Perhaps You Didn’t Enunciate?

I was working in a call center. During one of our “slow periods”, my coworker was talking about her oil painting hobby. Because art is an interest of mine, I later said to her:

Me: “I would love to see your paintings. Do you have pictures of them?”

She looked at me like I had just asked her for a date in front of her husband.

Coworker: “Say that again?”

Me: “Do you have pictures of your paintings?”

The woman turned her head with a “Can you believe the nerve of him?” look on her face. Thinking that she was upset about me listening in on her conversation about her hobby, I felt myself turn red as I quietly returned to my desk and mentally berated myself for not minding my own business.

The following morning, I received an email requesting me to report immediately to the human resource manager’s office. I’d actually had a very good working relationship with her over the previous seven years, and at one point, she had helped me get transferred to another project when I had expressed a growing amount of dissatisfaction with the one I was on. I had no worries at all about being summoned to her office.

The HR manager greeted me with a warm smile and asked me to take a seat. Then, she produced what I recognized as a complaint form for employees.

Manager: “Yesterday, you approached [Coworker] and asked her a question. Could you clarify for the record what that was?”

Me: *Seriously confused* “She was talking to someone about her painting hobby, and I asked her if I could see her paintings sometime. I asked if she had any pictures of them—”

Manager: “UGH!” *Tosses her pen on her desk* “Thank you. That’s all.”

Me: “Okay?” *Slowly getting up*

Manager: “You’re good. You can go back to work. Thanks for coming in.”

As I was walking down the hall, I heard her yell, “He said PAINTINGS, not PANTIES, you idiot!” followed by the sound of a phone receiver slamming down.