(I work in an office where we regulate and assist realtors in business, and they pay us for their memberships to different services. The billing cycle has been the same for at least fifteen years. They are given ten days to pay, beyond which point their membership becomes suspended for a month, then finally terminated. Throughout this process we fairly spam them with notices and alerts to make sure they know what is happening. Still, my day is filled with this type of call. This particular customer calls me after we’ve sent out the seventh and final notice.)

Me: “Thank you for calling.” *I do my standard greeting on the phone*

Customer: “Yeah, my account isn’t working.”

Me: *knowing full well why* “Okay, let me go ahead and look up your account.”

(I look him up and see he indeed owes two sets of payments, and has now been charged late fees after the two-week grace period.)

Me: “Okay, sir, it seems that your memberships were due, and as they have not yet been paid, your account was suspended.”

Customer: “No, you all said I had until the end of the month to pay.”

Me: “Well, yes, at the end of the month we have to terminate you, so you have until the end of the month before you lose your membership. However, as it says on your invoices, you have until the 10th to pay before late fees are assigned and your account is suspended. It is now the 21st.”

Customer: “Yeah, I saw that, but you didn’t tell me you would turn off my f***ing account so I can’t use it!”

Me: *unsure what to say to that* “I’m sorry; we thought saying, ‘Your account will be suspended,’ would convey that.”

Customer: “You need to change your invoice. The word ‘suspended’ doesn’t make any sense! And I can’t believe you are making me pay a late fee! I’ve been a realtor for 25 years with you, and this s*** is f****** ridiculous”

Me: *at this point his belligerence has made me cut to the chase* “We gave you a month and half to pay, emailed you seven times, put it on our social media pages, our website, and added a pop up to the system that made you scroll down and click, ‘I understand,’ before it would go away. The due date hasn’t changed for at least 15 years, and you’ve been paying on the same date, so I’m not sure why this time you would have forgotten when they were due.”

Customer: *long pause* “F****** can’t believe this!” *hangs up on me*

(Sometimes I’m frightened at the thought that these people are handling such huge, life-changing transactions for people!)

(We rent through an agency, and a year ago our property manager moved on to a different agency. We have a new property manager who is very demanding, but not so great at listening. I receive a phone call from her. It’s worth noting that I live in an old terraced house, so I have no front yard, my fence is about three steps from my front door, and the entire area is paved.)

Me: “Hello.”

Property Manager: Hi, [My Name], it’s [Property Manager]. Look, I’ll be blunt, we’ve had several complaints about the state of your front yard and we need to sort it out ASAP.”

Me: “My front yard?”

Property Manager: “Yes.”

Me: “What about it?

Property Manager: “Grass not mowed and being at knee height is the main complaint; I want to remind you that a condition of your tenancy is garden intermittence.”

Me: “This is [My Name], from [my address]; I think you have the wrong tenant.”

Property Manager: “Excuse me? I thought it would be nice to give you a heads up before I put in an official letter, for you to do the right thing. I know who you are, and I know which house this is; I’ve driven past and I can see for myself that your yard is not maintained.”

Me: “[My address] is a terrace. I don’t have grass.”

Property Manager: “This is [My Name] from [my address], yes?”

Me: “Yes.”

Property Manager: “Then I have the right house.”

Me: “I think something has gotten very jumbled here. I don’t have a front yard or grass; I have a small paved area with no greenery at all.”

Property Manager: “I drove past the property yesterday.”

Me: “Right… Okay. I’m just saying, you might want to double-check. Thank you. Have a good day.”

(A week letter, I got an official warning about my grass in the mail. I ended up emailing a picture of the warning letter, held up in front of my “front yard,” and a summary of the phone call to the rentals manager. I received a lovely apology from the rentals manager, and a gift card.

(I work at a care home. It is my day off when I get a phone call from my manager:)

Manager: “You’re an hour and a half late for work.”

Me: “It’s my day off.”

Manager: “No, it’s not. We switched it with tomorrow. We changed it on the rota in the staff room; didn’t you look?”

Me: “I checked the rota before I left yesterday; it hadn’t changed.”

Manager: “No, we changed it. We changed the rota at nine pm yesterday. You should have known, and now we’ve not been able to cover some of your clients, so people are still in bed; you need to be here to get them up.”

Me: “I left at eight; why did no one ring me earlier if that’s the case?”

Manager: “Erm…” *long pause* “Say, do you think you could do us a huge favour and come into work right now? We’ll give you tomorrow off, instead.”

I am in fourth-year in secondary (high) school. The sixth years — the 17- and 18-year-olds — in our school have their own small kitchen in the school for cooking instant noodles during after-school study, making cups of tea, etc. It doesn’t have an oven or a cooker; there are only small appliances, such as a kettle, a microwave, and a toaster… or, at least, there used to be a toaster.

The story, from what I can recall, begins with us in class. It is a regular old maths lesson and I, as per usual, am daydreaming. All of a sudden, the fire alarm goes off, scaring the bejaysus — “bejesus” with an Irish accent — out of us. We immediately follow the drill of pushing our chairs in, lining up at the door, and filing out onto the sports pitch. I assume it’s just the usual stupidity: someone in the chemistry lab lighting a bunsen burner under the smoke alarm. In fact, this incident took it to a whole new level, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who caused it. One of the sixth years decided to cook a frozen pizza in the toaster. The pizza, of course, caught fire, and subsequently so did the toaster. After having evacuated the entire school and lost roughly 45 minutes of valuable class time — near exam time, no less — it was decided that the sixth years’ toaster would be permanently confiscated.

The story doesn’t end there, however. Our year, the fifth/incoming sixth years, did some things for the sixth years to help them de-stress before their oncoming leaving cert exams, e.g. throwing them a surprise party. At the leavers’ ceremony this week, the head girl announced that, as a thank you, the sixth years had bought our year a toaster as a sort of house-warming — kitchen-warming? — gift, as well as a swing-tennis set. Luckily, I think we’ve all learned the moral of the story: don’t cook non-toastable things in a toaster.

(I work tech support. After standard verification, we ask for the issue.)

User: “I need to unlock my computer.”

Me: “Okay, just give me a minute; this should be a really easy fix.”

(I look at usual tools for unlocks, because that usually means that user’s account is locked.)

Me: “That is strange; I cannot see anything locked there. What is the application you are trying to access?”

User: “It is not an application; my computer is locked.”

Me: “Do you mean that your computer is physically locked?”

User: “Yes.”

Me: “Like in a box with a lock on it?”

User: “Yes, exactly.”

Me: “Did you set some code for it? I would guess it would be something like year of your birth, or something like that.”

User: “No, they gave me that with a code.”

Me: “Give me a moment. I will look for a locksmith in your area.”

(My colleague suggested that user should request blowtorch or sledgehammer.)