Due to my experience with databases and the specific reporting software we use, I often get called in to help build reports that coworkers in my company will run and use. This experience means that I’m also generally their first resource when those reports break or give odd data.

On this particular day, I am contacted by a fairly new coworker who is taking over a particular report that a prior coworker had been running. She wants me to explain how the report works so that she can understand it all. I am ahead on my work, and I’m happy to do so as my coworkers understanding the reports cuts down on the amount of troubleshooting I end up needing to do. I go over to her desk and sit down to explain things.

Me:
“To start with, how familiar are you with [Reporting System]?”

Coworker:
*Cheerfully* “Totally unfamiliar. This is my first time using it.”

Me:
*Laughing* “Well, that’s okay; it is designed to be pretty user-friendly. It mimics a lot of the reporting functions of [Common Database Program], if you’ve used that.”

Coworker:
“Nope!”

Me:
“That’s okay. So, first, let’s open up the report.”

My coworker opens the program, then pauses.

Coworker:
“Um, where is the report?”

Me:
“It will be under [Folder] in the Report tab.”

I walk her through opening up the report and go through the various columns in it, explaining where the data for them came from. The entire time, she is cheerful and attentive and seems to be following along easily.

Me:
“All right, so, this last column is a bit tricky, because I had to manually code it rather than relying on what [Program] has available. It pulls from–”

Coworker:
“Don’t condescend to me.”

Me:
*A bit startled* “Uh, sorry, I didn’t–”

Coworker:
“I’m a professional. You shouldn’t talk down to me.”

It was like a switch had been flipped. She went from cheerful to icily angry in an instant. There was nothing different about how or what I was explaining, as far as I could tell. I kept going, finishing up the explanation, and she ended up thanking me in the same cool tone. I went back to work, feeling slightly weirded out from the sudden tone shift.

I ended up getting called into my boss’s office a week or so later to be asked about it, because apparently, my coworker had complained to the boss about me trying to “foist off” my reports onto her. That really confused my boss, given that she was the one who’d assigned my coworker to take care of that report in the first place.

Many years ago, I lived on the bottom floor of a shared house, and a married couple lived on the top floor. I was very shy at the time and just wanted to stay out of other people’s business, but about a week after I moved in, every weeknight the upstairs was resounding with the sound of furious lovemaking. I could hear the bed thumping against the wall and the lustful yells were enough to wake the dead. It was disturbing my sleep. 

After about a month of this, I waited for a weekend, knocked on the upstairs door, and timidly suggested that they be a little bit quieter while making love at night. 

Cue a glare that would freeze Hell from the husband, directed at his wife. 

It turns out he worked nights.

(My writing group meets in a church that also offers a lot of other programs like AA, trauma support, and just general sanctuary as we have a huge homeless population. I arrive a little early for a writing group one day and there is a homeless man standing on the porch. I pass him and pull on the door.) 

Homeless Man: “It’s not open yet.”

Me: “Oh, okay. I guess I’m a little too early.”

(We stand and chat for a minute, and then my writing group leader shows up, giving the homeless man a huge, cartoonish berth to open the door even though we are practically standing right next to each other. The leader and I go into the meeting room and the homeless man goes into the sanctuary. We have our meeting and everything’s good until the end, when this happens.)

Group Leader: “Okay, that’s our meeting for tonight. Now for some announcements. I know there was a homeless guy earlier in the church. I asked him what he was doing here and he said he was charging his phone, but you guys don’t need to be uncomfortable because I asked him to leave.” 

Me: “Wait, you asked him to leave?!”

Group Leader: “Yes, he was making people uncomfortable sitting in the sanctuary.”

Me: “I spoke to him a bit on the porch. He was fine. Not dangerous or anything. They’re allowed to be in the sanctuary if they’re not causing any harm.”

Group Leader: “Well, he was making people uncomfortable. He’s gone now, so none of you need to be scared walking out.”

(I did leave, and I looked around for the guy hoping he hadn’t gone too far so I could at least apologize to him for her behavior, but I couldn’t find him. I still feel so bad about it; how could someone be so jerky as to oust a homeless guy from a CHURCH?!)

(My dad has worked with a man from El Salvador for many years, and they have become close friends. When this friend first moved to the US, he took classes to improve his English skills, but in the meantime, the language barrier led to a lot of funny misunderstandings between him and my dad. They got used to laughing together about all the little ways both English and Spanish can be confusing. My dad learned a bit of Spanish from his friend but never enough to really understand a whole conversation. One Father’s Day, my dad thinks it would be nice to call his friend and wish him a happy holiday, and he thinks it would be extra nice to say it in Spanish.) 

Dad: “Hey, I just wanted to wish you a happy Father’s Day! Feliz papa Dios!”

Friend: *laughing uncontrollably*

Dad: “What? Didn’t I say it right?”

Friend: “You meant, ‘Feliz Día del Padre.’ What you actually said was–” *pauses to laugh* “–’Happy potato God!’” 

Dad: *laughing, too* “Well, I was pretty close!”

Friend: “‘Papá’ with the accent on the end means ‘dad,’ but the way you said it with the accent at the beginning, it means ‘potato.’ And ‘día’ means ‘day,’ but ‘Dios’ means ‘God’!”

Dad: *smiling, shrugs* “Well, at least you knew what I meant!”

Friend: “Somehow I always do!”

(Now it has become a tradition that my dad has to call his friend every year on Father’s Day and wish him “Happy Potato God!” When my sister and I call our dad on Father’s Day, we tell him the same.)

(I’m a face painter at a famous zoo in California. All of our face paints on our menus have text explaining what they are, i.e., a kid wearing a lion face paint will have text on the bottom saying “lion.” A family comes up to me first thing in the morning and looks at our face paint menus. The little girl chooses a dolphin and the aunt walks over to the register to pay for it.)

Aunt: “Which one did she pick?”

Mom: “The dolphin.”

(The aunt tries to find the picture of the dolphin on my display boards which is not pictured. She points to the elephant.)

Aunt: “This dolphin?”

(I show her the picture on the menu; she ignores me and then points to the shark.)

Aunt: “Oh! This is the dolphin, but does it have to have a horn? Can you paint a flower, instead?”

(I look at what she’s pointing at and see she’s talking about the dorsal fin — the top fin on the shark.)

Me: “Ma’am, that’s a shark. And that’s not a horn, it’s a dorsal fin.”

(I point out the dolphin.)

Me: “This is the dolphin.”

Aunt: “That one has a horn, too! Can you paint a flower, instead?”

Mom: “She knows what she’s doing. Just pay her so we can get started.”

(I ring her up and then go to the kid. While I’m painting, I hear the aunt and mom talking.)

Aunt: “I thought she wasn’t going to paint the horn.”

Mom: “It’s a dorsal fin.”

Aunt: “What’s a dorsal fin?”

Mom: “I don’t know; we haven’t learned about it on Octonauts yet.”