I’m half-Korean and half-white, but I’m almost completely white-passing so people don’t usually know. I study as a producer and I want to go to Korea to produce for K-Pop entertainment companies. I am watching a Korean variety show when I get a visitor, a girl I know who uses our recording studio.

Visitor: “Hey, can I ask for something?”

Me: “Yes, what can I do for you?”

The visitor notices what I am doing.

Visitor: “Wait, what are you watching?”

Me: “Just a show. I’ll turn it off.”

Visitor: “I didn’t know you liked Korean stuff. I didn’t peg you as that kind of girl.”

Me: “I’m just watching a show.”

Visitor: “It’s super cringy for white people to watch that stuff, you know. It’s weird. What’s wrong with what we’ve got?”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

Visitor: “It’s like a Koreaboo thing, isn’t it?”

Me: “I’m half-Korean. Watching these shows helps me practise the language.”

Visitor: “What? No, you’re not! Your phone’s in English.”

Me: “What the h*** are you doing on my phone?”

Visitor: “Uh…”

She left pretty quickly after that. I didn’t find out what she was doing on my phone, though. I don’t produce for her anymore; she can’t look me in the eye!

I’m a guitar teacher at a music studio that offers lessons from August through June. Teachers have the option of doing lessons over the summer if they can arrange it with the customers.

It’s mid-July and I’m the only one in the building. I’m sitting at the front desk waiting for my student to arrive. In walks a woman I don’t recognize.

Woman: “Hi.  I noticed you have signs in your parking lot saying that parking is for customers only, but I have an interview at the restaurant across the street and I can’t find parking anywhere else. Would it be okay if I parked here just for the interview?”

Me: “Sure thing! We’re closed for the summer anyway, so no one is using it right now. Good luck at your interview!”

Woman: “Thank you so much!”

She leaves to go to her interview. The next day, my boss, the owner, comes into the studio while I’m working. 

Boss: “Hey, so I saw on the security cameras yesterday that you let someone park in our lot who isn’t one of our customers.”

Me: “Yeah, I figured because we’re closed for the summer and not using it at the moment, we could let it slide. She had a job interview at the restaurant.”

Boss: “You shouldn’t have done that! When people drive on our parking lot, their tires wear down the pavement and I have to pay a thousand dollars to get it resealed! That just cost me a thousand dollars! You can’t just let whoever drive on our pavement!”

Confused and sure she’s joking, I laugh a little.

Me: “Yeah…”

Boss: “I’m serious! That was not okay! Never let anyone park here again unless they’re one of our customers! Even when we’re closed. I’m not made of money, you know.”

Me: “Okay. Sorry?”

Boss: “Just don’t let it happen again.”

So, not only was my boss creepily watching me and listening to my conversations over the security cameras while I was the only one in the building, but she actually tried to tell me it costs her a thousand dollars to have someone drive over her pavement. I have repeatedly watched this woman call a tow-truck on people when we are closed or have extra parking. I have since left the studio.

As a young assistant, I had many jobs within a recording studio. One was cleaning the bathroom. Our bathroom was in the back of the studio, down the stairs in the dingy basement.

One morning I arrived to the screaming of the mixer, demanding I go downstairs and scrub the bathroom. Good assistant that I am, I ran to the store and bought every cleaning supply that I could carry, and proceeded to clean the bathroom: Comet in the sinks, Pine Sol on the floors, bleach in the toilet.

I was scrubbing and rinsing and mopping, and I heard through the studio speakers that I was needed in the control room. I left the half-finished job to align a tape machine, and then I was requested to do a messenger run.  

It was about midday by then and I returned to the office. Everyone was looking at me like I was a dead man walking. Finally, someone got enough nerve to tell me that the mixer was looking for me and that they’d never heard him this angry. I ran to the studio, and as I walked in, he was standing in front of the console crying, and screamed, “IF I COULD RUN, I WOULD KILL YOU WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS!”

Well, I had never finished cleaning the bathroom. This engineer decided to take a toilet break, sat on the toilet, and opened his newspaper. As he urinated, smoke started rising from inside the toilet and through his legs. I never flushed the bleach in the toilet; ammonia and bleach create chlorine gas, which burned his skin from the top of his bum to just above the back of his knees. He couldn’t sit for two weeks, which is tough for a recording engineer.

I somehow held onto my job. I guess the chief engineer thought it was funny.

It is Christmas 1988.

I have a recording studio based out of a big studio rehearsal complex in South London and have been working for three days on recording and producing some backing tapes for a client, who also happens to be an old friend. The last day we spend on the mixdowns and at about 9:30, we decide to take a timeout and go to the local pub for some refreshment, to rest our ears, and to generally chew over what we’ve done. While we are blowing the froth off a couple, another old friend along with his significant other turns up. Since we all know each other, we decide to carry on until closing time.

As it is getting late, I suggest we all go back to the studio, listen to the mixes we’ve done, and call it a day. As we are walking down the main corridor, we come across the studio manager who is busy restocking the beer machine in the green room. I tell him that we are just going downstairs to listen to what we’ve been doing and wrap things up. I also tell him not to lock up before checking with me.

We settle down and listen to the first track. At the end, one of our party has to go to the loo and so he goes off in search of relief while we carry on. The second track has barely started playing when he comes back saying that all the security gates in the corridor are locked and the lights are off!

Thinking this is a monumental wind-up I go to investigate… and sure enough, the lights are off and the gates closed up tighter than a nervous sphincter attempting to rein in the purgative effects of a themonuclear-grade vindaloo. As I go back downstairs to the studio, I also notice that the rear fire exit doors have been chained up. I try to call the studio owner but get no joy, so we sit there for a while trying to work out what to do. My friend in particular is rather concerned as he is off to the Middle East first thing in the morning to start shooting a commercial.

Eventually I decide the only hope was to call the Fire Brigade and get them to break down the fire exit doors. Twenty minutes go past…no Fire Brigade. Thirty minutes…you guessed it. By this time, I have lost my patience, so grabbing my toolbox I go upstairs to the fire exit and proceed to dismantle the entire thing from the inside. I eventually manage to get it open only to be confronted by a big burly fireman about to lay into the door with a fire axe. I manage to avoid being sliced in two by the simple expedient of stepping rapidly to one side. The rest of the firemen enter and check out the entire building while I regale the lead officer with our tale of woe, much to his evident amusement.

As you might imagine, I am not best pleased with the incident so the next day about lunchtime, I storm into the office — small portable thundercloud in tow — and in front of the studio owner and his wife proceed to lay down some serious and heavy invective upon the head of the hapless studio manager, calling into question his dubious parentage, and threatening to attach his gonads to the output terminals of the largest Class A power amplifier I can find if there is ever a repeat of the entire sorry débâcle.

The studio owner is none too pleased either, having been read the riot act by the Fire Brigade that morning. He is also furious that, in order to deal with the considerable fallout from the incident, he’s had to cancel the flight he’d booked to the States for that evening, which means that he and his wife aren’t going to be able to visit their family until the New Year.

The flight he was booked on — but had to cancel — was Pan Am 103.

(I just received a call from ‘Allen,’ the Microsoft Certified Technician, who says there’s something wrong with my computer:)

Me: “I am really busy right now, but could you please call back in five minutes at my other number?”

Caller: “Sure. Just say the number.”

Me: “My number is [number]. Thanks, and I look forward to chatting with you.”

(I hang up and called the same number and the Fairfax Police Department dispatcher answers.)

Me: “Hi, [Dispatcher]. You should expect a phone call from Allen the scammer regarding a malfunctioning computer.”

Dispatcher: *laughs* “That’s a great one! I look forward to chatting with him!”