This happened when I was still a med student. We were learning how to perform an opthalmoscopy, which is an examination of the retina, optic disc, etc. To do so, you normally have to use eye drops to dilate the pupil and then look at the back of the eye with a lamp. As he explains all this to us, the ophthalmologist spots my eyes.

Ophthalmologist: “Oh! Wow! You have such large pupils! That’s rare, but very useful for us! Are you okay with letting your classmates practice on you? That way, we won’t have to use the eye drops!”

Me: *Thinking this won’t take very long* “Uh, sure, okay!”

How wrong I was. What follows is literally thirty minutes of people lighting lamps directly into my eyes. The ophthalmologist encourages them to practice more, gushing about how useful it is to have a student with such large pupils! Finally…

Ophthalmologist: *Addressing me* “Oh! We only have five minutes left. You still need to take a turn, too!”

My classmates shut off their lamps and I blink, for the first time in thirty minutes not looking directly into a lamp.

Me: “Uh, sir, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

Ophthalmologist: “What? Why not? We didn’t use the eye drops on you!”

Me: *Still blinking* “Yes, but all I can see are dancing spots in front of my eyes.” 

Ophthalmologist: “O-oh… That could happen, I guess…” *To my classmates* “Would you mind escorting her to your next class until she can see again?”

If I ever need an ophthalmologist, I now know where NOT to go. Luckily, I was never interested in that field anyway, because I never learned to perform an opthalmoscopy.

I work in customer service for a food company. Customers call us if they have questions about our products regarding things like ingredients, health, allergens, etc.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company]. How can I help you?”

Caller: “How do you know when to take [pie] out of the microwave?”

Suddenly, I hear a loud “pop!” from the background.

Person In The Background: “MY LEGS!”

Caller: “Uh… I gotta go!” *Click*

I recently started working for a food delivery service. I make a delivery to some apartments. They have elevators to get to the top floor. I go in, press a button, and the door closes… almost all the way.

I am now stuck. I message the customer.

Me: “Hi, this is [My Name] with your [Delivery Service] order. I’m stuck in the elevator in your apartment building.”

He came down and tried to help. All in all, I was stuck for about forty-five minutes before we were able to pry the door open and I was free.

The customer tipped me an extra $60 for the hassle. I’m not a claustrophobic person, but it definitely ticked all the right boxes that day.

I’m working at a natural history museum. I see a little child running toward a model of one of our dinosaurs. They are eagerly admiring it and I can’t help telling them a few fun facts. Suddenly, their mother runs over and pulls them aside.

Mother: “No! Remember, I told you, no dinosaurs!”

The mother then narrows her eyes at me.

Mother: “And you! You should be ashamed of yourself, poisoning young minds into thinking dinosaurs were real!”

Me: “But ma’am, they were.”

Mother: “No! Dinosaur bones were put into the ground by the devil to confuse people and make them believe in evolution.”

Me: “I… Ma’am, if you believe that, then why are you at a natural history museum?”

Mother: “I wanted my child to see the volcano exhibit.”

Me: “Oh, that’s great. Just up these stairs.”

Mother: “Come with me, [Child]. You need to see what Hell will look and feel like in case you start straying again.”

When I turned eighteen, I got a job at a distribution center of a big German shipping company, working a few hours after school. I was assigned to various stations, depending on where they needed help at the moment.

One day, I was assigned to a station I’d never been before. After a while, I noticed a wooden pallet with about a hundred of the same packages. For the most part, we handled only single packages, so this seemed odd to me at first.

Me: “Hey, [Coworker], that pallet looks special. I haven’t seen something like that around before. What is this?”

Coworker: “Oh, those are just urns from the crematory. We ship those every couple of weeks.”

Me: “We ship urns with the ashes of dead people? Why?”

Coworker: “You see, in Germany, you’re not allowed to collect the ashes from the crematory yourself. Only the boss of a funeral home is allowed to do that. The other legal way to transport filled urns is shipping them with our company, because we used to be owned by the government.”

I was a little weirded out and decided I don’t want to be cremated in Germany, but I managed to handle those pallets without incident.

Fast forward a few years. As I’m shopping at a local supermarket, a woman approaches me.

Woman: “Sorry to bother you, but is your name [My Name], by a chance?

Me: “Yes, it is. Why?”

I do not recognise her, but I’m bad at remembering people.

She yells across the aisle:

Woman: “Hey, [Friend’s Brother], it is him. now you can say hello!” *To me* “He didn’t dare to ask you himself.” 

I recognise the man she yelled to as the little brother of a friend I’ve failed to stay in touch with over the years.

Me: “Oh, hi, [Friend’s Brother], good to see you. How are you? How is your sister?”

Blah, blah, blah. We catch up for a while. 

After a couple of minutes:

Me: “And what do you do now?”

Friend’s Brother: “Well, you met my girlfriend. I’m just finishing school, and I work a few hours at the distribution center on the side.”

Me: “Hey, I had that job. It was fun, most of the time. Do you still get those wooden pallets full of urns?”

Friend’s Brother: “Oh, yes, we do.”

Me: “Man, can you imagine how bad it would be to knock one of those over and break the urns? We used to joke about it all the time.”

He gets quiet and looks down.

Friend’s Brother: “Well… you see… I actually did that. I crashed it and it turned over. A lot of the urns broke. There was ash everywhere.”

Me: “Oh, no. Oh, s***. What did you do then?”

Friend’s Brother: “Well, we brushed the ash up and put it in a bucket. Then, we sent everything to the station for damaged packages. I never found out what they did with it.”