One of my male coworkers is from a country where, as he puts it, relationships and marriages are more of an arranged idea than something people choose to do and as such, there is a lot of “hidden fun” going on.

He wants to make plans to use his vacation time to visit different locations around the USA. One of these stops is New York City, where I used to live.

Coworker: “So, you can take me on a tour?”

Me: “I don’t have a ton of vacation time right now.”

Coworker: “Just a week or two.”

Me: “Yeah, I don’t have two weeks, and I have kids. Maybe if [My Husband] can get off his job, we can schedule a big vacation, but—”

Coworker: *Annoyed* “Why do people always say their partner has to go along? It’s not a romantic getaway!”

I have had this conversation with him before, as I know other people have.

Me: “I know that, but taking one-on-one trips with people who aren’t your significant other… It’s the way it looks. It’s not personal. It’s just—”

Coworker: “Well, that’s dumb.”

Me: “I would be unhappy going without my family, anyway. Why don’t you go with [Married Male Coworker]? He’s from New York, too.”

Coworker: *Offended* “I’m not touring New York with a man.”

Me: “Why?”

Coworker: “People will think we’re gay!”

I’m now annoyed enough that I want to laugh, but I hold it back.

Me: “So… it’s not a romantic getaway if you go with a married, female coworker, but it is a romantic getaway if you go with a married, male coworker.”

Coworker: “It’s completely different.”

Me: *Sigh* “Okay.”

Coworker: “Why can’t you just come with me? We won’t sleep in the same bed.”

Me: “I know we won’t. Because I’m not going.”

Coworker: “Why?!”

Me: “I’m not available.”

I turn to walk away.

Coworker: “You don’t even know when!”

Me: *Shrugging* “I know I’m not available.”

He continued to ask me to make plans with him for weeks before I finally cracked and screamed at him. Initially, I was written up by Human Resources for creating an uncomfortable work environment. I told them about our conversation where he refused to go with a male coworker but insisted on going with me. They dropped my write-up, and [Coworker] was moved to another branch.

I’m an office administrator at a company with several different departments. We’re all in the same building, but every department has its own communal kitchen and break area. Every department also has its own small “well-being” budget, so the people who work closely together can decide together if they want to spend the money on fruit baskets, potted plants, activities, and other small things that make their department a nice place to work.

Once a month, I have a meeting with the other administrators in the building so we can coordinate practical things and keep each other up to date on what’s happening in the other departments. As one of those meetings comes to a close, one of my fellow administrators has one last issue to discuss.

Coworker #1: “Look, this may sound crazy, but I think people are stealing coffee mugs from our break area. We bought twelve really nice ones for the department so we’d have real mugs when we invite people for meetings, and there are only six left. Can you check your departments and see if there are any mugs that don’t belong there?”

Coworker #2: “Yours, too? Our mugs have been going missing, too. They’re only the cheap ones from [Furniture Store], but it’s so annoying.”

Coworker #3: “We have missing mugs, as well. What about your department, [My Name]?”

Me: “No one’s said anything, and I usually bring my own thermos mug from home, but I’ll check.”

I go to our break area, open the cupboard for communal coffee mugs, and find it full to bursting. Most of the people in my department also have their own personal mugs that they keep at their desks, and when I start asking around, it seems like everyone just assumed someone else bought the mugs.

Turns out one of the senior managers, whose office happens to be in our department, has made it a habit to go around to the other departments for meetings, grab one of their mugs for coffee, and then take it back with him to his own office. He’ll then put it in the dishwasher in our break area and forget the crucial step of BRINGING IT BACK.

I go knock on his office door to confront him with this serious crime, tongue-in-cheek, since he’s an easy-going guy.

Senior Manager: *Embarrassed* “Well, they can come over here and get their mugs back, or maybe you could…”

Me: *With a wide grin* “Nope! I already put all the mugs on a cart, and you personally get to take them back where they belong. Think of it as an act of penance!”

[Senior Manager] had a good sense of humor and did his tour of shame the next day, returning all the ill-gotten mugs and bringing chocolate for the other departments as an apology. 

He did not, however, learn from his mistake, and Mug Returning Day turned into a regular event. Every once in a while, I’d put a cart of stolen mugs outside his office door and he’d go buy a big bag of candy and do his little tour. 

When he retired a few years later, every department gifted him one of their mugs to remember them by. I miss that guy.

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I supply tools and fire safety to the rest of my organisation statewide. Nearly everything is simple, polite requests for stuff like a fire blanket or spanners. A lot of it isn’t for us, but we always tell them who to contact.  

My colleagues are getting tired of the attitude of one department manager, but he has never contacted me. New starts are warned, women especially. I’m waiting and ready for him. This happens via instant messenger.

IT: “I need you to be my minion, please.”

What is a minion? I look it up, and needless to say, I find it really patronising.

Me: “‘Minion: noun, a follower or underling of a powerful person, especially a servile or unimportant one.’ We don’t stock minions.”

IT: “I need a guinea pig. A lab rat, or rat for short. Henceforth, you will be known as ‘rat.’”

I do some Googling to redirect him.

Me: “No, my name is [My Name], not Rat, and the number you need is [number].”

IT: “I think you gave me the wrong number; that’s a pet store.”

Me: “Yeah, but they should have what you need. They’re mostly in the family pet business, though, so I wouldn’t mention the experiments.”

IT: “Eh? What?”

Me: “What, ‘what’? There’s a place in Tasmania that supplies lab animals. Could try them.”

Half an hour passes. I can practically hear the gears turning in his head 700 km away as he realises he isn’t talking to one of his direct reports.

IT: “I am so sorry, I have just been contacted by another one of my minions. I have the wrong [My Name].”

I have the same name as someone in his department.

Me: “Call me, extension [number].”

IT: “I didn’t mean to.”

Me: “I’ll talk to you or your boss. Take your pick.”

My phone rings.

Me: “You said you were contacted by ‘another’ one of your minions. Do you understand that this requires me to be one of your minions? Is that how you think of your colleagues, and me?”

IT: “I didn’t know—”

Me: “You should have known. I do not report to you, and I don’t stock minions. I do stuff like fire extinguishers. Look, my colleagues have been getting tired of how you talk to them, a lot of it is misogynistic. Nobody else starts an email with, ‘Hey, sweetcheeks.’ Not one other person. And you do realise that if you’d started that with the words, ‘Hi, [My Name], can you help me with…’ I wouldn’t have been sending you to the pet store? Does this make sense?”

IT: “Yes, it does.”

Me: “Thank you. I will keep it off the record for now. Between you and me, if you need advice on how to phrase something, call me and ask.”

He later emailed me, asking me to pass along his apologies for his choice of words. It’s early days, but we are hearing much less nonsense from him.

I work with a team of programmers that has a good sense of humor and is regularly joking with each other. We had a government lead who was partially responsible for setting priorities as to what needed to be added to the software we were prototyping, which meant that he was important enough we had to talk to him, or about him, a number of times each day. He had always gone by a certain nickname during that time, and we were used to calling him that.

Then, we got a new developer who had the same name, except our developer’s legal name was the nickname, so he jokingly argued he had dibs on it. Our government lead admitted he used to hate the nickname as a kid and insist on his real name, so he didn’t mind being called by it now. Thus, we all sort of agreed each person would go by their legal name to avoid confusion in the future. The only problem is that we all kept calling the government guy by his nickname out of habit, to the regular confusion of our new developer.

One day, the new developer came in with a Nerf gun, which is honestly not that uncommon to see in an office like this. His explanation for it?

New Developer: “I’m sick of you calling [Government Guy] my name. It keeps confusing me and driving me postal. So the solution is obvious: from now on, when someone drives me postal by using the wrong name, I will simply have to shoot them!”

He was true to his word. Any time someone called the government guy by the developer’s name, he would turn around and shoot the offending party with a Nerf dart before going back to work. There were even a few times when it was clear we were about to mention the government lead and the developer would grab his gun and jokingly shake it menacingly at us to remind us to use the right name.

This was all done in good fun and we all had a laugh at it. We even kept a running tally on a whiteboard of who got shot the most. The funny thing, though, is that it worked; we all very quickly got used to using the new name under the threat of being shot!

A little while later, someone much higher up in the government, who we rarely saw, came down to speak with us and she called our government lead by his nickname. She didn’t notice that we all immediately glanced at the new guy as soon as she said it. For his part, he clearly looked down at the gun as if debating it, but he wasn’t brave enough to shoot her. As soon as she left, we all jokingly teased him about not shooting her.

New Guy: “I have this silly policy about not shooting people that have the ability to decide whether or not I get a paycheck, you see.”

For reasons that aren’t important to the story, I’m driving a coworker’s car. It’s not very late, but it’s winter, so the sun is already down and it’s dark. I turn on the car’s lights and quickly realize that my coworker is one of those people who install overly bright lights.

I flip them off and decide to rely on the streetlights to see.

Unfortunately, an officer of the law takes offense to this and pulls me over.

Officer: “Were you aware that your lights are off?”

Me: “I can see just fine.”

Officer: “Please turn on your lights.”

I turn on my lights. THE BEACONS ARE LIT! GONDOR CALLS FOR AID! ALL OF CHINA KNOWS YOU ARE HERE! THE SUN RISES!

Me: “So… I can’t see anymore. Can you?”

Officer: *Pauses* “Please turn off your lights.”

So, that’s the story of how I got my coworker a ticket for improper car lights.