I frequent a cafe where the owner goes all in for decorating whenever he has an excuse. However, as a straight man in his seventies, he’s not up to speed on the details of LGBTQ culture.

Owner: “I’ve just learned something! Did you know there’s more than one pride flag? I thought it was just the rainbow, but no, there are so many.”

Me: “[Owner], you ordered one of each, didn’t you?”

Owner: “Of course I did! Just you wait. Come back here in a week, and there will be more flags than you know what to do with.”

The next week, I’m back. I’m an early riser and usually one of the first customers, and as I arrive, [Owner] and one of his employees are still actively hanging flags.

Owner: “[My Name], come in! Look, they’ve all arrived. There’re so many!”

Me: “Wow, I don’t know what half of these flags are.”

Owner: “Aha, look what [Employee] made me.”

He pulls out a printout that shows each flag, its name, and what that label means.

Owner: “This one’s asexual — not sure why they’re stuck with such gloomy colors — and that’s bisexual. That one’s pansexual, which seems like it’s the same thing as bisexual but with nice colors.”

He opens a box.

Owner: “Let’s see who’s next. Well… who is this one?”

It’s got red bars at the top and bottom and a tree in the middle on a white bar.

Owner: “Let me see, it must be here somewhere… I can’t find it, but it’s when two women… I think it’s women…”‘

Me: “[Owner], I think that’s the Lebanese flag.”

Owner: “Lebanese, yes, thank you! That’s women who marry women, right?”

Employee: “[Owner], that’s lesbian. We talked about this, remember? Lebanese is like [Other Customer]. From Lebanon.”

Owner: “But when she said she was Lebanese, I thought…”

Employee: “You met her husband!”

Owner: “Well… I didn’t want to assume. Now, let’s pack that away until we work out when the Lebanese national holiday is, and we’ll pretend that we’re just showing solidarity with [Other Customer], shall we?”

A friend calls me in a panic; the designer his boss, [Client], hired to do a presentation for a pitch isn’t giving the boss exactly what he wants. After a few vague instructions, I give [Client] different options. I realize that [Client] doesn’t understand that Photoshop can’t create photorealistic imagery with the exact composition and details he wants — well, at least, not within a few hours.

[Client] agrees to a collage of existing photos but then continues to ask why each photo doesn’t match his specific requests.

Me: “To achieve what you’re looking for, you need to stage the entire thing in real life and photograph it.”

Client: “Cool, so the machine can do that, yeah? Can you get this to me in an hour?”

I told my friend the bad news. [Client] refused to pay for the five hours of work I did giving him different options.

While I’m checking out at the bakery, a tired-looking man comes in.

Customer: “Can I get one of your vegetarian cakes with the cheese, and can you write on it?”

Employee #1: “Um, we can definitely do a custom message, yeah, but what was that cake?”

Customer: “Vegetarian?”

Employee #1: “All our cakes are vegetarian. Do you mean vegan? And what’s this cheese?”

Customer: “Oh, d***, I don’t know what it’s called… It’s a vegetarian cake and it has cheese frosting. My sister-in-law loves ’em.”

Employee #2: “Sir… do you mean carrot cake? With cream cheese frosting?”

Customer: “Yes! That. Thank you!”

Employee #1: “Okay, and what’s the message?”

Customer: “Can it say… ‘Thank you for looking after our dumb a**es while we work out how to be parents,’ but make it sound better?”

Employee #2: “Just a guess… How recently was your child born?”

Customer: “Is it still Wednesday?”

[Employee #2] hands the customer a muffin.

Employee #2: “Congratulations! It’s Friday. Why don’t you sit down and have a snack, and we’ll workshop that message?”

About ten seconds later, as I’m walking out…

Employee #1: “Do you think we should wake him up?”

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I work in a four-person team in my office. Our manager calls three of us for a meeting one day.

Manager: “Now, what I am about to say is really serious.”

We stiffen, wondering if he is about to say that the company is letting us go.

Coworker #1: “What’s going on?”

Manager: “I would like to draw your attention to the racist and offensive language you have used about [Coworker #3].”

[Coworker #3] is a second-generation immigrant from India. We are confused by the manager’s words as she has never said anything about workplace bullying, nor do we think we have said anything that could have potentially upset her.

Manager: “I overheard you calling her an Indian.”

Coworker #2: “She is an Indian.”

Manager: “That’s the offensive language I was talking about! The term is ‘Native American’.”

We realize what [Manager] means.

Me: “[Manager], her parents are from Pondicherry in India.”

Manager: *Puzzled* “But she doesn’t have an accent, and she has a Western name.”

We weren’t disciplined.

Two young students are walking through the hallway outside the labs. There’s a Hispanic man on all fours scrubbing up a spill with some paper towels. As they pass, I hear [Undergrad #1] say something that ends with, “…just a janitor.”

Undergrad #2: “Just a janitor? Do you know what they do in this lab? This is where they keep the disease! I bet he studied longer than us before they let him clean here!”

They turn the corner. The man stares after them and then finally turns to face me. I see he’s holding a crumpled coffee cup, which he presumably dropped.

Man: “I mean… I’m a PhD student, so I guess he wasn’t that wrong?”