My wife’s stepfather used to work at a canning factory. This is probably one of the most bizarre experiences that I can imagine.

One night, my wife’s stepfather was working the evening shift at this canning factory. He and the security guard at the guard shack for the parking lot don’t see eye to eye, and they were arguing. It was a little heated, and my wife’s stepfather suddenly grabbed the guard by the front of his uniform and yanked him out of the booth. Understandably, the guard got up with his fists raised, ready for a fight.

Suddenly, a train went rolling right past the guard shack. This in and of itself is not extraordinary as the factory is actually near train tracks. However, the guard shack is a good 500 feet away from these tracks, and my wife’s stepfather thought it was going to crash straight through the guard shack and kill the guard.

The guard looked at the train going past, rolling into the factory, and turned white as a ghost. This factory did not have tracks going through the factory but rather beside the factory.

Apparently, the city had the street nearby repaved, including the train crossing. The crew, however, did not bother to account for the tracks and simply paved right over them. When the next train came down that line, the train was lifted off the tracks by the pavement and redirected — straight into the canning factory and within a few feet of the guard shack.

My wife’s stepfather and the guard became drinking buddies.

Years ago, I worked at a small consulting firm/software developer that worked primarily with local government offices. Working with local government is… interesting. Let’s just say that they have more than the normal share of people who wind up in positions they aren’t fully qualified for.

One such individual was the head of IT support for one of our customers’ offices. This gentleman was very sure of his expertise in all things computer. Those of us who had to deal with him, however, were skeptical.

We met with [IT Support] and other members of this particular customer administration once a month to discuss our software implementation. It wasn’t what I’d call a flawless rollout, but despite a rocky start, things had started to smooth out, most staff at that government office had transitioned to the new app, and we had worked out the kinks of most of the workflows.

Or so we thought…

[IT Support] was apparently not happy with our software. Rather than submit his concerns as tickets to our helpdesk — which I ran — he decided the appropriate way to handle this was to ambush me with a laundry list of complaints at our monthly meeting, in front of my boss, and in front of his boss.

In the middle of the meeting, he stood up, pulled out a stack of papers, and read complaint after complaint to the room. All complaints were from him, rather than actual end-users, many of which had already been addressed, but he saved the best for last. His final complaint was that he was looking at the data extract our software generated to comply with a state reporting requirement and that the “font the application uses looks extremely unprofessional!”

After pointing out that this was literally the first time we were hearing all of the unaddressed issues, since he had never reported them to our help desk per the established policy, I expressed confusion over the last complaint, since the data extract just generates a .csv file. We don’t have a specific viewer bundled with our app, so… that particular report doesn’t get any fonts from us. I asked for a screenshot, and [IT Support] agreed to send it once he got back to his office.

Sure enough, he sent a screenshot showing the contents of the report displayed in good old Comic Sans font… opened in Notepad… in a screenshot that included his Windows desktop, where all the icons also had their names in Comic Sans font.

Turns out [IT Support] had taken advantage of the Windows theme feature, selected a theme that used Comic Sans as the default font for all Windows applications, and then… accused us of using an unprofessional font.

I have a coworker who has zero boundaries and is pretty much disliked by everyone. I have caught her several times going into my desk to take personal items or steal food. Unfortunately, we do not have locks on our desks or doors, and she is in human resources, so there isn’t much I can do in the way of complaining.

We have a coworker leaving and I come to find the “Goodbye” card I got for him missing. I know instantly who took it, as she mentioned coming into my office the night before. But I have a spare and decide to just call her out to her boss when she hands over the card to him, gently reminding her that I told her last week that she shouldn’t be removing items from people’s offices.

Our departing coworker’s last day is Monday, so I have everyone — except Ms. HR, as she has her own card — sign the card Friday afternoon and put it on his desk. I seal it up.

Monday morning, I come in to find the card unsealed. Ms. HR has written a note on it for him. And, of course, she still decides to hand in the stolen card with a more “personal” message to make herself look good. Ugh.

This happened back in the 1990s. For a couple of years, during the summer, I did residential voluntary work at a charity holiday home for the elderly and disabled, until the charity sadly had to sell the property. It was the opportunity for couples and individuals to go away for two weeks and have other people help look after them.

There were a lot of volunteers, and we were each assigned to one or two guests to provide as much help as they needed throughout the day and night. We were also expected to help other guests if their volunteers were not available. There was always at least one fully trained nurse or doctor on the premises at all times.

It was hard work, but I loved every minute of it… except possibly that time I was woken up at 2:00 am by the nurse to help change my guest’s sheets, as they were urine-soaked. He’d not wet the bed, but the idiot who emptied his catheter the evening before had forgotten to close the tap. But before anyone says the nurse should have woken up the idiot and gotten him to clear up the mess, I can assure you she did. Let’s just say that half-asleep me soon woke up and was very apologetic. Both the guest and his wife were all right about it; it wasn’t the first time that had happened to them, and I made certain I didn’t do that again!

To say this next thing was an annoyance would be a massive overstatement. It was more a mild frustration that quickly become a bit of a running joke: no one could remember my name. We all had name badges — those plastic types with a removable card. Mine clearly said, “Stephen”, but I was always called “Simon”. Everyone else was called by the right name, but for some reason, no one could remember mine.

I didn’t get cross, nor did I blame anyone. It could be because of their eyesight or memory; that’s hardly their fault. I did always politely correct them, which worked briefly, but by the next time they saw me, I had reverted back to being Simon. One of the biggest “offenders” was a lovely gentleman who was recovering from a stroke. It was all taken in good humour, but I really did want people to stop calling me Simon.

So, after a day or two of this, I removed the card, turned it over, and wrote, “NOT SIMON”. And it worked! They stopped calling me Simon!

Everyone — the staff, the volunteers, and the guests (especially Lovely Recovering Stroke Chap) — happily called me “Not Simon” instead. Ah, well.

And as an epilogue, LRS Chap improved incredibly well over the course of his holiday. He was wheelchair-bound at the start, but after every meal, he would try walking a few steps. He went from only managing three or four steps at the start of the holiday to managing over one hundred unassisted steps by the end!

I had a client, retirement age, who was looking for a website for his new business. It was a pretty simple website since he was just starting so I quoted him a basic package of up to five pages. He sent over content for us to get started; it wasn’t a lot so it really only warranted one page, broken up into sections. We designed it fairly quickly and emailed the dev link for review.

The client calls with some simples edits and he is referencing where the edits are by page numbers. I was super confused and kept asking him for the sections titles so I knew where he was talking about. I soon realized he had printed his website and therefore was referring to his page numbers. We finally got through his edits when he asked if according to the quote he could have another page.

Still confused, I then realized that since his website was printed on 4.5 sheets he assumed that he has met his page limit for his website.

I didn’t want to make him feel stupid so I told him adding an additional page wouldn’t be a problem. I guess there is a first time for everything!