I am standing in line at the gas station, and I overhear a woman yelling at the guy ringing her up.

Customer: “I’m an American, and I demand to be rung up by a non-Muslim!”

The guy took off his Kufi and tried his best to sound like an old-fashioned cowboy. The customer threw her things down and stormed off.

I have made it a point to give that gas station repeat business because that was one of the funniest things I’ve seen go down in a while.

A lady returns her Wi-Fi printer while demanding to see a manager.

Customer: “My printer is telling me to f*** off and die!”

Manager: “There’s no way the printer has been programmed to say that.”

The customer kicks up such a fuss that we send a technician to her home to do the setup for her. He comes back very soon, laughing.

Technician: “Her neighbor’s Wi-Fi network is called ‘f***_off_and_die’.“

I recently joined a new company as a software engineer. Following an upgrade to the version of the framework we use, we have had to update things we were working on to match the requirements of the new version. It’s trivial enough to do, so long as we catch all the instances where this is needed.

As it happens, I manage to miss one, as do the two colleagues who review and approve the code changes, which are then merged into the main branch. Happily, we are immediately alerted to the issue by the automated tests that run every time the main branch is updated, so the code doesn’t get released to the live product.

Since it’s such a small fix to implement, I work with a member of the IT infrastructure team to make the change directly to the main branch. He has the access; I know what changes need to be made.

We’re communicating via an Instant Messenger app.

Me: “You need to go into this file, to line [number].”

IT Guy: “Okay, found it.”

Me: “And now you need to change [text #1] to [text #2].”

IT Guy: “Yup, done.”

Me: “And that’s it — save the file and that’ll fix it.”

IT Guy: “Cool. It’ll take a while for the tests to run again. I’ll let you know if there are any issues.”

About ten minutes pass, and he messages again.

IT Guy: “Okay, all looks good!”

Me: “Great, thanks for your help. I’ll let the rest of the engineers know.”

A few minutes pass, and I’ve switched windows to work in a different program. Then, I get an IM notification.

IT Guy: “D**k!”

I’m pretty stunned. Sure, I made a mistake, but nothing came of it and it was a minor fix, resolved in less than thirty minutes. I tab back into the IM, perhaps wondering if the message was meant for someone else.

I then see that the message has been edited, with a follow-up.

IT Guy: “Sick!*”

IT Guy: “Whew, that was NOT a good typo to make!”

We have a new manager who is trying to make their mark on the office by putting up a whole bunch of useless and “corporate-y” inspirational posters. Most are generally easy to ignore, except one that my coworker spots.

Coworker: *Pointing* “You might want to take this one down.”

Manager: “Why?”

The poster is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not follow where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and make a trail.”

Coworker: “Because we’re a railway company.”

A customer comes up and places a case of beer on the counter.

Customer: “I need to return these.”

Me: “What is the reason for the return?”

Customer: “I thought that when you open the cans they’re supposed to go cold like in the commercials.”

He thought the cans would become instantly cold from room temperature when opened. The box did say “cold activated” — which is basically when the packaging turns from white to blue when cooled to the best drinking temperature.

He was a nice guy and was quite embarrassed. I gave him a free bag of ice so the mountains on his beer would turn blue.