One of the new tech guys comes into the office. He looks twenty at most.

Tech Guy: “Hi, I’m here to see [Coworker].”

Coworker: “That’s me. Why?”

Tech Guy: “You put in a ticket about your work phone autocorrecting words it shouldn’t be?”

Coworker: “I did?”

Tech Guy: “Uh, yeah. I got the ticket right here.”

[Tech Guy] shows the ticket, and [Coworker] laughs.

Coworker: “I forgot about that! I sent that for your boss as a joke last week. How long have you been in the tech department?”

Tech Guy: “This is my first week.”

Coworker: “Sorry, dude, he’s hazing you. He’s my friend, and this is what he does. I’m sorry.”

The poor tech guy leaves the office, looking confused.

Me: “Hey, [Coworker], what was the ticket?”

He shows me:

Ticket: “Work phone keeps autocorrecting “surely” to “Shirley” when left in Airplane mode.”

Me: “Yeah, that kid was waaaaay too young to ever get that reference.”

My wife is from another country, and English is her second language; she doesn’t know American idioms very well, but along with our toddler, she is learning.

[Toddler] is on the couch in her diaper, eating snacks, and watching TV instead of getting ready.

Me: “Hey baby, I got to go to work, will you miss me?”

Toddler: “No, you don’t like TV, go to work.”

Wife: “Don’t cry, she just wants to be a, hmm, potato chair?”

Me: “Couch potato.”

Wife: “Is that because she looks like a potato with no shirt on?”

Toddler: “Pooo-taaaa-tooo, boil’m, mash’em put them in a stew.”

My wife looks at me, confused. I taught my daughter well.

I worked at an aquarium in Maui, Hawaii, during the years when the TV show ‘Lost’ was a very big hit.

Guest: “Where’s the polar bear kept?”

Me: “Ma’am, this is an aquarium.”

Guest: “And Polar bears swim, don’t they? I just want to see the one that they use in the show. I know they film it here.

Me: “Ma’am, you have been watching too much TV.”

Working at the bookstore, I overhear a teenage girl say to her friend:

Customer #1: “That must be based on the movie. I wonder if it’s as good?”

Customer #2: “Pride and Prejudice? I heard it was kinda old. Like the movie is like, twenty years ago.”

Customer #1: “Eww.”

The batch of old-school Blockbuster Video stories on here reminded me of when I was working there in the 1990s. A customer was trying to recall the name of the movie she wanted.

Customer: “There is a guy and a girl, and they meet up and fall in love.”

Me: “Well, so far that’s the ENTIRE romance section.”

Customer: “I think they met in a park.”

Me: “Well, it could—”

Customer: “—or a restaurant.”

Me: “Is it a new release?”

Customer: “Yeah.”

Me: “Let’s look at the new releases wall and—”

Customer: “—wait, is that it?”

She picks up a VHS of ‘While You Were Sleeping’.

Me: “That’s about a woman who rescues a man who fell onto the tracks at a train station and gets mistaken for his fiancée.”

Customer: “Yeah, this is it!”

Me: “You said the movie you wanted was about a guy and a girl who meet up and fall in love, and… what am I saying, all these movies end like that. Never mind, I’m glad you found your movie!”

She rents it happily.

Two years later, she’s looking for “that movie about a guy and a girl who meet and fall in love… there might have been a boat?” and it turns out she was looking for ‘Titanic.’