Yes, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget her. She was impressively obnoxious.
I was giving a tour to a group of museum visitors when she and her husband joined our group. She proceeded to argue with everything I said though it was painfully obvious that she had no idea what she was talking about.
We went out to see a log house that has been moved to the museum property. One of the visitors asked me about the staircase.
“It’s sort of unusual,” I said. “Usually, staircases in log houses were located next to the chimney but in this house, it was located along the opposite wall.”
“That’s not true!” Mrs. Troll burst out in an indignant voice. “Log houses NEVER had staircases indoors!”
I blinked. “Well, uhm . . . we can tell from the architectual evidence that the staircase was located over here. It would have been a bit steeper than the one we have, but they did have one here.”
“You shouldn’t be telling people that!” she thundered. “Log houses never had staircases! Everyone knows that!”
“Well, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that,” I said, and tried to go on to talk about another feature.
She butted in. “They never had stairs! There was always a ladder outside that the kids had to climb to get into the upstairs.”
The kids? Everyone slept in the same room-- upstairs. “I’ve never heard that before, ma’am,” I said. “We had experts reconstruct this building and all I can tell you is that they were certain the staircase was located here.”
She muttered and fumed and we walked on. We next went into an area which has antique fire equipment. I told them that the water pumper they could see in front of them dated to the 1850s. She exploded. “That can’t be true! They always used bucket brigades!”
“Well, yes, they used those, too,” I conceeded, pointing to the row of leather fire buckets.
“That can’t be from the 1850s! The didn’t have things like that back then.”
“Well, it is,” I said flatly. “We have the purchase records in our archives and contemporary newspaper articles which talk about it.”
In another room, I told the visitors that a certain artifact was very rare. Only two other museums in the country had one. She informed me that this was not so, and I shouldn’t be telling people that because she knew she had seen one in another museum other than the two I named. I didn’t even bother to reply.
Her husband trailed along with us as silent as the grave. He looked extremely uncomfortable and embarassed. By the fifth room, the rest of the group were ostentatiously rolling their eyes whenever Mrs. Troll would burst out with another of her objections. In the Native American room, she informed us that all of the lables were wrong and that the pieces had obviously been made by [tribe which didn’t live anywhere near here.] I told her if she liked, I would get her the names of the archaeologists and anthropologists who had put years of study and work into putting the exhibits together and she could take it up with them.
Apparently, she felt the whole place was full of fakes. “Rip-offs” she kept muttering. They didn’t have “clothes like that” (from her I learned they were still wearing hoopskirts in 1900), they didn’t have stoves to cook on-- they always used open fireplaces and that the wallpaper our Victorian expert had chosen was all wrong because it was “too loud.” Everyone knows that Conestoga wagons were designed to float across rivers and the remnants of paint had to be later because they never painted wagons.
The tour finally ended and the group went into the gift shop. I went to run the register. Mrs. Troll stromed up to a man who was buying a replica item for his son. “Why are you buying your kid that overpriced junk?” she demanded. “All of this-- nothing but junk! Overpriced junk!”
Actually, we have some pretty nice stuff in our gift shop, and the prices are very low compared with what other museums charge. The father turned to her and said in a voice full of venom, “I like that my purchase will support such a fine museum.” He smiled at me. “Young lady, you did an excellent job.” He turned to the other people in the shop. “Am I right?”
The other guests added their compliments and clapped. Mrs. Troll scowled and glared and continued making disparaging comments. She and her husband lingered until after everyone else had left. She was going from item to item exclaiming over how it was cheap and overpriced. I spotted one of my co-workers and motioned her over. I hissed into her ear that unless she took over, I was going to march over there and punch Mrs. Troll.
Astonishingly, Mrs. Troll instantly changed her demeanor and was sweet and pleasant to my co-worker after I left the room.
