I was born in Hungary in 1988. My birth certificate indicates the People’s Republic of Hungary.

In the mid-1990s, I needed to get a personal ID, a very important card. They misprinted the birth date as 1898. My mother told me that this was an issue and had to be fixed, so we went back to the office. I was about six or eight or something, so I cannot recall most of the events, but I was afraid I could be punished for this.

I remember vividly that an old lady looked at me as I handed the card over, scowled, and tossed the card back.

Employee #1: “The ministry does not make mistakes.”

My mother said something to the effect of, “This is obviously wrong,” but I cannot recall exactly what. I do know that for two weeks, we had to battle the bureaucracy. The two most frequent responses that came back:

Employees: “It is not my desk/job; please go to [insert position here].”

Employees: “The ministry does not make mistakes.”

I cannot even remember where we ended up — someplace with wooden paneling and high ceilings — and a woman said to us:

Employee #2: “This is obviously wrong, unless people can age backward. Let me fix this for you.”

I remember because she was struggling not to laugh, and she failed. She had a great laugh and then told us that my proper card would arrive in the mail.

My mother said that if it was messed up again, I should shrug it off because it meant free travel on the mass transit AND museum discounts!

They both laughed, and I was just sitting there, not understanding why it was funny.

I do now, and I hope you all found it funny, as well.

Many years ago, I am working in a gas provider company’s call center. One day, my coworker receives a strange complaint from an old woman. 

In Hungary, there are still some heating devices that look like radiators, but they actually run directly on gas, so there’s no water or whatever in the system. They are ugly-looking and box-shaped.

Coworker: “Hello, [Gas Provider], how can I help you?”

Old Lady: “Hi there. I have called because I suspect that the quality of the gas has declined. Am I correct?”

Coworker: “Unfortunately, yes. We’re getting lesser quality gas from abroad. It should get better within a week.”

Old Lady: “Oh. All right, then.”

Coworker: “May I ask how you realized this?”

Old Lady: “To save money, I usually cook on the ‘gas radiator’ instead of the stove. And [dish], which I can usually make in an hour or an hour and a half, took more than two hours.”

Coworker: “Well, okay. Thank you for your call.”

When we heard the story during our break, all of our hearts went out to the poor old lady using the heating for cooking, too, just to be able to save some money. The dish she was talking about is one you can make on a stove in twenty minutes.

CONTENT WARNING: War, Serious Injury (Limb Amputation)
 

My grandfather was conscripted into the Red Army. In 1944, he fought from Stalingrad to Budapest as a tank driver. In Budapest, his tank was blown up, and he managed to get out with only one leg to be amputated.

A few weeks later, in the hospital, he got a false leg and was told that he was not allowed to drive anymore.

As he got up, a nurse helped him out of the hospital. A commissar walked up to him.

Commissar: “Comrade, I see you are ready to fight for the people again.”

Nurse: “But he cannot walk, let alone fight!”

Commissar: “Nonsense! He’s got both legs, both arms, and a head. That’s enough!”

My grandfather realised that the commissar was trying to joke with this description. The nurse, however, did not. Instead, she grabbed his false leg and pulled it — pulled it straight out of his pants while my grandfather was leaning on her.

Nurse: “See? He can not run anymore; he even has to relearn how to walk.”

The commissar turned white, the nurse was all red, and my grandfather started laughing. The commissar told him to spend some time walking and getting used to the new leg and then just walked away.

The nurse became my grandmother, and they lived happily together.

I worked for a weekly newspaper, running a small design department of five people, and we had just lost an investor and canceled a major product, so layoffs were inevitable. The new boss called me into her office, holding a document that she tried to hide from me, but I could catch a glimpse and saw that the new suggested head count for my department was down to three.

Me: “No way we can do this job with three people, even with the reduced workload. We tried it in the past when we had the same mix of products that we have now, and three people just weren’t enough. If one person goes on vacation, it’s barely possible; if someone else gets sick, we’re dead. The bare minimum we must have for this department to run properly is four. I will not sign off on anything fewer than four people. You can try it with someone else running the department, but soon, you will be scrambling to hire a fourth person, someone who would need to be trained, and it would be a huge risk to day-to-day operations.”

Manager: “Okay… Four people it is. But you’ll still have to let one person go. Who will it be?”

Me: “It will be me. This is my one-month notice.”

She was quite shocked, but unbeknownst to her, I had just gotten the phone call two hours prior that I’d been waiting for for months: the job offer for literally three times what I was making, for an organization known to be an excellent employer, with great benefits, decent hours, and excellent job security. The timing couldn’t have been better, and I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d gotten that phone call a day later.

It all worked out fine in the end, one of my people was promoted to my post, and things have been running quite smoothly from what I gather. And my new job was truly life-changing in more ways than one; I’m still there.

In the mid-1970s, my father was touring with a hunter friend of his, both using old rifles and wearing older camouflaged clothing. In the area, there was a military practice going on between forest commandoes and regulars from various Soviet states.

As my father and his friend walked and chatted, a small group of regulars hopped in front of them and demanded that they drop the rifles.

My father almost did so, but his friend told him to instead very carefully unload and then put the guns down. The regulars were confused and radioed the headquarters that led the practice. Then, they decided to take my father and his friend to the “POW” area (the cantine), where the losers are kept and given a performance review.

The moment they arrived, an officer started shouting at my father and his friend for removing any insignia and such from their clothing. The officer shouted in a language neither of the two “captives” understood. After being scolded, they got an extra heaping in Hungarian about how they were completely unfit, too slow, etc. My father suddenly lost it.

Father: “Just look us up in your registers or what have you. I don’t care. We are not soldiers.”

Officer: “Stop kidding! Only soldiers can be in this area. We notified everyone in the area and put up markers within a five-kilometer radius.”

Father: “We came here for a hunting trip!”

The officer left to get the name list and then returned, even angrier, with a general in tow.

General: “So, you two are not soldiers, yet you ended up in the middle of a war game. Your clothing is camo, so you could be easily mistaken for one of the commandoes from a friendly country that is also attending. You know that you two could be imprisoned for trespassing and disrupting military practice?”

They did not know and explained that this must be a mistake. The general smiled.

General: “Were you soldiers before? No? Congratulations, and welcome to the Hungarian Home Guard. You lost the game. Just sit down until we finish.”

So, they sat down, chatted in their limited knowledge, and had some soft drinks. After a few hours, the soldiers came back, the generals had some talk, and a colonel walked over to my father and his friend.

Colonel: “We need to remove you from active duty for unprofessionalism and not meeting requirements. Please find out which bus goes to the settlement closest to your home, and we will notify you when you are drafted. Dismissed!”

To his credit, he only started laughing after the salute.