(I am part of a club fencing team at my college, and we are usually very laid back about adult language and jokes, but we have gone to a practice that also includes kids as young as eight, so we are all trying to watch our mouths. We are running a drill in which we try to score points in specific places on the opponent’s body. I am fencing with the assistant coach.)

Coach: “Okay, I still need to get my arm shots and leg shot. Already got my body shots.”

(I smirk but manage not to make the obvious joke, mindful of the twelve-year-old three feet away. Later in the same fight, I push him to the end of the strip, but hesitate in going much further because of a wall right behind him, and he scores the touch on me.)

Me: “Yeah, I should have just kept going on that, but I didn’t want to knock you into the bookcase.”

Coach: “Wouldn’t have been the first time I got pushed into a wall.”

(Later, after a lot of the younger fencers have gone, the other college fencers join us in a corner to chat.)

Me: “Man, it is so weird not being able to swear after a point. And I am holding myself back from some of the jokes I want to make.”

Coach: *laughs* Yeah, I realized after I made the wall joke that it might have been a bit much.”

Me: “I think that one might have gone over their heads. But I was talking about the body shots. I had to bite my tongue on that one.”

(He laughs, but another fencer looks confused.)

Fencer #1: “Body shots? Yeah, he hit you in the chest; that was a body shot.”

Me: “No, but it sounded like he had body shots.”

Fencer #1: “What?”

Coach: *sighs a little and turns his back to the room of kids to face her* “Yes, but a body shot is also when someone pours a shot of alcohol down someone’s chest and then you lick it off them as it drips down.”

Fencer #1: *still very confused* “But… that’s not what we were doing.”

Coach: “Well, yes, but— Oh, never mind.”

(My coworker has just returned from a three-day first aid course, so he can be qualified as the first aide for our pool and gym. On his first day back, we are discussing how his course went.)

Coworker #1: “Oh, God, the course was so boring. I had to fight to stay awake the entire time.”

Me: “Was there nothing that interested you?”

Coworker #1: “Well, the guy who took the course did say he had done something from the course a lot of times.”

Coworker #2: “Resuscitate someone?”

Coworker #1: “No something else, to help keep them alive.”

Coworker #2: “Resuscitation?”

Coworker #1: “No, it was something else! The main thing we learned.”

Coworker #2: “That’s resuscitation!”

Coworker #1: “CPR! He had done CPR to save people!”

Coworker #2 & Me: “What do you think the ‘R’ stands for?”

Coworker #1: “…”

Me: “Please tell me you didn’t sleep through the course.”

(We don’t plan to leave him as the sole first aide of the gym any time soon.)

(I work as a cleaner for a gym. I also have a bladder problem that makes me go to the bathroom a lot. Plus, this day I’m on my period, so I go.)

Boss: “Why were you in the bathroom for so long? I don’t pay you to go!”

Me: *embarrassed* “I have a bladder issue.”

Boss: “Whatever! Clean those mirrors!”

(I go, but the feeling comes back so I run back in the bathroom. I’m finishing up when I see two eyes peeping at me! They’re not [Boss], so I go to him.)

Me: “Did you send someone to peep at me?!”

Boss: “I had no choice! You were in there slacking off! My other employee saw you!”

Me: “I’m on my period! And it’s illegal to peep on someone while they’re on the toilet; it’s called voyeurism!”

Boss: “I didn’t do it! It was my employee!”

(I quit that day. Really, who sends someone to peep at others?)

(Our gym is right next to an adult store that has several mannequins in lingerie.)

Customer: *in a fury* “How can you be right next to that disgusting store?! My kids will be traumatized!”

Me: “Sorry, but we have no control over that.”

Customer: “Hmph!”

(She pushes her kids, who look like teenagers, out the door. I can see her yelling and banging on the adult store’s door until an employee comes out. The employee speaks to her, and the crazy customer swings at her, misses, and stomps off. Then the employee comes into my gym.)

Me: “You okay? She’s crazy.”

Employee: “I guess I shouldn’t have told her that I’ve seen her kids try to sneak in there!”

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(I work at the front desk of a recreation center that has a pool in it. The pool is scheduled to shut down for annual maintenance, as it does every year. An elderly man comes in and walks up to me in a huff.)

Old Man: “Why are you closing the pool for a week this year?”

Me: “Sir, we always have. It’s an annual—”

Old Man: “Why? What’s wrong with the pool?!”

Me: “Sir, were resurfacing the bottom of the pool.”

Old Man: “Why can’t you just take the water off the bottom, and just leave the rest of the pool open?”

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