Coworker: *smug grin* “Whenever I see that some customer is struggling to understand me, like from a language barrier or whatever, I make sure to speak faster and quieter, and use more big words.”

Me: “No sé por qué eres hijo de p***.” *”I don’t know why you’re such a son of a b****.”*

Coworker: “Huh?”

Me: *faster, quieter* “No puedo empezar a comprender para cuál razón piensas es necesario ser p*****o a nuestros clientes maravillosas.” *”I can’t even begin to understand for what reason you think it’s necessary to be a d**khead to our marvelous customers.”*

Coworker: “God d*** it, I can’t understand you when you talk like that.”

Me: “Oh, sorry. I must be a terrible person.”

(I work remotely and am on a conference call with several people.)

Coworker #1: “We’ll also need to sync with [Team] to deliver the– I’m sorry, there’s some noise on the line? Is someone rustling papers?”

Coworker #2: “Oh, that’s me. Sorry, I dropped my meatball on the mic and was trying to clean it off.”

(I’m talking with a coworker about a restaurant she went to with her family last night.)

Coworker: “It was really good. They had lamb.”

Me: “Eww! Poor little lamb!”

Coworker: “Well, it’s not like it was a baby one or anything!”

Me: *blinks* “But a lamb is a baby, [Coworker]. A baby sheep.”

Coworker: “What? No, I’m sure it was a full-grown lamb. They wouldn’t eat a baby one.”

Me: “All lambs are baby sheep, [Coworker]. If it’s a full-grown one, it’s a sheep. Lambs are, by definition, sheep who are under a year old.”

Coworker: “Well… I didn’t eat any.” *nervous laugh*

Me: “It’s okay if you did, [Coworker]. Just because I don’t eat meat, it doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Coworker: “I’m sure lambs aren’t babies, though. They wouldn’t eat a baby.” *walks off muttering about eating babies*

(We both grew up in the same general area, an area that is known for farming and lots of farm animals. I kind of thought everyone knew that a lamb was a baby sheep, though, especially people around our area, where there are sheep and lambs like every mile.)

(It’s truck day, so we’re unpacking freight and putting it away. I’ve just brought something to the stockroom, where my coworker is unpacking her freight. She yells for me as I walk away.)

Me: “Yeah?”

Coworker: “If you see anybody come back here with a box for me, I want you to punch them in the throat.” 

(Getting boxes of your stuff after you think you’re done sorting can be annoying, but you never know when others are finished sorting through their own boxes. She’s joking, but I play along.)

Me: “Okay!” *laughing* “Yeah, you know how violent of a person I am.”

(We both start laughing, and another coworker asks what we’re laughing about. We explain, and she starts laughing, too. I go out to my area to begin sorting through my freight. Later:)

Me: *walking into stockroom with a box* “[Coworker]!”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “I think I need to punch myself.”

(My coworker laughs again and we talk about how we usually each get at least one box of each other’s freight. Even later:)

Co-Manager: *walking past* “Did you punch yourself?”

Me: “I told [Coworker] I should!”

(Some days are rough, but my coworkers make things fun.)

I’m working on night replenishment in a supermarket over the Christmas period, which mostly involves getting as much as possible of the last delivery of the day and the multiple overnight deliveries of chilled stock onto the shelves ready for opening. One of the good things about night shift is that you’re allowed to have headphones on to listen to your own music. Like nearly everyone there, I take advantage of this.

My work playlist is best described as eclectic, spanning a few hundred years and several genres. I also have a habit of singing or humming under my breath as I work, usually without even realising I’m doing it. Most people ignore this or can’t hear it through their own music, but sometimes I get comments on my musical choices.

I once got comments from the person who’d been paying enough attention to my singing to realise that I had metal, pop, classical, and showtunes all mixed together, among other genres. This annoyed him, enough to call me a “fake metalhead” and demand that metal not be mixed in with “lesser music.”

My response was a very mature one: I unpaired my headphones, searched a specific song, and played it through my phone’s speakers. It was from a metal band’s most recent album, but it was most definitely not a metal song, instead being a choral arrangement of a poem.

He had no answer for that… especially as the manager for that section started yelling for him to get back to his own department and stop harassing me.