It is a Sunday afternoon when a friend in my A-Level Politics class asks me how many pages long the essay due on Monday is supposed to be. I panic at this point, as I’ve completely forgotten that there even is an essay due.

I get the pertinent details from another classmate and start working on the essay. By late evening, I realise that I’m not going to get it finished in time. However, I will be able to write a little more than the first page. 

I write this, print it, and take the first page to school. In the class, I hand it in to the teacher in a plastic wallet. That evening, I finish up the essay, print the full document, and take that in on Tuesday. Before classes start, my politics teacher finds me and lets me know I only handed in the first page.

Feigning ignorance and concern, I apologise and say I can print it off again and give it to him at break. At break, I go to the Humanities office and hand over the completed document.

And that’s the story of how I managed to give myself a day’s extension on an essay. Thankfully, I had a reputation as a good and conscientious student, which probably gave me the benefit of the doubt in the teacher’s eyes, but I never risked that gambit again!

I am a trainee for a well-known book retailer. It is company policy not to change notes. Three women walk into the store.

Woman #1: “Hi. I like your hair! I work just down the street and was hoping you could change £200 into £10 notes.”

She gets out £200 in fake £20 notes.

Me: “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Besides, we don’t even have £200 in our tills.”

[Woman #1] thumbs through her “money.”

Woman #1: “Okay, what about £100?”

Me: “No.”

Coworker: “I’m afraid we can’t do that at all.”

Woman #1: “Okay.”

The next day, I was informed by my manager that after the women left our store, they drove up to one of our sister stores in the next town and pulled the same trick, but this time they got their money.

A while back, my office hired a new — somewhat senior — manager. He was a guy in his late forties — quite a nice guy, if I may add — with tons of experience in direct marketing, but quite bad with computers and anything IT. We noticed from day one that it took him an hour to type a few complete sentences, but emailing was mandatory, due to the size of the company. 

A few weeks into the job, he still wasn’t sending any relevant emails. Once in a while, he would send a blank email to the entire team, or a partial email, but that was it. My coworkers and I were getting a bit frustrated at this point; one of us had to go and ask him about his agenda personally, and then someone would put this in an email and send it to the entire team.

A couple of more weeks passed by. The new manager was getting a bit cranky. He was mumbling about people “always resending his words.” He then called us for a short meeting one day, saying how disappointed he was that nobody ever replied to his emails, and that people just ignored his replies.

We were all baffled, as none of us had ever received any sensible reply.

I thought there may be a problem with his email account; he seemed to receive everything, but apparently, whenever he tried to send something, it got “lost.”

I offered to look into his settings to see if I could help and I noticed over 200 items in the draft folder. Long story short, the guy thought that “Save” as in “Save draft” sent an email, and that “Send” meant “Send to trash.” Mystery solved.

Related:
Email Fail, Part 25
Email Fail, Part 24
Email Fail, Part 23
Email Fail, Part 22
Email Fail, Part 21

I work in tech support, fixing computers. We have a problem customer who regularly comes in with his virus-infected laptop for us to clean, not bothered about the reams of adult material that we can clearly see have caused the issue.

This guy is vulgar and rude and looks down on us, calling us “geeks” and “tech nerds,” not to mention regularly joking that we’re all virgins and live in our mothers’ basements — the usual stereotypes.

One day, he comes in with an older lady, who I learn is his mother. She needs her older laptop updated, and she is very pleasant to deal with. Her son, however, remains rude and awful.

Completing the paperwork, I note that they have the same address, so I surmise he lives at home with his mother, which is a delicious irony in and of itself. However, the next time he comes in with his infested laptop, I come up with an idea.

I ask him if he is okay with me adding some free software to his browser that will help with his… uh… recurring issues. He nonchalantly agrees, just browsing on his phone.

I install the software, which is designed for less-abled people, and set up the settings to speak aloud, in the loudest volume possible, the name of every site he visits on his browser. I also “accidentally” misplace the volume controls on his user interface and move around some hotkeys. When I am done, I smile as I hand it over.

Surprisingly, we haven’t seen him since. I can’t know for sure if living with his mother presented a problem when every barely-legal website he visited had its name announced at full volume, but I can certainly hope.

My husband and I are laying in bed, awake and on our phones, but too lazy to get up.

Husband: “Oh, I had a weird dream last night.”

Me: “Oh?”

Husband: “Yeah, we got visited by that scientist guy, the one who flies around on the giant aubergine.”

Aubergine is “eggplant,” for our American friends.

Me: “What on earth are you on about?”

Husband: “You know! The science guy! Lemongrass Tyson!”

It clicks.

Me: “You mean Neal DeGrasse-Tyson?!”

Husband: “Yeah!”