Once upon a time, I worked for a retail chain. As happens at the front of the store, we had lots of stuff to go back to the floor, but as it was Halloween time, we also had a cart full of costume parts that had become separated from their packaging and other pieces.

The shift manager for the front that night made some promise that for each store credit card application we ran, he would put on a piece from the costume cart. As the evening wore on, he looked sillier and sillier, adding multiple wigs, hats, an eye patch, etc. — I think he was close to a dozen pieces.

Obviously, his method as a manager was effective, and he was a great sport about the whole thing. He brought joy to an otherwise mundane night in the place that felt like it was slowly killing us all.

Neither of us works there anymore, but he still brings a lot of joy to my life; we’ve been married for twelve years.

When my office in the early 1990s first started using email, the process was a bit more involved. Instead of being connected constantly, we had to use a modem to call a server and exchange the new emails we’d authored with incoming emails from our customers. Since the program that did the connection and email interchange was DOS-based, it was the only program that could run at a time on a particular PC.

Our secretary who handled the email found that if she didn’t disconnect, she would get informed of any new emails in real-time. Unfortunately, she could only do this if she wasn’t planning on using her computer for anything else. (The office was still using typewriters, so she still could do work.)

One day, when she went to lunch, she kept the email program connected. An older engineer saw that her computer was still connected for email, so he decided to write a joke email chastising her for leaving her email program on. It was something along the lines of:

Email: “Oops! I goofed and left my email open so that anyone can write messages pretending to be me!”

When she got back from lunch, she was very upset about the intrusion and was worried about getting in trouble even though she’d done nothing wrong.

As the office “computer guy”, (no official IT team existed), I took it upon myself to address the issue. I wrote a reply to the message along the lines of:

Reply: “This is a professional office. If you see technology on that is not your responsibility, please leave it be. Do not pull juvenile pranks.”

Though the engineer didn’t get in any trouble, he later did with another incident. He was using email to write explicit love letters to a woman he was seeing at the US Navy office. He accidentally replied to one of her messages by clicking a checkbox that sent his reply to not only everyone in our office but to everyone in the US Navy office (several hundred people). Since our email access was through the Navy, he (and we) got into a bit of hot water because of his error.

The way my mum and dad got together was like something out of a cheesy romance movie. Mum was eighteen and Dad was nineteen when they met at a house for a party. At the time, my mum had a boyfriend, but after talking to her, my dad could not get her out of his head. He then spent a month searching for her, only knowing her first name. He found her boyfriend, who was now her ex, but he told my dad that he had no idea who he was talking about.

At the beginning of the next month, my dad was out on a date at a pizza parlor… where he saw my mum on a date, as well. They all decided to sit together. Halfway through, my mum’s date ditched her, so my dad decided to take both girls home. He dropped off his date first so he could talk to my mum for a little longer.

They came to a stoplight, and the radio was playing a song called “Little Arrows”, which is about Cupid shooting arrows at random people so they’ll fall in love. My dad leaned over the steering wheel and looked up at the sky.

Mum: “Um… what are you doing?”

Dad: “Lookin’ for arrows.”

Mum tells me that she knew right then that this was the man she would marry. Two weeks later, Dad proposed. They were together for almost thirty years before Dad passed away.

Two of my coworkers — [Woman] and [Man] — are dating each other. Everyone in our department agrees that they’re the cutest couple we can imagine, but they’re actually really good at not letting their relationship interfere with work in any way.

This story takes place shortly after we all start coming back into the office after a year and a half of working from home during the global health crisis. It’s a particularly cold winter day, and [Woman] decides to do something about it.

Woman: “That’s it! I’m turning the thermostat up! I’m freezing my butt off!”

Man: *In a stereotypical fake whining voice* “Oh, no, not your butt! That’s my favorite part.”

Everyone in the office freezes — pun not intended — and then bursts into raucous laughter when we realize what just happened. [Man] and [Woman] catch on and turn beet red from embarrassment.

Man: “Um… I forgot that we’re at the office and not at home, so… can we all just pretend that I didn’t say that?”

Coworker: “[Woman], now I understand why you were so careful to make sure you were on mute during all of our Zoom meetings!”

That set off another round of raucous laughter, with the couple joining in despite their obvious embarrassment. It really helped boost morale after so many months of chaos trying to coordinate everything while working from home.

The couple is now happily engaged, and they’re still good about keeping their relationship separate from work, even though we still make the occasional joke about this story at their expense.

I’m taking orders for the drive-thru, and this man makes an unusual request.

Customer: “Hey, if I order a [Chicken Sandwich], could you cut a hole in the middle for me? It’s for a joke.”

Me: “Let me go check with the kitchen staff.” *Does so* “All right, we can do that; I’ll just ring it up as a special request.”

The man gets his food, and I don’t think much of it. Later, however, the man comes through the drive-thru again and identifies himself as being the man from earlier.

Me: “Oh, I remember you. How did the joke go?”

Customer: “It went well. See, every year, I give my wife a flower for our anniversary, but this year she was insisting, ‘You don’t have to get me a flower. Just get me a [Chicken Sandwich] or something.’ So, I got her a [Chicken Sandwich] and stuck a flower through that hole you cut in it for me!”