I put my foot in my mouth at work today. I had a customer returning a bra.

Me: “I don’t really know about bras. I once went into a [Lingerie Store] and asked if their wireless bras came with a data plan.”

She sort of laughed and said:

Customer: “Maybe.”

I thought about it for a second.

Me: “You know, these days, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

I then added, as if it was the best idea ever:

Me: “They could call it The Hotspot!”

I immediately facepalmed.

Me: “Sorry.”

The customer started giggling hysterically.

Customer: “Why aren’t you in marketing?”

Me: “I don’t know.”

I work in a hardware store with a pretty strict uniform policy. The store’s logo is plastered all over my clothes. There are four logos on my polo shirt, three on my jacket, three on my trousers, and two on my lanyard, and today, I even happen to be wearing branded socks that were a silly little company Christmas gift last year. Besides this, the uniform has a very recognizable colour scheme that surely no one would wear of their own free choice. Despite this, I get asked this question all the time, and today, I guess my brain-to-mouth filter failed.

Customer: “Excuse me. Do you work here?”

Me: “No, I’m just a huge fan.”

I walked away. The customer stood in confused silence while her husband dissolved into hysterical laughter.

For the record, I did, of course, go back to help them, and thankfully, they both had a good sense of humour about it.

I am a klutz. I bump into things, I cut myself on a daily basis (on anything, from paper to knives), and a lifetime supply of bandages is enough for a month. There is no medical reason for this. I am just inattentive and… a klutz. This has resulted in a very high pain tolerance, so whenever something happens again, I calmly walk to my husband so he can practise his first aid skills again.

This happens when I have a wart underneath my big toe. According to my husband, it must be bothering me, considering the size, so I make an appointment with my general doctor to remove it.

The day before I go to the doctor, I am wearing sandals and I am skipping up some stairs outside. Clumsy me gets stuck behind a stair; my slipper goes under and my feet go over. I feel something start to bleed and I put some tissues in between my toes. I calmly walk home.

I present my new wound to my husband and he gets the first aid kit with a groan. But when he cleans my wound… he finds out I managed to cut a piece of flesh from my toe!

We call the doctor, who gives us instructions to see if anything important got damaged, but it looks like I only cut some callus and the bleeding already stopped. It’s late in the day and the appointment is early in the morning, my husband cleaned my foot very well and I’m not feeling anything, so the doctor changes the appointment from wart inspection to wound inspection.

The next day comes and I indeed only cut callus… and the wart. It was a perfect slice and nothing (well, a tiny bit of skin) got damaged.

Doctor: “You know, if you were scared of the appointment, you could have just told me! You didn’t have to cut the wart off yourself!”

My boyfriend talks in his sleep. It’s rare and only for a couple of minutes but always funny. Sometimes, I like to argue with him when he’s sleep-talking because it’s funny.

I wake up one night because I hear my boyfriend talking. He’s sitting upright in the bed, staring at the wall.

Me: “What?”

Boyfriend: “Stupid gopher.”

Me: “What are you talking about?”

Boyfriend: “That gopher.” *Points at the wall* “It’s driving the dog crazy and it’s messing up my woodpile. I need to get rid of it.”

It finally clicks. We don’t have a woodpile and there are no gophers anywhere near where we live.

Me: “No, that’s a muskrat.”

Boyfriend: “No, it’s a gopher. He’s an a**hole.”

Me: *Laughing* “I think it’s a beaver.”

Boyfriend: “What? Beavers have a big tail. Look at it.” *Gestures to the “gopher”*

Me: *Holding back laughter* “Okay, babe, you’re right. You can get it in the morning. Come back to sleep.”

Boyfriend: “Okay.” *Lays back down* “He mocks me.”

He went back to sleep after that and had no recollection of it in the morning.

I am working the front counter at a sushi restaurant. It’s getting pretty late and we have a full house. At this particular location, the guests will come to the front register to pay for their meals.

A group that has been situated at one of our tables — three young men and a woman — approaches the counter. I smile at them as they arrive and the first one hands me their bill and card.

“How was everything?” I ask cheerily as I finish checking out one individual and move to the next.

Customer #1: “Great!”

Customer #2: “Good, thanks.”

Customer #3: “Good.”

Customer #4: “Does the carpet match the drapes?”

There is a silence as I stare in absolute shock at the man who spoke. His friend, a large local man, throws his billfold and credit card at me and wrangles his friend out of the restaurant by the back of his collar with repeated apologies.

Once they are gone, the three remaining customers ask if I’m okay, apologize to me numerous times, and pay out their tabs. They all cycle outside and have a group conversation beyond our windows as I stand there, still in relative confusion as to what happened.

Eventually, the large man comes back in to retrieve his card, which I have processed.

Customer #1: “I am so sorry about that.”

Me: “I, umm, it’s okay.”

Customer #1: “He works in construction, and apparently, someone on his jobsite told him that ‘Does the carpet match the drapes?’ is a response to someone asking how things were going.”

Me: “He’s never heard the term before?”

He shakes his head.

Customer #1: “Apparently not. He’s not the best wordsmith out of us; I genuinely believe that he would not have said that had he known the true implications of the phrase.”

Me: “I see. Well, no harm done.”

Customer #1: “He wants to come back in and apologize if you are cool with that.”

Me: “Sure.”

The man taps on the window of the shop, attracting the attention of his friends, and the young man that created the problem came back in.

Customer #4: “I am sooooooo sorry. I didn’t know.”

Me: “It’s all right. What did you think that meant?”

Customer #4: “When we do work, interiors are always last. I was told by someone I was working with that the phrase is the same thing as saying, ‘Everything went well,’ because the carpets and drapes are installed.”

Me: “I see.”

The larger boy shook his head, burying his face in his hands.

The group ended up leaving me a $37 tip and became regulars of the location.