filling the tube with water? How? What does that mean?”

Me: “Keep the two holes pointed to the sky and pour water in the holes.”

I was losing a bit of patience but working in retail made me a stone faced 🗿 statue.

Her: “But how does this help me?? The tank! The tank is what matters! Stop with this nonsense!”

Me: “Lady, that comes later in my explanation.”

Her: “Just tell me what to do!”

Me: “Fill the hose with water, thumbs over the holes, then put one end inside the water tank, keep the thumb on the other one, then turn the whole tube upside down, so it resembles a hill, then just put the other end inside the smaller jerrycan and let the thumb go!”

She still can’t grasp how the water would come out of the tube like that.

Her: “What you’re saying is like, against the laws of physics. How would the water come out like this? How can the water go up the curve and down again?”

I tried to demonstrate it without the water at first, just telling her to fill the hose with water and demonstrating it, then I got two cups and a V bent straw, filled one cup with water and left the other empty, then I dipped the straw inside the water and just hung the curve over the lips of the two cups.

I also found countless short videos on YouTube to show her, one where a man siphons out water from a plastic pool with a hose.

Her: “Yes that’s cool but how does this help me? Am I supposed to leave this overnight? I can’t do this every night?”

Me: “No that’s not the poin-“

Her: “Just tell me how do I take the water out!”

The debate was very long, me and my dad lost a couple of brain cells, every other customer that witnessed this went out laughing. I was about to go insane, I couldn’t resist calling her an idiot, which is nothing after all that.

“How dare you call me an idiot? It is not my problem if you can’t explain because you’re Chinese and can’t speak Italian properly!”

I am a high school student with better grades in Italian language than most of my class.

She then stormed off and left everything.

Am I the asshole?

TL:DR: Customer is not smart enough to understand basic concepts, I got clinically insane trying to explain it to her and called her an idiot.

Edit: I left out some insults she had directed towards my dad and me thinking they were better left out of it.

She called my dad a farmer because of his rough appearance, and because of our ethnicity.

Most of you have no idea how it is like to work a retail business. Sure, we make decent money, but it also means that we have to deal with the lower end of the intellectual spectrum.