My office-husband video-called this morning to share this embarrassing gem.

Him: “I love my staff. Thank God they have a sense of humor.”

Me: “What now?”

Him: “I just typoed something in chat. It was supposed to say, ‘Got it, should be fine.’ It came out, ‘Go tits, hould be fine.’ 

Me: *Laughs*

Him: “At least she just laughed.”

Six years ago, after my fiancé proposed, we decided to not waste time and get married at a courthouse. [Fiancé] was previously married and is from England, so he brought the original copy of his divorce papers that he’d had mailed to him. However, the papers weren’t very fancy-looking, so…

Clerk: “I can’t accept this. It looks like a Xerox copy.”

Fiancé: “No, it’s the original. I got it shipped from England.”

Clerk: “I’ll go ask one of the officials.”

She left and came back, shaking her head.

Clerk: “I’m sorry, but he says it just doesn’t look official enough.”

Fiancé: “Well, this is as official as it gets. I don’t understand.”

At that point, I was stressed out due to this and other unrelated reasons, and I excused myself to have a small meltdown. Oops.

The next part was related to me by my fiancé. The clerk looked sympathetic after I left crying.

Clerk: “Look, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have a raised seal or a wax stamp or anything…”

Fiancé: *Snaps* “Well, what am I going to do, FRAME IT?!”

The clerk went silent, and my fiancé left to join me, managing to get a laugh out of me with the story. The good news is that we managed to find a county clerk’s office forty-five minutes away that did accept his divorce papers, and later on, he got his friend who is a consulate to officially stamp it, so perhaps I’ll get him a frame as an anniversary gift!

My parents divorced when I was ten. For the rest of my childhood, I lived with my dad, but I moved in with my mom when I started attending college.

Not long after I started college, I turned eighteen and became eligible for jury duty. I got my first summons sent to my dad’s address. But there was a problem. My mom did not live in the same county, so I was not eligible to attend that jury duty as I no longer lived in the proper county.

Not long after, due to some issues with my mom, I had to move back in with my dad. Of course, that was when my mom’s county sent me a jury summons, which I was, of course, ineligible for.

Both counties gave up on me, believing I lived in the other county. It probably didn’t help that after I moved out on my own, I happened to bounce over the county line a couple more times, and at the moment, I live at a residence so close to the county line that the person at the DMV asked which county I lived in when I registered to vote.

A client for a municipal website asked me to clean up a photo of the city hall, and he sent me two photos. One of them was a blurry photo that looked like it was taken on a smartphone by a running drunk, and the other was the same city hall photo but in a full rainstorm.

Me: “I can’t use either of these photos.”

Client: “Why not? Didn’t you say you were good at Photoshop?”

Me: “I am, but I can’t fix a horribly blurred low-resolution photo or clean up heavy rain where you can barely even see the building behind it.”

Client: “That’s a shame. You came highly regarded to us, and I thought you were capable of more.”

Me: “Why don’t you just take another photo? Or, I can even do it myself since I don’t live far from the city hall.”

Client: “No, that’s okay. I no longer have any faith in your abilities.”

As someone who works for the government, I hate the kind of runaround a lot of places give to people. If I don’t know the answer, I at least try to find someone who will.

My partner moved to Switzerland. To get approved to live here for longer than three months, you need to find employment or prove you have income that allows you to finance your life, so you’re not a drain on public funds. The way the law is written simply states that you must have an indefinite employment contract. It doesn’t mandate a specific salary, minimum hours, or a percentage, which is calculated based on a work week; if your full work week is forty hours and your contract is for 50%, you work twenty hours per week.

My partner applied for a job on an hourly basis. After she signed the contract, she applied for her permit to live here. They denied it, citing that the permit required at least 80% employment. When I asked them why, I got the typical runaround from local, to state, to federal government; everybody said that there were rules from some other jurisdiction, though this is typically a state issue. But nobody could confirm to me this ominous rule of 80% employment, because no laws or regulatory statutes mentioned it anywhere.

Once I got angry enough with these guys, one of them finally relented and told me they have this internal guideline that states this 80% employment rule, which they never communicate publicly, for some reason. Once I knew that, I threatened to ask their department lead, which is always an elected politician — remember, government agency — if they wanted to get reelected again based on what arbitrary criteria their department tried to enforce here without any legal backing.

They finally relented and issued the permit, but by that time, my partner had already switched jobs and found one with 100% employment.

Sometimes I love and hate working for the government. I like the general work I do, but I also see a lot of redundancy and laziness here.