(A new colleague has just joined our company. For a 36-year-old, she is really weird and incredibly infantile; she does things like sticking out her tongue at us when she loses an argument, jumping out at the other staff, and once sneaking up on me and tickling me. For lunch, there’s a canteen nearby, and we usually call beforehand to place orders. They will pack it for us but we have to collect it in person. We take turns to collect the food for everyone. It happens to be my turn, and the newbie tags along to help me carry all the packets. [Newbie] almost goes up to grab a random food packet, thinking it’s hers. I tell her it’s still not ready. She sees the cook add some spring onions to the packet in front of her, and panics.)

Newbie: “I don’t want spring onions in mine!” 

Me: “Oh, let me tell the cook.”

Cook: “Sorry, it’s already packed.”

([Newbie] stops dead in the middle of the packed canteen and starts FAKE CRYING at the top of her voice. There’s no actual tears, just a loud, deafening wailing like a baby.)

Newbie: *wailing* “AH-HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH, I don’t want spring onions! I don’t want spring onions!”

(Her hands were on my shoulders and EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the immediate vicinity turned to gape at us. She had an enormous grin on her face, like she thought she was funny. It was clear she was not actually upset by the onions, just doing it for laughs. The cook gave us a weird look and pushed the packet to us to get rid of us quickly. I nearly died of embarrassment as she wailed all the way out of the canteen. A few weeks later, she started a petty fight with our supervisor, because the supervisor called her “Miss” and she deemed it insulting. She threatened to call the police for it, and the manager got tired of her squabbling and fired her for poor attitude.)

(I’m opening the office mail when I notice a particularly thick envelope from a law office.)

Me: “All right, taking bets. Death, bankruptcy, or suing?”

Coworker: “Death.”

Me: “I feel like we get more bankruptcies.”

Manager: “Definitely suing.”

(I open the letter and find a check along with several invoices.)

Me: “Huh. They’re just paying their bill.”

Manager: “No one would have guessed that!”

(Part of my job involves working with secure data, so my job includes random trainings being assigned to us to review best practices for keeping data secure. One day, I get called into my boss’s office about those trainings.)

Boss: “IT was just complaining to me that you haven’t completed any of the last three trainings.”

Me: “I haven’t gotten notifications about any trainings in the last month or so. Do they still send out email notices for the trainings?”

Boss: “They do. They’re insisting that they’ve sent out multiple notices.”

Me: “I’ll go check.”

(I go through my email, searching for the notices, and I finally find one in my spam folder. After looking at it, I find out what the problem was.)

Me: *to my boss* “I found out why I wasn’t seeing their emails.”

Boss: “And?”

Me: “They were getting caught by the rules about ‘unknown links’ that IT insisted we set up in one of their earlier trainings.”

Boss: “Oh.”

(As it turns out, everyone who actually implemented that rule was also failing to get the notices, while those who had skipped it, such as my boss, were still getting the notices. If it had been deliberate, it would have been a good way of showing who actually followed those lessons and who didn’t. As it was, it was just due to the IT group not following their own rules about what constituted “safe emails.”)

(There is a certain report that we need to have run monthly. Unfortunately, the people who are authorized to run the report insist on giving it to us as a heavily formatted PDF, which makes it all but impossible to pull the actual information out that we need. We have repeatedly asked for just the raw data, but they insist that it is utterly impossible for them to extract just raw data from the system. Finally, after months of cajoling, I manage to get the report runners to sit down with me for a meeting to walk through the process of pulling the report. From the start, they treat the meeting as a waste of time, acting bored and talking down to me about how “complex” the system is. They end up paging back and forth through several menus before they finally find my report. They make a big production about opening it up, and then they jump up trying to export it.)

Me: *holding my hand out* “Wait!”

Report Runner: “What?”

(I reach over, pull the mouse out of his hand, and scroll it over a centimeter, moving the cursor from a button with the “PDF” symbol to a button with the “Excel” logo. I click on it, bringing up an option box, where I select the option to export raw data as an Excel document, and then do so. I turn back to look at the group, which is now dead silent.)

Me: *in the most icily polite voice I can manage* “We would like future reports to be exported as raw Excel files. Please.”

(Thus far, they have managed to actually follow that request.)

I answer customer feedback emails. Here is one of my silliest:

“To Whom It May Concern,

My phone has [Game App] installed on it. As I am sure you are aware, your company has chosen to advertise with [Game App Company]. Your ad decided to impact my loading time, causing me to lose my game. I guarantee you, I will never purchase a single one of your products. Ever. Either choose lighter ads or better companies to advertise with.

Thank you for your time,

[Fake Name]”