I used to work as a field service engineer for a company that designed and built custom robotic automations for laboratories worldwide. Stuff like liquid handlers, automated extract storage/retrieval systems, etc. One of my favorite stories from that job was the scientist in hong kong who called me up one night absolutely furious. I was in Helena Montana at the time building a machine for another customer when my phone rang and this dude just went the fuck off on me. I went through all the usual trouble shooting steps with him on the phone... "is the machine powered on? is the monitor powered on? is the machine plugged in? is the computer connected to the unit?" etc and so on. Naturally he got all shitty with me... "of course its turned on, the power lights are on... im not stupid I know what a power plug looks like..."
So... after about 30 minutes on the phone with this guy raging at me I book a red eye flight out to hong kong and was on the plane within a couple hours... long flight.
At any rate... our pricing structure at the time for clients demanding an inhouse service call was like $700/hour with a minimum of 3 hours paid and all travel costs covered by the customer as well.
So... this guy is racking up a huge bill... im into over time... he's paying for this super long flight by the hour...
I get into his office and he is still just going on and on about how shitty the robot I installed for him was... how unreliable... how it hasn't worked since I installed it and showed him how to use it, and how poor my customer service was for his account. I listen to him, feeding him the usual customer service horse shit waiting for him to calm down and let me do my damned job. We walk back to the lab... I look at the machine for less than 30 seconds before plugging it in (the wall plug it was supposed to be using was less than 5 feet from the lab phone he called me on, in full open view)
We boot it up and I'm walking back out the door in under 10 minutes desperately seeking a hotel. The bill we sent him was easily over $6000.