(I am a flight attendant. For parents travelling with babies or toddlers, we usually carry some soft toys shaped like a tiny airplane, with a simple mechanism that you wind up by pulling a string; while it unwinds, it makes the toy buzz and shake and move forward a little. A passenger approaches me.)

Passenger: “Hey, do you have those… You know, those vibrators? I want one for my baby.”

(It took me a second to figure out she meant the vibrating toy; I just hope I managed to keep my face straight. I had a good laugh with the crew in the galley later.)

(I go to an “elite” high-school that specializes in language learning. The really cool thing about their curriculum is that after the initial hard learning in the first year, students take one or more classes entirely in their primary language. For me it is German, and because the school doesn’t have enough teachers to cover all subjects, my classmates and I end up with chemistry and biology in German all through ninth grade. Our final biology tests are tough and most of us review all of the year’s learning material so that we can pass. Skip ahead to tenth grade. Note: it’s usual for schools in Bulgaria to hold “entry-level” tests for most subjects, in order to review the most important things from the last year and to ease the transition in the new stuff.)

Teacher: “All right, students, hope you had a good summer, but now things are getting tough again. Our entry-level test is on Tuesday next week.”

Class: *groans*

Teacher: “I also have some good news, though. This year we won’t be learning in German, so at least you won’t be bothered by grammar and new biology vocabulary.”

Class: *sighs in relief*

Classmate: “Excuse me, Mrs. [Teacher], we are still having the entry test in German, right?”

Teacher: “Why? It’s in Bulgarian, too.”

Classmate: “But we know all this stuff in German!”

Teacher: “So, translate it; you’re smart enough, I believe?”

Classmate: “Yeah, for most things, but those special terms aren’t that easy to translate. All materials we have from last year are in German, and we don’t even know what half of the organs are called in Bulgarian!”

Teacher: “Oh, come on. You can do it. End of discussion. Now, let’s review. Can someone tell me anything about the chemical substances in a human cell?”

Class: *looks dumb*

Teacher: “Anyone? No one?”

Class: *looks even dumber*

Teacher: *sighs* “All right…” *in German* “Chemical substances in a cell?”

Classmate: *also in German* “I know that one!” *proceeds to explain*

Me: *facepalm* “We’re so failing that entry test.”

(Most of us did fail. I still think it was a very stupid change in curriculum.)

This story is from the 1990s, back when I was at university. Certain exams went like this: there would be a few people at a time in a professor’s study, each would draw a ticket from a tray and had to speak about whatever was on the ticket. One person would be speaking, while the others jotted down notes on their own topics, organized their thoughts, or otherwise prepared for their turn.

This particular exam was in general linguistics and was taught by a guy everyone feared, because it was common knowledge he failed people for the tiniest mistakes, took his subject extremely seriously, and expected the same from everyone else. He was also a bit of a giant, physically; he was very tall and bulky, had a permanent stony expression, and spoke with the coldest voice all the time, and was generally quite intimidating.

In his exam, each ticket also contained a couple of languages we were supposed to say a few words about. I was in the study, busy writing down notes on whatever I drew from the tray and waiting my turn, while a girl started speaking about the first language in her ticket, which happened to be Latin.

“So, Latin… Well, obviously it is spoken in Latin America…”

The professor went bright red, leaned over the desk, and basically — the huge mountain of a man that he is — loomed over her like he was going to drop on her and squash her at any moment. Or explode. I mean, I could see him literally shaking as he yelled, “What?!”

She wasn’t even allowed to start on her topics; he ordered her to leave immediately and wouldn’t hear another word from her. He calmed down a bit after she left, and to be honest, he was completely fair with the rest of us that day, and I passed with top marks. The story about the girl with “Latin in Latin America” is now told as part of the local academic “dumbest things students have said” folklore, and some people think it’s made up until I mention that I actually witnessed it.

(A customer is ordering a wedding cake.)

Customer: “This is what I want: a hundred pieces, four-tiered cake, and here is a picture of the model. There’s nothing too special about it; it’s just a simple design, so it shouldn’t be hard to make.”

(She shows me a picture of a wedding cake with a luscious, top-to-bottom cascade of roses, covering almost half of its surface. I know that to make that number of flowers it will take me at least a week and will probably involve me staying after working hours, more than once, but I put on a brave face and calculate the cost.)

Me: “The price of your order will be [price].”

Customer: “What?! Why so much?”

Me: “Well, it does sound lovely, but this particular model is thickly covered with roses. Sugar flowers are expensive, because they are slow to make.”

Customer: “But it’s only a simple model!”

Me: “I admit, the rest of the design looks simple enough, but the sheer amount of flowers will lift the price up.”

Customer: “But it’s only a simple wedding cake!”

Me: *getting fed up* “Look! I counted nearly a hundred individual roses. It’s hard work making them, because they are so time-consuming. The price of one single rose is [price of rose] and put together, they will actually cost more than the edible part.”

Customer: “…”

Me: “…”

Customer: “It’s still too expensive, and I can’t see why.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I just explained to you why.”

Customer: “Fine! I’ll just pick another model, then.”

Me: “I think that’s a good idea.”

(The kicker in this story is that the customer was one of our own employees, she was a cake decorator herself, and she had years of experience making both wedding cakes and sugar flowers.)

(In the office kitchen, the coffee maker has a part that won’t go in properly after cleaning the grounds container. There’s a trick to doing it that I know, but most other employees don’t. It is literally just pushing slightly on a spot and everything clicks into place, but you need to know where to push. I usually end up doing it for people several times a day. Almost every day, some variation of this happens. I am female.)

Me: “Need help with this?”

Struggling Female Employee: “Yes, please.”

Me: *helps replacing the container*

Struggling Female Employee: “Thanks. You should show me how you do that.”

(Later:)

Me: “Need help with this?”

Struggling Male Employee: “Nah, I got this.” *after several minutes of more struggling* “Okay, you do it.”

Me: *does the magic touch*

Struggling Male Employee: “Yeah, I guess that was easy, now that I’ve done all the hard work.”