One day I was running some errands in the morning and, after completing them, I decided to get some early take-away lunch for my boyfriend and me, go to my boyfriend’s place, and eat together with him.

When I arrived at the building where my boyfriend lives, there were some maintenance guys in the stairway. My boyfriend had told me the previous day that the maintenance guys were going to come and check every tenant’s bathroom facilities in case there were any repairs that should be done or something. Apparently, they had just come from my boyfriend’s apartment when I arrived.

I politely greeted them, took my keys — I have my boyfriend’s spare keys — and was about to open the apartment door when one of the maintenance guys shouted, like he was trying to warn me, “Hey, there’s some man in there!” I was very confused, and responded, “Um, yeah, he lives here?” and then I just went inside.

But I’m still confused to this day. What the heck was that? I don’t even live in the building and the apartment belongs to my boyfriend! I mean, sure, they couldn’t have known that, but was it really that weird of a concept for him to think that people might live together or just visit each other?

In Finland, it’s also very common to live together with your boyfriend or girlfriend even if you aren’t married, so I don’t think it was about that, either. Also, my boyfriend and I are both adults — around 26 — so it wasn’t like I was a tiny schoolgirl who was entering some shady old man’s apartment. Even after three years, this situation confuses me.

(We are in cooking class. We have eaten the main dish we made that day, and one of us is bringing the pie in to the table. I turn my head a little to look at it, and my teacher loses her s***.)

Teacher: “Just like you, always hawking for the first slice. You know what? This time you won’t have any!”

(Usually everybody takes one or three pieces and the rest is given to the teachers, but this time our teacher made the other students eat the entire pie while preventing me from getting any or leaving. This teacher also stopped making us cook any actually good food after our class became 100% girls; all we got was “healthy” BS, like salads and soups, and the emphasis was on how it looked and the decoration. When there were boys in our class, we often made pancakes, pizza, and the like, but the teachers stopped it when the boys got their own class. Just to be clear, in Finland the housekeeping classes are compulsory to everybody.)

(I am working in an ER doing office duties, including admitting walk-ins. A phone rings.)

Me: “This is [Hospital] with [My Name] speaking. How can I help you?”

Caller: *absolute silence*

Me: “Sir or ma’am, are you unable to speak? Do you have a medical emergency?”

Caller: *still absolute silence*

(After about 60 seconds of silence, the caller hangs up. A few minutes later the phone rings again. The same thing happens again. I am getting really worried that this might be a bad emergency, like a stroke, that can leave a person without speak. I start wondering if I could communicate with the person using the phone’s dial tones and how to do it. But again, the person hangs up before I figure out a way to do it. The phone rings a third time. This time it’s the husband of a nurse, both of whom I know very well.)

Husband: “Hi, [My Name]. [Nurse] has really bad laryngitis. She can’t speak and can’t come to work today.”

Me: “Thank God. I was trying to figure out how to communicate with a person who can’t speak.”

(I am a store manager at a coffee chain. Our employees are hired by a separate HR and recruiting department. I need new people so they send me twenty-year-old who has passed the interview process and seems eager to start working. I tell her the basics, give her her shifts for the next four weeks — in Finland you are required to give employees their shift lists quite early, so they can plan their lives outside of work: childcare, studies, hobbies, etc. — and start training her. Training lasts two shifts and goes okay. After those two first shifts, she stops coming to work. She does not show up for her next shift and does not answer her phone or emails. After a week and five missed shifts, I decide to email her and let her know that, since she was on her trial period and had not given any explanation for her absence, she is fired. A week after the email she shows up for work as if nothing happened and asks where her apron is. I ask her to come to my office.)

Me: “Did you not see my email or the message I sent to your phone? You failed to show up on your shifts for weeks — shifts that you agreed to take, by the way — and did not answer your phone for over a week, so I’m terminating our contract. You are no longer employed here.”

New Starter: “Come oooon! I’m sorry, okay, but I was so busy with, like, studies and other stuff and did not have time to come to work. I have time now, so I can work the rest of my shifts this month. It’s not that serious. You are a student, too; you should know what it’s like when you are busy. You can’t just fire me!”

(But I can and I do, even though she kicks up a fuss, seems to think it’s super unfair, and even threatens to spam our Facebook with bad reviews. Fast forward five months: I get a call from a recruiter for another coffee chain.)

Recruiter: “Did you have an employee called [New Starter] working for you?”

Me: “Oh, her. Yes, we did. Why?”

Recruiter: “Well, we are considering hiring her and she used you as a reference on her CV. She said she worked for you for four months; is that accurate?”

(The effing bonehead had actually used me as her only CV reference, with the right phone number and everything, and made up a work history where she was an appreciated member of our team, a reliable worker, and a customer service specialist. I had fun correcting these mistakes, and I do not think she got the job at the other coffee chain after I told them about her work ethics. Lying on your CV is a delicate skill, people, and HR actually does occasionally check the references.)

(I work for a software company. We provide document archiving services through internet and if/when customer ends the subscription they can order all the documents to be saved e.g. on a CD. This customer has done so. She calls a bit later to ask how she can search a certain document from the CD)

Customer: “I have this CD from you that has all my documents I once stored in your service. Now I need to find a certain document from here, how do I find it? There are so many documents here”
Me: “Well you need to go to your computer’s resources and use the search features your operating system has”
Customer: “But I need to find this certain document, how do I find it?”
Me: “You need to use your own computer’s search features for searching. You go to resources and type in the word you wish to search among the documents. Unfortunately I cannot give you more specific information on your computer’s search features because those can vary based on the operating system you are using and we don’t have training for that. You won’t have the search features of our service because the data is no longer on our server”
Customer: “… So…. How does my computer know what to search?”
Me: “You will choose on your resources the CD and the type in the word or words you wish to search”
Customer: “So… Do you mean that I have to put this CD into my computer first?”
Me: “…Yes, that is what I mean”
Customer: *very happily and cheerily* “Oh, good! I didn’t know where to put this CD. I was fearing that I would need some kind of special device to see the data on this CD!”