Years ago, before navigation apps, we had a man come to our door unexpectedly (not a delivery). He was from a local utility to notify us of some upcoming work.

Me: “Hello, can I help you?”

Man: “I’m with [Utility]. Is this [my address]?”

Me: “Yes.”

Man: “You’re supposed to have your address painted on the curb and on a mailbox. That’s legally required. Most people have it on the house so delivery people and utility workers can find it. You don’t have any of those. How do expect anyone to find you?”

Me: “Step back two steps and reach out with your left hand.”

He stepped back and touched the post holding up the porch roof. It had our street number in four-inch-high metal numbers. He had to have walked right past them to ring our bell.

Man: “Well, those are hard to see from the street. You should still have them on the curb. You don’t even have a mailbox. That’s illegal.”

Me: “The numbers are on the curb right next to the driveway. I don’t know how you missed them.”

The numbers were sharp, large, and easily read.

Man: “I was looking for them on the house. You still need—”

Me: “A mailbox?”

I pointed to the mailbox, which was on the property line with our neighbor. It was one post with two boxes. The one on our side was ours and had the numbers on the visible side and the end (door).

The man shook his head disgustedly, handed me a notice about the upcoming work, and walked away.

This was many years ago, in the early days when MP3 players were available and still a new and exciting thing. My older sister had a part-time job while in high school and had saved up money to buy one, and as her birthday was approaching, my parents agreed to help make up the difference as her birthday present.

My whole family tagged along to buy it. It was a very exciting thing, and as jealous as I was of my sister for getting an MP3 player, she said I could have her old Walkman, and I was very grateful.

We went to an electronics store, and we were greeted by an older lady who worked there.

Now, I have nothing against older people working with electronics, but I could see from my parents’ faces that they didn’t want to be served by her when she started talking about how technology is moving too fast… And she worked in an electronics store and was meant to sell these things.

My sister started asking about the types of players available and pointed out some she had seen in the catalogue which were in her price range.

Sister: “I saw this one, which is in our price range and can hold 150 songs!”

The sales lady rolled her eyes and looked fed up.

Sales Lady: “Oh, that’s no good! You don’t need 150 songs! All you actually need is five or six songs, and you can just swap them around every now and then!”

I think she probably had a heart attack when Spotify was released.

This story takes place some years back before digital started to really take over how people get their video games and physical media was still very much in high demand. I’m an avid PC gamer.

I work near a well-known chain of tech stores, and maybe once a week, I just take a few minutes to head over to the store and peruse the aisle of PC games while I am on my lunch break. It is a nice break from dealing with customers on the phone at my work all day, every day.

One day, I have twenty minutes to kill before I have to leave to get back to work in time, so I do my usual and wander through the PC games. I happen to find a couple that I’ve wanted for a while that have been priced down from their initial release price. I pick them up, and since I have a bit of time left, I wander through the pre-built PC section just to see what kind of hardware some of these overpriced pre-built computers have in them.

Most pre-built systems at these stores aren’t really geared toward gaming, but a couple of models have okay graphic cards in them, and I’m always interested in looking. Most systems are dual-cores and one has a fancier quad-core — Q6600, if anyone remembers this bad boy back in the day. It’s not that I need one of these systems, but I just like to check out the hardware.

Nearby, a salesman is trying to sell to a customer, and I’m just kind of listening to what he’s pulling out of his rear as they walk and talk through the computer section.

Customer: “I’m looking for a good computer that’s fast. I need it to do fast emails for my work. I do a lot of work using Office.”

Salesman: “This computer here has a four-core processor, so it does work faster than that dual-core I was showing you.”

Customer: “Oh. That’s very good, then! I see it says four cores at 2.4 G-H-Zs. Is that good?”

I’m not listening too much, just catching bits and pieces here and there, until the salesman tells the customer this doozy of a line as they happen to stop right behind me.

Salesman: “That means you have four cores that add up to 9.6 gigahertz! That makes this computer so much faster than that two-core one that only reaches around 4.5 gigahertz!”

I start laughing out loud. This takes the salesman and the customer by surprise, and they turn their attention to me. I address the customer.

Me: “That’s not how it works. If I were you, I wouldn’t listen to a thing this guy has to say, and I’d save myself a lot of money by not buying here. Do yourself a favor and go to [Other Chain] instead; they know what they’re talking about.”

I glanced at the salesman “computer geek” guy, shook my head, laughed again, and made my way to the checkout counter.

During this trip, not only did I find a couple of games I wanted, but I also got a good laugh from a clueless employee trying to BS a potential customer.

Back when I first started in my industry, a friend of mine from uni landed a job at my company, too. The place was four levels with an atrium in the middle. I was on the third floor, and [Friend] was on the first floor, but I could see him from my desk. He didn’t know this yet, and he didn’t know where I was seated.

I let him get settled in for the morning, and then I anonymously messaged him through our internal messaging system.

Me: “[Friend], meet me at my office immediately.”

I watched as he looked around the office, slightly panicked.

Friend: “Sorry, who is this? And can I ask where your office is?”

Me: “Now, [Friend], I don’t have time for this.”

He started to look really panicked. Then, he got up and walked into the atrium and stood turning round in circles, looking at the offices. I felt bad about it then and waved down to him.

Me: “Now, [Friend]!”

Being the good-hearted guy he was, he laughed and mouthed, “C**t,” and I went back to work giggling.

A few days later, I started hearing a very occasional and very high-pitched “eeee”-like beep in the office I shared with two others. It was VERY subtle — almost out of our hearing spectrum, to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was hearing it.

But once I did accept that I really was hearing it, it became more and more noticeable with each beep, and more and more irritating. The timing was unpredictable — sometimes ten minutes between beeps, thirty minutes between, two minutes, an hour, etc. — so I let it go for quite a while before I started to accept that I might be going mad and asked the others if they heard it. They both looked almost relieved and said they did, and it was driving them mad, too.

So, we started looking around the office, pulling shelves apart, emptying drawers, and pulling pictures down. I even sat outside the office for a few hours to make sure it wasn’t coming from outside. (It wasn’t.)

We also timed the beeps all day to see if we could find a pattern. There was no pattern; it seemed completely random.

The following day, we got serious and started pulling apart our PCs one at a time. We were all looking a bit wild-eyed by this point.

Eventually, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, [Friend] arrived at the office, laughed at us sitting on the floor with our PCs in pieces, and told us he’d taped this small evil noise device under a shelf. He said he would have left it longer, but our boss thought it had gone on long enough.

Touché, [Friend].

I’ve just pulled up to the drive-thru speaker at a fast food restaurant.

Employee: “Welcome to [Restaurant]. May I take your order?”

Me: “Hi. Can I get—”

Employee: “AH, F***, HE’S BACK! [OTHER EMPLOYEE], HE’S IN THE KITCHEN! HELP ME!”

I pull out my phone and dial nine and one. I’m about to hit the final one when the drive-thru window pops open and an opossum goes flying out.

Employee: *Clearly out of breath* “Sorry… We’re… closed, due to, uh, sanitary reasons…”

Me: “…did it bite you?”

Employee: “Nah, he got a mouth full of chicken and he was not letting go.”