Being a Public Archaeologist I'm expected to know how to communicate with people. You know, the living kind.

Whenever there are any activities that involve non-archaeologist your coworkers will look at you for help. And that's totally fine, it is my job after all but sometimes you just encounter those kinds of people known as assholes. Yes, this story is about one of those people.

I was assisting with some tours that were given to the citizen of a city in which excavation was taking place in order to preserve the old city wall. Unlike with most excavations were you find tiny bits and pieces, here there were actual pieces of the wall still intact. Because the excavation was taking place in the middle of the city the archaeologists had daily spectators, hence why the idea of tours was introduced. At this time I worked at an organization that helped to educate the public about archaeology in an easy and accessible way. Which is why we were hired to give the actual tours, provided we didn't disturb the archaeologists working there in their work. No problem, right?

My colleague Josh and I were tasked with making the tour and promoting it. There were two weekends in which we would each give four tours a day, eight in total. Half of the tours were booked in advance, the other half was open for anyone to join. So, we would start with one booked tour, then an open one, then booked and so on.

The beauty of this system was that if people approached us about the tour we could offer them a place in the open tours fairly quickly, making it able for everybody to join. And that gave us very mixed groups with people from all walks of life. I really liked that about the tours, until the second weekend.

My open tour was about to start when two teenage boys joined. I greeted them, introduced myself to the entire group and started my tour with an introduction about the history of the city. The two boys were bored very quickly and started to whisper among themselves, which I tried to ignore. They were teenagers, I could hardly expect them to be super quiet on their free Saturday and listen to a history lesson. I asked for their attention once we entered the excavation, telling everyone to stay away from the pit at all times, and not disturb the archaeologists working there. I give you one guess as to who completely ignored my instructions....

Yes, those two boys were starting to get on my nerves when they preceded to kick little pebbles in the pit with the goal of "accidentally" hitting one of the people down there. My patience finally ran out and I pushed one of the guys back, putting myself between him and the pit as I gave him my last warning, "either you stop or I'll remove you from this excavation!"

"What the hell, woman! We didn't do anything?"

"I know exactly what you were trying to do. Either you stop or you go."

The guy got all up in my face as he yelled, "you better show me some respect, bitch!"

This was supposed to intimidate me, I guess, but the fact that the guy was shorter than me and a lot skinnier took away any form of intimidation. It looked like a little chick pretending to be a cocky rooster with his movements, it was laughable. And that's what I did; I giggled, I couldn't help myself it just looked so idiotic.

The boy became red with anger, making me snort even louder. I was crying with laughter by the time he kept trying to intimidate me, telling me I had to show him respect because he was a man in that squeaky boyish voice before storming off the excavation with a head the shade of a tomato.

I turned around to see several archaeologists behind me, their trowels in hand, ready to whoop some ass. The rest of the tour group was baffled by what just happened. Some laughed others looked disapprovingly at the two boys. But not a word was said about the incident.

Afterwards, I discussed the matter with Josh and although he initially thought I was too harsh for laughing in the kid's face, he changed his statement when we encountered the boy with five of his friends later that evening and they all became as quiet as church mice once they saw me.

Maybe it was a bit too harsh to laugh in the kid's face, but in my defence, he was going too far to demand respect from me he definitely didn't deserve. Respect is earned, not given and disobeying basic rules will not earn you my respect.

What do you guys think?