Our old house was ridiculously hard to find. The entrance was easy to drive past, it had a series of apartments next to it, and four houses all split off from the path that came to our house.

Whenever I ordered pizza, I checked how well the driver had been able to find the house, and I kept adding instructions until I had about three paragraphs accurately guiding people down the right paths, giving them a clear location to park, and listing three different ways to identify if you were going down the wrong stairs, including the fact that the closest stairs you could mistakenly go down were attached to a car-port.

Once I got it to this length, most drivers commented happily how useful it was since it saved them a lot of messing around, or they at least found us very rapidly without knocking on the other house we were attached to.

This only failed me twice. The first time, I was absolutely certain that the driver wasn’t quite at reading level in English, which was fair, and he was sweet and only a little lost. The second one, though…

He went down the wrong stairs, complained when I corrected him, basically had very little interest in coming down to the correct area, and made me come up to meet him. The kicker, though, was his parting line.

Delivery Driver: “Why do you have so many directions on your place? It’s so easy to find.”

I didn’t see that guy again. I didn’t make a complaint because he made it to me in the end. However, the next driver was once again grateful for the instructions. It’s only you, mystery driver.

Customer: “You have a beautiful accent! What country are you from?”

Me: “Oh, haha. Thanks, ma’am, but it’s the same country as you. I’m from New England.”

Customer: *Disappointed* “Oh… is anyone here from Old England?”

Me: “Uh…”

Customer: “I just love watching The Crown!”

Me: “Well, I—”

Customer: “Does New England have a Queen, too?”

Our call center allows us to work from home due to health reasons as long as we have a stable Internet connection, which, thankfully, I do.

Caller: “Where am I calling? This had better be an American!”

Me: “You’re calling Cebu in the Philippines, sir.”

Caller: “I want to speak to an American, d*** it!”

I try to explain more but this caller just isn’t having it. Thankfully, due to watching too many shows and YouTube, I can do a pretty good accent from someone in the US. I put them on hold, switch accents, and come back to them.

Me: “Hello, sir, you’re speaking to [My Nickname]. How can I help you?”

Caller: “Thank God, you’re an American. Where are you?”

Drawing a blank, I just think about a line from a “Star Trek” movie I have seen recently where Captain Kirk says, “I’m from Iowa; I only work in outer space.”

Me: “Iowa, sir.”

Just then, a rooster cries the typical “cock-a-doodle-do!” in the backyard of my very rural, very Filipino home that is certainly not in Iowa.

Caller: “Good! Sounds like Iowa, too! Now, my problem is—”

I work for a photography company that specializes in graduation photos, and it is graduation season in these parts, so I’m working hard. We deal with a lot of major universities with hundreds, sometimes thousands of graduates, and it’s up to my department to put the grads’ information into a computer and then send them order forms. The grads, however, can be incredibly stupid.

The university in question is very prestigious and known for its football team. It has a lot of international students, most of whom graduate with honors. Now, our grad cards are not that complex. They have spots for your name, permanent address, parents’ address if it differs, and a checklist describing hair color, ethnicity, etc.

Many people get confused by the address form for some unknown reason. I’ve come to the conclusion that either many graduates cannot see or understand the letter R, so their countries end up being various counties in Michigan, or said counties in Michigan have risen up in rebellion and established themselves as sovereign nations.

But the most hilarious thing came from one of the foreign students. There were three things on this card that didn’t quite add up:

1) Michigan has now been taken over by Jerusalem.

2) Jerusalem is now its own country, having completely separated from Israel.

3) “My parents live on the main street of Jerusalem” is now a valid address.

I would have chalked this up to the language barrier, but entering the rest of her data made me head-desk so hard that I almost knocked myself unconscious. This woman was a Ph.D. student and had lived in the United States for almost ten years. She had a degree in English, having graduated with a minor in ESL.

I have no idea how she messed up that badly.

One time, I was being interviewed by a young woman about a job.

Young Woman: “Where were you born?”

Me: “Tucumcari, New Mexico.”

Young Woman: “You’ll have to show your naturalization papers before you can apply for the job.”

Her supervisor and I had a good laugh after he made her look up New Mexico in the US atlas. I did not take the job because I had a very low tolerance for working with stupid people.

Another time, I had been working at a company for nine years. They had a policy of doing routine checkups of dependents to see if the lists needed to be changed. I submitted my list, which had not changed in five years. I got a call from the department saying that I had given the wrong first name for my wife.

Worker: “You gave the abbreviation of your first name, Charles, for your wife’s first name.”

Her name was translated from her native Korean to “Chae” in English. The name is listed that way on her citizenship papers. I finally had to talk to a supervisor to get her to accept my paperwork. By the way, Charles is abbreviated “Chas”.