I was only around for about half of this occurrence, but I later learned the full story from my manager. My manager received a call from a customer asking if we had a certain item. We did, so the customer requested that the manager ship it to her, which is a service we offer. Now here’s where things get tricky: the customer had a loyalty account with us, so we had her address in our system, but she wanted this item sent to a different address. We are located in Washington state; the address she wanted it shipped to was in California.

Normally, this would be no problem, but when the manager tried to enter the California address, she got an error message saying the address was wrong. She double- and triple-checked her spelling against the note she took when she was on the phone with the customer, but she was still not able to put the address through.

She switched registers, as we’d been having trouble with them on and off for the past week or so and usually any problems could be solved by starting over at a different register. No such luck this time.

She called the customer back, confirmed the address, and tried again. Three times. She spelled out every word in the address, enunciating as clearly as she possibly could, to make sure she’d written it all down correctly. The customer confirmed that it was correct. The register still didn’t take it, saying that it was incorrect. It had now been a good half-hour since my manager had taken the first call.

This is about where I come in, because she asks me for help. She has me watch her while she tries, yet again, to order the item and ship it to this person. She does everything exactly correctly; I have no idea what’s wrong. We try spelling out, “North,” instead of just typing, “N,” and we try spelling out, “Drive,” instead of abbreviating it. Nothing works.

I have to step away for a minute to help another customer, and by the time I’m done, my manager has just gotten off the phone with the customer yet again. In desperation, the customer has given my manager her daughter’s address and asked us to ship it there, instead. It still doesn’t work.

Finally, even though technically we’re not allowed to have our phones out on the sales floor with us, my manager goes and gets her phone and types the address into Google Maps, just to see what happens. That’s when we find the problem. She had written the city down as “Los Alpos,” when it is, in fact, “Los Altos.”

At this point, it has been at least 45 minutes of repeatedly calling the customer back, trying to figure out what was wrong with the address. Not once has the customer corrected the spelling of the city name.

When she finally finishes the transaction, my manager jokes, “That was my last transaction of the day. I’m not doing any more. I refuse.”

This story is from the 1990s, back when I was at university. Certain exams went like this: there would be a few people at a time in a professor’s study, each would draw a ticket from a tray and had to speak about whatever was on the ticket. One person would be speaking, while the others jotted down notes on their own topics, organized their thoughts, or otherwise prepared for their turn.

This particular exam was in general linguistics and was taught by a guy everyone feared, because it was common knowledge he failed people for the tiniest mistakes, took his subject extremely seriously, and expected the same from everyone else. He was also a bit of a giant, physically; he was very tall and bulky, had a permanent stony expression, and spoke with the coldest voice all the time, and was generally quite intimidating.

In his exam, each ticket also contained a couple of languages we were supposed to say a few words about. I was in the study, busy writing down notes on whatever I drew from the tray and waiting my turn, while a girl started speaking about the first language in her ticket, which happened to be Latin.

“So, Latin… Well, obviously it is spoken in Latin America…”

The professor went bright red, leaned over the desk, and basically — the huge mountain of a man that he is — loomed over her like he was going to drop on her and squash her at any moment. Or explode. I mean, I could see him literally shaking as he yelled, “What?!”

She wasn’t even allowed to start on her topics; he ordered her to leave immediately and wouldn’t hear another word from her. He calmed down a bit after she left, and to be honest, he was completely fair with the rest of us that day, and I passed with top marks. The story about the girl with “Latin in Latin America” is now told as part of the local academic “dumbest things students have said” folklore, and some people think it’s made up until I mention that I actually witnessed it.

(I work for a large hotel company that has many locations. The hotel where I work is in downtown Washington, DC. The phone rings.)

Me: “Hello! My name is [My Name]. How may I help you today?”

Caller: “Hello. I’d like to make a booking for a room with an ocean and beach view.”

Me: “Oh, this is actually [Hotel] in Washington, DC. Did you mean to call a different location?”

Caller: “No, I’m calling [Hotel] in Washington, DC.”

Me: “Um, I’m sorry, but there’s no ocean in Washington, DC.”

(A couple of my coworkers turn around to look at me with raised eyebrows when I say this.)

Caller: “Oh, well just any view, then, I guess.”

I was enjoying a beer with my husband at a local pub near a well-respected university when we overheard two local, college-age girls discussing languages. One girl was from Israel and her American friend was asking which dialect of Hebrew she spoke. The Israeli said, “Just Hebrew.” Her friend kept repeating her question and went on to explain how folks in different countries, like Mexico, have different dialects. My favorite example she gave was the “Guacamolans” and how they speak differently from other Mexicans. It took everything we had not to laugh out loud.

(I live and work in Iceland.)

Customer: “Do you have international busses?”

Me: *thinking I misheard* “Sorry, a bus for where?”

Customer: “You know, for Scotland or somewhere outside of Iceland.”

Me: “You realize this is an island? You can’t drive to another country from here.”

Customer: “Not at all? What about busses that drive onto ferries that take you somewhere?”

Me: “It takes a few days to sail to the next country.”

Customer: “…”

Me: “So, no. No, we don’t have those.”

Customer: “Not in the whole country?”

Me: “I mean, we’re just one company. You can try asking at the tourist information, but…” *the customer walks off* “…I highly doubt it.”