(I have just been hired as a computers/technology teacher. I’ve decided to make my grade five and six classes learn touch typing, as it’s a valuable skill. I’m a bit worried they’re going to put up a fight and groan about it, as most of them just want to play computer games in class, so I have a trick up my sleeve that I hope will convince them to get on board. I have just made them all take a typing test. Most of them averaged 10-20 words per minute.)

Me: “Okay, guys, everyone come back and sit on the carpet. I want to show you something.” *I pull up the same typing test onto my computer which projects onto a board, so they can see my screen.* “I’m going to show you why we’re learning this.”

(I take the same typing test that they’ve just done. However I am a very fast typist and break 100 words per minute with zero errors. My students watch, first in silence, but as time ticks down they start to shout and chant. By the end of the test half of them are on their feet cheering me on. Not gonna lie; I feel like a superstar.)

Student: “Daaaaaang, she types faster than Usain Bolt runs!”

(I have them start the typing program and they literally run to their computers. After class ends I hear many of them talk about my typing skills as they file out of the room. The next day several students tell me they logged onto the program at home to practice more. They’re now so excited to learn, and would rather practice typing than play computer games in class. I love my job!)

(The ballet teacher is rather strict about not joking around in class even though we’re all adults. “Echappé” is where you jump from feet together to land with feet apart.)

Teacher: “And what does echappé mean?”

Me: “To escape.”

Teacher: “And what are we escaping from?”

Me: “You.”

(I am at work at a boat dealership, when a man with matted grey hair and a biker jacket walks in. I am upstairs working so my coworker approaches the man. I can hear their conversation from my office.)

Coworker: “Hello, sir. How can I help you today?”

Customer: “I wanna talk to [Coworker who isn’t working that day].”

Coworker: “I’m sorry, sir, but he isn’t in today. What were you chasing?”

Customer: “Chasing? I wasn’t chasing anything!”

Coworker: “What were you after, sir?”

Customer: “I’m not chasing anyone!”

(This continued for a while until the man eventually leaves, but not before saying “How rude” to my coworker. I walk downstairs and approach my coworker.)

Coworker: “Wonder what he wanted from [Coworker who isn’t working that day].”

Me: *jokingly* “Maybe he’s a convicted stalker and got scared when you said chasing.”

(I looked out the window to watch the man leave, expecting him to hop onto a Harley or something similar, but to my surprise the man got on to a push bike and rode it down the footpath. I swear, we get all the crazy ones.)

(I run a small business catching and relocating venomous snakes from people’s yards and public areas. Australia is up top of the list for deadliest snakes in the world. I get a phone call one morning from a very anxious person saying they have a black snake in their yard. From the accent, it sounds like they are not local to Australia.)

Me: “Can you see the snake right now?”

Customer: “YES! YES! YES! It’s right beside the kid’s pool. Come get it! Get it now!”

Me: “Okay, sir, slow down a moment and give me your address, and just to advise, it’s a $[total] call-out fee, even if the snake moves away.”

Customer: “That’s fine! Come get it!”

(I quickly drove to the address, armed with my usual equipment, to meet the petrified client, who rushed me into the backyard and pointed toward a little wading pool for the kids. I moved toward it carefully and to my shock… it was the customer’s garden hose. He didn’t want to pay but he also didn’t like it when I pulled one of the boxes out of my car with a six-foot Eastern Brown Snake in it and told him I needed a place to relocate this snake to. The cash appeared quickly after that.)

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(It’s the first class of the year. We’ve got a drama teacher who’s completely new to the school and makes a big deal of having studied drama at a prestigious performing arts school in Perth, a city in the country’s west with a significant South African population. My girlfriend, who moved to Melbourne from Johannesburg two years ago and still talks with a noticeable Afrikaner accent to this day, is reading out some lines from a short acting scene the teacher brought in with him.)

Classmate: “But now, my dear, I must go.”

Girlfriend: “You can’t!”

(With her accent, it sounds like something completely different. Quite a few of us, me included, have a bit of a laugh at this. The teacher puts a halt to the acting and walks up to her on the stage.)

Teacher: “[Girlfriend], what did you just call him? That word isn’t appropriate for people your age to say.”

Girlfriend: “Um, I was just reading off the script. See here? It says, ‘You can’t!'”

(She points it out to the teacher, but her repeating of those words triggers another burst of laughter from the class.)

Teacher: “But that word isn’t pronounced like that. You’re getting the vowel sound all wrong.”

(At this point, my girlfriend starts looking like some bizarre combination of embarrassed and offended. The laughter stops. One of our friends, who’s just been laughing along with the rest of the class thus far, interrupts the teacher.)

Friend: “You do realise she’s not swearing at [Classmate], right? It’s just her accent. She’s from South Africa.”

Teacher: “Really? It doesn’t sound like any accent I’ve heard.”

(By this point, the classmate with whom she was acting at the start of the class has had enough, and he goes off at the teacher.)

Classmate: “Hey, [Teacher], you said you studied at [Arts School], right? If I’m correct, that’s in Perth. How the h*** can you spend that long living in Perth and not be able to recognise or understand a South African accent?”

(The teacher just dodged the question and ordered us back to our work. He was easily the worst drama teacher at the school, and I don’t think anyone was sad to see him go when he left the school at the end of the year.)

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