There’s an outside and an inside doorbell in my apartment complex. The outside doorbell is akin to a foghorn in sound and loudness, while the inside doorbell is more of a ringing of metal against metal. Both bells are mounted in the main hallway of the apartment, which is directly adjacent to my bedroom, but only the outside doorbell is connected to an intercom system allowing you to talk with the person standing in front of the apartment building so you know whether to let them in or not.

It’s a hot, humid night, so all the doors in the house are open. I’m alone in the house, and I’m blissfully asleep when the outside doorbell rings and rudely interrupts the dream I was having.

I pick up the horn for the com system.

Delivery Guy: “I have your order for [Restaurant] here.”

Me: “I did not order at [Restaurant]; you have the wrong house.”

Delivery Guy: “But this is apartment [number].”

Me: “I did not order at [Restaurant]. I was asleep. I would have known if an order was placed for my household. Please check the address again.”

I put the horn back on the intercom and return to bed. Unfortunately, I have not even put the covers back over me before the doorbell rings again.

Delivery Guy: *In a more insistent voice* “I have your order for [Restaurant] here. For [address]. That is this address.”

Me: “I did not order at [Restaurant]. I was asleep. Something has gone wrong. Please call your boss and confirm that you have to be here.”

I put the horn back, but something about the delivery guy’s insistence bothers me. I pick up my phone and check the messages I’ve received. There’s a message saying, “Your order has been made and the delivery is en route to your address,” from the restaurant in question. Given I have not put an order in, this confuses me, so I decide to call them.

Me: “Hey, I got a message that my order was en route, and a delivery guy just showed up at my house, but I have not made an order. Can I ask if it was made by phone or Internet or something? Are you sure you sent them to the right address?”

Restaurant: “No, no, it was the wrong address. We noticed after he was gone. He didn’t answer his phone while driving. Can you send him back?”

Me: “Yeah, but how did it happen?”

Restaurant: “You and another customer have the same first name and live on the same street. The kitchen is loud, and someone wrote the wrong number.”

Me: “Okay, human error. Can happen. Thanks! I already told him to call you, so if you let him know where to go?”

Restaurant: “Yes! Sorry for the mixup! You’re a valued customer!”

Me: *Merrily* “If I’m the first one you think of when someone with my name orders, I would think so!”

The delivery guy managed to find the right place to deliver the order to, so all’s well and only some sleep was lost.

I work as an office manager of a tech company. Most of the employees are programmers, so they should be good at logical thinking, right? Turns out not always. Most of the problems I have with them are caused by them not reading emails or signs around the office. However, some employees still baffle me.

On this one occasion, the office has been implementing hybrid work for a while due to a common reason since 2020. One of the programmers sends an email asking for a new monitor because her old one is acting up. That’s easy to handle, so we say yes and that she can take one home as long as she returns the broken one.

Then, she sends another email asking for “the so-called drawers we have in the office”. My team is so confused that nobody answers her email until she comes in the next day.

Me: “Hi! Are you here for the monitor?”

Colleague: “Yes. I have the old one here for you.”

Me: “Cool! Just leave it here and I’ll take care of it.”

Colleague: “Thanks!”

Me: “What about your other request? I don’t really understand it. Do you mean you want a monitor stand with space under it to act as a drawer?”

Colleague: “No. I meant the drawer we have under our desks. I have a similar desk at home but it doesn’t have a drawer and I don’t like seeing my things on the desk.”

Me: “You mean the one attached to the desks?”

Colleague: “Yes!”

Me: “Well, there are a few problems with that. One, it is installed on the desk. They were bought as a set so we don’t have any spares lying around. Two, it’s fragile and around a meter long. Is your desk even the same size?”

Colleague: “I don’t know. I thought we could just try it first.”

Me: “I’d rather not. And the third problem is that the furniture has been bought by the company taking over our building. Even if I let you take one drawer off, you need to bring it back in a month, anyway. Have you looked around online?”

Colleague: “No. I just love the drawers we have here so I thought I should ask first.”

Me: “I’m sure you can find something on [Webstore].”

Colleague: “I don’t like them. But I’ll look around.”

Me: “Okay.”

Six months later, I’m still bewildered. At least she’s not unreasonable like another colleague who demanded the kitchen never ever use cilantro (even on other people’s food, not only on hers) because she doesn’t like the taste.

I work security for a music venue, and since I’m one of the older guys, I usually get to roam the floor, but this day was different. I was stationed in the barricade between the crowd and the stage. The crowd started funneling in and filling up the space by the barricade immediately. I noticed that the crowd seemed to be older metal fans, so we didn’t expect it to get too rowdy.

The first act went on and the crowd was headbanging and lightly mosh-pitting along. Well, that didn’t sit well with the singer, so before the last song, he told the crowd to kick it up because security were his friends and they needed to earn their pay. Immediately, a guy crowd surfed to the front. I caught him and let him go.

The singer commented, “That’s what I’m talking about!” and then started their last song.

My coworker and I were almost overrun by crowd surfers, but we kept up until halfway through the song when a crowd surfer with no shirt, slick with sweat, came over and got shifted to the right at the last push of the crowd, and thus, we were out of position to catch him. He proceeded to fall through my coworker’s hands and hit my knee and bend it a little backward. I screamed, fell forward, hit my other knee against the barricade, and fell to the ground. Before my coworkers could help me out of the way, I got my head stepped on by a crowd surfer.

They wanted to try and stand me up, but I made them pull me out to the side. Once I calmed down a little, I noticed my knee didn’t hurt, so I tried to stand, but my right knee wouldn’t hold and I fell back down.

An ambulance was called, and the poor paramedics that showed up couldn’t lift my rather large self onto the gurney. I pulled myself up with the barricade enough to get the gurney under me and was wheeled out of the venue, to the cheers of the crowd. That was the first time I ever had a crowd cheer for me.

I ended up missing a week of work due to a hyperextension/sprain of my right knee, and then I was put on light duty for another week. But the venue changed their policy on crowd surfers to where you can once, but if you are caught again, you are kicked out.

I went to a fast food drive-thru. It’s super popular but I’m unfamiliar with the menu. They have order takers standing outside so far ahead of the order screen you can’t read it, so either you know what you want or the order taker gives you options.

I ordered the basics: a sandwich, fries, and soda. When I saw the menu, I noticed other items I would have ordered, as well. But oh, well. Their loss.

At the pick-up window:

Me: “Can I have a print menu so I can be prepared next time?”

Employee: “Sorry, but because of [health crisis], we can’t hand out paper menus due to germs.”

And they handed me a paper bag of food and a paper drink cup.

Eons ago, we went out to dinner with another couple, all of us enjoying a child-free evening. We decided to try a place that had recently opened. Three of us were drinking water, and the fourth had a lemon-lime soft drink, which, of course, looks like water if you don’t notice the bubbles.

At one point, the waitress came by and refilled all the glasses with water, including the soft drink. When it was pointed out what she did and a replacement was requested:

Waitress: “Well, how much of it did you drink?”

Seriously? She was going to bring a partially full glass as a replacement? No big surprise that the place closed down within a few months.