I’m ringing up a woman who has two tiny fluffy dogs tucked into a baby pram. 

Me: *Smiling.* “They’re adorable! What are their names?”

She picks up the first one, a little ball of energy. 

Customer: *Proudly.* “This is Scat!”

I feel my face heat up instantly.

Me: “Oh… uh… how did you come up with that name?”

Customer: “It’s short for Scatty, like ‘Beam me up, Scatty‘!”

Me: “You mean… Scotty. Like in Star Trek?” 

Customer: “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Scatty.”

I decide to let that one die quietly and move on. The customer has a bit of an accent, so maybe it’s a pronunciation issue. She sets the dog back in the pram, picks up the second dog, a tiny one with huge eyes. 

Customer: “And this one’s Dookie.”

I bite my lip so hard I nearly draw blood, trying not to laugh.

Me: “Lovely names!” *Quickly scanning her last items before I completely lose it.*

I’m dealing with a prospective supplier. My surname is rather long and annoying to spell, let’s say for the sake of the story that it’s Hammeringell, so I invented a shortcut that usually works great, but…

Prospective Supplier: “And your surname is…?”

Me: “Hammeringell. Spelled hammering, E, double L.”

Prospective Supplier: “Got it.”

The catalogue arrives, marked for the attention of “Mr. Hell”. I have low expectations about this supplier’s performance.

I’m restocking produce when a customer comes over to me.

Customer: “I’m looking for the green thing, the… uh…”

Me: “Can you describe it?”

Customer: “Tree brains.”

Me: “Broccoli?”

Customer: “Yes, that’s it! Sorry, my brain isn’t braining today.”

Me: “No worries, we’ve all had those days. Broccoli is usually right there, but we’re out. We just got some in, though, so I’ll get some for you.”

Customer: “Thank you! Thank you!”

I get him his ‘tree brains’ and continue restocking. A while later, I hear a coworker on the radio, asking:

Coworker: “Yo, anybody know what cow squares might be?”

The answer was cheese slices. I hope that the customer’s brain started ‘braining’ before the drive home!

Me: “Good morning. Thanks for calling IT; this is [My Name]. How can I assist you?”

User: “I am a new employee with our company, and I cannot get into our system.”

Me: “Are you at the Windows login screen or the Citrix login screen?”

User: “Windows.”

I pull up her account and find the new hire spreadsheet. It has each new hire, their email, and their one-time-use password on it.

Me: “Can you tell me which password you are using?”

We cannot give out passwords over the phone, so I have them tell me their passwords.

For this next portion, I will use fake company names and fake default passwords.

User: “Parker4545%.”

Me: “Hmm. That is what we have on file. I’m going to open up Active Directory and reset it back to that same password in case someone fat-fingered it.”

AD gives me an error: invalid password.

Me: “Strange, it won’t let me use that password for some reason. Trying again.”

Again, AD tells me the password is invalid — strange because this is just a variation of one of many password templates at the company.

Me: “One moment while I reach out to an admin regarding this.”

I pull up teams and reach out to the account admin. He tries resetting it himself and gets the same thing. He pulls in another account admin and gets the same thing. We escalate up to the exchange admin in case it’s an issue with desynching. He checks everything, and he can’t figure it out, either.

This chat is getting larger and larger until the sysadmin (system administrator) joins in.

Sysadmin: “Well, you see guys, the reason you are unable to reset Ms. Park’s password to Parker4545% is that IT HAS HER LAST NAME IN IT!”

The chat is silent for roughly ten seconds and then is quickly filled with GIFs of people stating that they are dumb or GIFs of people smashing their heads into things.

Me: “Ms. Park?”

User: “Yes?”

Me: “We found the issue.”

User: “Oh, good. What was it?”

Me: “Your last name is Park. We were trying to set your password to ‘parker’, which has your name in it, and that is why it wasn’t working.”

She cackles with laughter.

User: “Oh, my God. That is hilarious.” *Jokingly* “How many people did it take to figure that out?”

Me: *Seriously* “Way too many.”

My company is creating a new sub-team to handle particularly urgent matters when they arise. All of middle manglement is in an all-day meeting — literally, it started at 8:00, they took an hour for lunch at 12:00, and it’s 4:33 when they make a decision, as indicated by the time stamp on the email announcing it — about what to name the new sub-team. Their choice: Fast Action Response Team.

My manager approaches me a few minutes later, having walked back over from the meeting. He looks completely drained.

Manager: “Wow, that was a lot of work. I didn’t realize how many managers it would take to come up with a good name.”

Me: “Three more than you had available.”

He started to glare at me, and then it was like a lightbulb went off over his head. After another all-day manager meeting three weeks later, the sub-team’s name became the Emergency Action Team.