(I work for an IT distributor. We coordinate everything from single-user install CDs to fully-assembled server racks and storage clusters. One of the many hats I wear is setting up shipping quotes for the sales teams when they’re entering orders. Normally this goes smoothly, especially since the number of shipments that are made on our accounts gives us really good rates, but every now and then something like this email chain happens.)

Sales: “Hey. Why is this so d*** expensive?!”

Me: *a little surprised they actually typed that out in a company email* “Actually, we got really good rates for this.”

Sales: “Are you kidding me?! This is going from Utah to Utah; it shouldn’t cost this much!”

Me: “Before this continues, I would like you to please look over the quote you sent me again; just a quick glance should show you why it’s ‘expensive.’”

Sales: “I’m looking at it right now. See?” *attaches a screenshot they took with their phone* “It’s four little things going just down the road!”

Me: “Actually, it’s four boxes that are over 100 pounds each, all oversized, going priority overnight from one corner of a fairly large state to another, plus another box of accessories. Yes, this is costing us over $200; if it were list price, that would be over $800, plus extra service fees which are waived due to the level of our account. However, if you know someone that wants to take a quarter-ton of computer hardware in a pickup — or better, a moving truck — across a 12-hour-round-trip trek, we can certainly waive the shipping cost.”

(Surprisingly, they did not waive the shipping cost. And yes, I do have to explain how shipping works to this person every time they process a “big” shipment.)

(I am in Hong Kong. I enter an elevator that is descending. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze at first, so I accidentally bump into the other occupants who are already in there. Everyone involved in this story appears to be East Asian, myself included.)

Me: “Whoops. Sorry, everyone! My apologies.”

(We go down a few floors and several people exit. The only people remaining in the elevator are an old man and me. We go down one more floor, and standing in front is a young man who is hesitant to enter.)

Me: “What seems to be the matter, friend? Come on in; there’s plenty of room.”

(The young man is standing still, and not moving an inch.)

Me: “Are you going up, or going down?”

Young Man: “Up!”

Me: “Well, okay, looks like you might want to try the other elevator. This one’s going down for at least several more floors, so it’ll be a while before it starts going back up again. Have a good one, then.”

(The young man stops acknowledging me and just waits for the door to close. While we’re going down again, the old man standing next to me finally decides to talk to me.)

Old Man: “Where are you from, son?”

Me: “Me? I’m from Canada, sir.”

Old Man: “That explains it! Your English and your manners are both exceptionally good! I knew there was no way you could be one of the local kids!”

(Rather unfortunate that he has such a view of his own country’s youth, but hey, he said it, not me.)

(I work in a call center environment. We sit in cubes and I can hear everything around me, much to my coworkers’ dismay; I can catch them saying some pretty funny things, either to themselves or to clients. My coworker is trying to phonetically spell something over the phone to a client.)

Coworker: “That is C, like ‘cat,’ A, like ‘apple,’ N, like ‘knife’…”

Me: “That’s not how this works.”

Coworker: “Shut up with your bat hearing.”

(I work for a company that hires a lot of temporary workers and always has payroll problems with them, resulting in a lot of late checks. This particular temporary worker has already had their check delayed over a month, and they’ve come to collect it now that it has finally come in. They have a very long and complicated Eastern European last name. My name is Brian.)

Employee: *sighing after finally getting their long-sought-after check* “My name is spelled wrong.”

Me: “Okay. I can send it back for you — and I’m not going to lie, it will probably take payroll even longer to get a new check issued — or you can try and cash it anyway. Considering the number of checks I have cashed with my name spelled, ‘Brain,’ you are probably going to be fine. If not, I’ll keep yelling at payroll until they get everything straightened out for you.”

(Luckily, they got a laugh out of this and, after I checked on them a few days later, everything went fine with depositing their misspelled check.)

(I work for a company that offers digital marketing services, among other things. In order to track the campaign’s performance, we need to add a small piece of code to the client’s website. Most of the time we are able to add this ourselves, but occasionally the client has contracted out their web services and we must get in contact with a third party. Recently, a campaign that was generating huge success has suddenly flat-lined. After hours poring over the campaign I finally determine that there is a flaw with the code, which was installed by the third-party web company six months ago. Here is my email exchange.)

Me: “Hey, can you guys please re-add [code] to the site? We had it on there before but I’m not sure what happened.”

Contact: “Our service team is unable to add [code] to the site at this time as there is already existing [code] on site. This code was sent to us two months ago, and we updated it as requested. It is not recommended to have multiple [code]s running at the same time but it can be done. Please advise if we are to remove or replace the existing [code].”

Me: “I can’t speak to what to do with the current [code], but ours needs to be re-added as soon as possible. [Client]’s campaign has already experienced a negative because it was removed.”

Client: *cc’d on email* “Oh, yeah, we had them remove [code] to put our marketing intern’s on there. It’s for her final class project. Just add both codes.”

Me: *now exclusively to the client* “Did you know that they had removed our [code] from the site to place your student’s there?”

Client: “Yeah, we didn’t think it would be a huge deal because she’s running her own marketing for us and it’s all the same code.”

(After digging in a bit further, it turns out that not only had they basically sabotaged their own campaign, they were also running digital marketing to compete with their existing digital marketing campaign as a way to get out of their contract with us!)