(I need to get some samples delivered from a supplier in Los Angeles to an architect elsewhere in Los Angeles. I ask my assistant to contact a local courier to make the delivery. I feel I should preface at this point that we’re on the East Coast and it’s about 4:00 pm. She says, “Not a problem!” and gets right to it. Five minutes later she walks into my office in a PANIC.)

Assistant: “They say it’s going to take two hours to get it delivered!”

Me: “Okay, that’s fine.”

Assistant: “But that’s going to be too late; the architect will be closed by then.”

Me: “No, it’s fine. They’ll still be open.”

Assistant: *looking at her watch* “Um, okay.”

(She leaves, looking VERY confused, and comes back five minutes later with her notepad.)

Assistant: “Um, I just did some time calculations, and they’re definitely going to be closed by the time the courier makes the delivery.”

Me: *starting to realize there’s a much bigger issue here* “What time do you think the package is going to arrive at the architect?”

Assistant: “If they leave now, it won’t be there until 6:30, and the architect closes at 4:30, so they won’t make it in time.”

Me: “You realize, of course, that there is a three-hour time difference between us and them, right?”

Assistant: *blank stare*

Me: “Yeah. It’s not 4:30 there. It’s actually 1:30. So, if you call them now, and they leave by 2:00, they’ll still be there before the architect closes.”

Assistant: *more blinking, more blank stares*

Me: “I mean… You understand that, right? Like… the time-zone thing?”

Assistant: “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. They’re in the past? Like… we’re in the future? I don’t understand.”

Me: *finally fed up with this conversation, and also trying to stop myself from firing her on the spot* “Call the courier and tell them to make the delivery now, and don’t bother me for the rest of the day unless it’s a crisis.”

Related:
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 12
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 11
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 10
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 9
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 8

I work as a medical illustrator, drawing injuries and surgeries for legal purposes — used as courtroom exhibits, mediation materials, etc. Most of the time, the cases that cross my desk are the same run-of-the-mill kinds over and over, but every once in a while, we get very interesting and challenging cases to illustrate.

My most memorable case involved a man with a tumor that had grown in almost the exact middle of his head, sort of at the very back of his throat, near the base of his skull. It had grown monstrously and required a surgery to remove it to improve quality of life. But the only way to get to it required some extreme measures, and I’ll never forget the surgeon’s notes in which he described the procedure. This is a bit gruesome, if you’re squeamish.

It required lifting away the bottom of the face from the skull and cutting the mandible — jaw bone — down the middle, then prying the jaw apart to either side. While the surgeon provided no sketches to help me visualize this, he made it clear enough when he mentioned it was commonly known as “the Predator cut.”

They also then removed half the jawbone. It was surprising to learn how they reconstruct the face afterwards; they simply carve up segments from your fibula — the small bone in your lower leg — and make a new L-shaped jaw out of it!

(We have been working a special project for six weeks; most of us have been working from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm every day, but have been asked to go to 8:00 pm on certain days. I have gone the longest without a break. I am working in one section, and my boss is working on the other side of a short wall. I see a coworker walking by. This particular woman has proved to be very lazy. She’s carrying her bag. She’s been only with us for about three weeks.)

Boss: “[Coworker], where are you going?”

Coworker: “I’m going home; it’s six.”

Boss: “But everyone agreed to work until eight tonight.”

Coworker: “I’m too tired to work until eight; it’s not fair to make me work.”

Boss: “Everyone’s tired, and we have to get this project done.”

Coworker: “Well, I haven’t had a break for days.”

Boss: “You had the weekend off. There’s people here who haven’t had a day off in five weeks.”

Coworker: “Well, if you are just going to make me stay until eight, I’m going to be much too tired to come in tomorrow.”

Boss: “You’re going to be too tired to come in tomorrow?”

Coworker: “Yes, I will be. What do you think of that?”

Boss: “If that’s the case, you can go home now, then.”

Coworker: *smugly* “Okay, bye.” *starts leaving*

Boss: “And you can have tomorrow off, too. In fact, how about you don’t come back at all?

Coworker: “What? You can’t do that!”

Boss: “Yes, I can, and I have. Make sure you don’t leave anything of yours here, because you are no longer welcome here.”

(I work in a vaccine development company making viral vaccines. We usually write quantities of viruses in “log ten” units because the numbers are huge, e.g. six logs is a million. My colleague in charge of the process development team is giving a report. I’m in the assay development team, and she doesn’t get along with any of us.)

Colleague: “You can see that the total amount of virus in this run was twelve logs in the raw harvest and went down to nine logs in the purified batch. So, it’s only a twenty-five percent loss, which I think is pretty good.”

(Twelve logs is a trillion and nine logs is a billion.)

Me: “You can’t calculate percentages on log values. That’s not correct.”

Colleague: “How can you say it’s not correct? Twelve minus nine is twenty-five percent loss.”

Me: “You can’t do it like that. You have to convert to linear [regular numbers] first.”

Colleague: “This is my data! I can choose how I want to present it! You have to respect my opinion!”

(We end up arguing over secondary school maths for about five minutes before the boss, annoyed, stands up and points at the slide.)

Boss: “That is not a 25% loss. That is a 99.9% loss.”

(I work in an office, booking spa days and treatments for a large UK chain.)

Request: “Does [Owner] do the massages? I’d like him to dress up as a crab. I have made an outfit out of heavy-duty rubber and plastic. [Owner] can wear this. There are eyeholes to see out of, and levers and pulleys inside the pincers so that they can be operated. The crab costume is painted professionally in the correct colors so that it will look like an actual crab, albeit a very big one. I will also need three hazelnuts placed on a south facing window-sill during my massage, and the Nicaraguan national anthem playing on a trumpet.”

(Needless to say, they did not get this request!)