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Here’s Hoping Y’all Have Different Doctor’s Offices

, , , , , , , | Working | April 18, 2023

One day, I get the following email from a local government agency that helps people back to work.

Agency: “Hi, [My Name]. Could you give me the contact name you have for [Employment Skills Training Organisation], please? I just want to ensure they get you to us. Thanks, [Official].”

I have never contacted them, but they sound like they already know me. As it happens, I am actually job hunting now, but I’m an engineer looking for a senior technical or management position — not something I would contact either this agency or the training organisation about.

They have the right email address, which is “[My First Name] dot [My Last Name] at [email company] dot com”. I don’t have a particularly common name, there are a couple of ways of spelling my first name, and people routinely spell my last name wrong with extra Ls, an N instead of an M, etc., but this one is completely correct.

I look them up, and their office is only about a mile down the road from where I live, so I ring the sender to see how they got my email address. Maybe someone forwarded my details to them by accident?

Me: “Hello, I’ve just had an email from you about an appointment. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall contacting you before today. How did you get my email address?”

Official: “That’s strange. Are you [My Name]? Do you live in [Local Area]?”

Me: “That is my name, but I actually live just down the road in [Adjacent Area]. Funnily enough, I am looking for a new job, but I’m actually a senior engineer at [Famous Technical Company], so don’t know why you would have my details.”

Official: “Is your email ‘[My First Name] dot [My Last Name] at [email company] dot co dot uk’?”

Me: “No, it’s ‘[My First Name] dot [My Last Name] at [email company] dot com’.”

Official: “Oh, I see! Sorry, I must have mistyped the email address.”

Me: “Hang on! Are you telling me there is another [My First And Last Name] just a mile down the road from me? He’s got almost the same email address? And he’s also job-hunting?”

Official: “It certainly looks like it.”

Me: “Wow! Well, please let him know that his namesake wishes him all the best of luck!”

I used to shop in the area where this office was located all the time, so I could have passed by my younger “self” at any time and never known it!

Oh, You Must Be The Steelers Fan

, , , , , , | Learning | March 28, 2023

The year is 2004, and I am a Resident Assistant in a residence hall. I have been informed that our hall has a new arrival, from New England or thereabouts. I go to introduce myself.

Me: *With exaggerated Britishness* “Ah, you must be the American chap.”

New Student: *Amused* “Yes, I’m the ‘American chap’.”

We exchange actual introductions.

Me: “How are you settling in? Is everything going all right?”

New Student: “Yes, everything’s fine. Actually, the only thing I’m finding strange here is all the different accents and the rivalries. In the US, we don’t have your thing of insulting people from different cities all the time.”

Me: “What about Pittsburgh?”

New Student: “Oh… yes. I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well, Ya Got Me. By All Accounts, It Doesn’t Make Sense.”

, , , , , , | Working | November 22, 2022

Years ago, I had a coworker in my office who always seemed to have some kind of drama going on. Frequently, she was absent from work or would be in the manager’s office for hours each day sobbing about what was going on.

Here’s a list of different things she was apparently experiencing:

  1. One week, she claimed her brother had gone missing and that her family was “beside themselves with worry”.
  2. A week later, she claimed her mother had been rushed to the hospital and needed major heart surgery.
  3. She claimed her husband was being abusive to her, but she couldn’t tell anyone in her family because, apparently, it was a secret marriage that her family could never know about.

Oddly, whenever she would mention these apparently distressing events, she would stop talking about them shortly after and never bring them up again. Whenever we would ask her how she was doing or about any of the situations, she would be very evasive or just change the subject.

One week, our manager informed us that this person would be off work sick for an undetermined length of time for “personal reasons”. We later found that she had called up and told our manager that she had just voluntarily committed herself to a mental health facility; otherwise, she would have been sectioned under the mental health act. We felt bad for this girl because, clearly, she was having a hard time, and we never want to see anyone struggle that badly. For months, we picked up the slack and got her work done. People from the office were checking in with her and hoped she would recover soon. Then, this bombshell happened…

I came to work one day after being off the previous day. One of my coworkers came up to me and told me the following in total disbelief.

Coworker: “Hey, [My Name], you won’t believe who I found working at the checkout at [Supermarket]! Well, it was [Sick Coworker]!”

Me: “Sorry… what?”

Coworker: “Yeah, it appears that all this time, she’s been working while was off sick from this place!”

Me: “You’re kidding me! Wait a second… Don’t we have a [Supermarket] right around the corner from here?”

Coworker: “Yup! That’s where I found her! You should’ve seen the look on her face. She saw me, got that deer-in-the-headlights look, and then ran off to the back! She apparently thought it was a smart idea to work right opposite the place she was scamming!”

Everyone in the office was a mixture of extremely upset and baffled. Apparently, one of the senior managers went down there and confronted her and told her under no certain terms that she was sacked immediately. We later found out that the company had reported her for benefit fraud.

The funniest part is that she apparently demanded that we give her a good reference when she was applying for new jobs. From what I heard, our manager gave her a reference, but it wasn’t a glowing one. 

Many of our coworkers have since said that, looking back, a lot of things about her stories just didn’t add up or that more questions should have been asked by management. I still don’t understand what was going through her head the entire time.

Anime Can Make Anything Weird

, , , , , , , | Learning | September 14, 2022

I’m taking a Media Studies class in college, and for one project, I’m showing my classmates a set of clips from various anime films.

One of the clips gives us a brief suggestion of lesbianism between two characters.

Classmate: “Hey, I wanna see this movie!”

The characters then melt into orange goo.

Classmate: “…no, I don’t.”

When You Don’t Even Know What You Don’t Know

, , , , , | Friendly | June 1, 2022

We are at university. My friend is hoping to arrange an industrial placement, but the start of the academic year is looming.

Me: “Have you arranged where you’ll be staying next year?”

Friend: “No, not yet.”

Me: “What about [Landlord]?”

Friend: “No, I can’t speak to them yet as I don’t know yet.”

Me: “What about when you do know?”

Friend: “Well, I don’t know when I’ll know, so I can’t say whether or not I’ll know.”

Me: “That’s a lot of ignorance.”

Friend: “There’s not a lot I can do about that.”

Me: “I know.”

Friend: “I don’t.”

Me: “I know.”

Friend: “Wah!”

A few months later

Me: “I mentioned that conversation about ‘That’s a lot of ignorance’ to [His Housemate]. He said it was very like you.”

Friend: “Well, yes, that’s because it was me.”