It is 2014, and same-sex marriage has been legalised in England, so my fiancé and I are planning our wedding despite having little money and, to be honest, even less of an idea of what we’re doing. I have been given a card with the number I have to call to book our ceremony at the registry office.

I have ADP — auditory processing disorder — so I struggle to hear properly on the phone, so when I don’t hear the answer of the man who answered, I just assume he introduced the registry office and immediately say.

Me: “Hello. I need to book a wedding, please.”

There is a pause.

Man: “I’m sorry?”

Nervous, I start to ramble.

Me: “I was given a card with this number on it? To book our wedding, I mean. And, um, they said they couldn’t do it in person, I had to call, and—”

Man: “Whoa, hold on. You’ve got the wrong number.”

This doesn’t quite sink in at first and I pause.

Me: “I have?”

Man: “Yes.”

Me: “Are you sure?”

That’s a stupid question, I know.

Man: “Very sure, mate, yeah.”

Me: “Oh. Um, where have I called?”

Man: “[Hometown] crematorium.”

Me: “Oh. Oh. No, that is definitely not where I wanted to call!”

I start laughing, which sets the man on the phone off, too. For a few moments, neither of us can get anything coherent out. Eventually, I get the card back out and read the local number back to him; it’s definitely correct. He starts to say something when I suddenly yell:

Me: “OH! Oh, I am an idiot!”

Man: “Nah, no, it can’t be you. You’re not the first; we’ve had a few people call about weddings!”

Me: “No, no, it’s me. I put in the wrong area code!”

The area code for a nearby town — who I actually needed to call — was very similar to the area code of my town! The man was glad to have that mystery solved, and I have been amused since then at having called the crematorium of all places to try and book my wedding.

And if you were curious, yes, we did somehow manage to pull the wedding together, minus cremations, and remain happily married to this day.

This happened back in the 1970s. I was nearly five and my little sister would have been about three. After growing up in London, we had just moved to a small town.

Mum was taking my sister and me on our first trip to the shops in this new town. My sister was in her buggy and I was walking by the side. As we walked over the crest of a hill, something flat and grey-blue came into view, although neither my sister nor I paid any attention to it until Mum asked us about it.

Mum: “Do you see that blue thing in the distance?”

Sister & Me: “Yes, Mummy?”

Mum: “Do you know what it is?”

Our guesses included a stream, a river, a pond, and a lake until, eventually…

Me: “Mummy, is it the sea?”

Mum: “Yes!”

Sister & Me: “Wow!”

When we were growing up in London, Mum and Dad didn’t have a car, so going to the beach was a very rare event — maybe once a year — so Sis and I were quite taken with this knowledge that we were near the coast.

That night, when Sis and I were in our rooms, Mum came to check that we were asleep and was quite surprised to see me awake. I was really worried.

Mum: “Are you all right?”

Me: “You know the sea, Mummy?”

Mum: “Yes, dear?”

Me: “Will it still be there tomorrow?”

I take my daughter to one of the shops where you stuff a bear and buy clothes for it. We are looking at the options when a man pushes past us, luckily missing my daughter. I ignore him and continue helping her pick the empty bear. We stand in line and wait for the stuffing machine when I notice something odd. The man from earlier is stood in the line without a child.

The line moves along slowly. The woman on the stuffing machine eyes the man carefully and goes into her routine about the special hearts, etc., and asks if he wants to help push the button, as she would with the children.

He declines and awkwardly stands there as she goes onto her spiel about the “birth certificate.” This whole process takes a while and the man gets more agitated as it happens.

Store Associate: “Would you like to make a wish?”

Man: “Look. It’s a gift, okay? I just want this done.”

Store Associate: “Not a problem. Your bear is all done. In future, you can pick from any one of the premade bears if you like.”

Right next to the empty ones were premade bears of every type. Perhaps if he wasn’t in such a rush he would have noticed them!

I accept an invite to a job interview. I have several lined up over a few weeks and don’t get a chance to do the normal background checks I normally do, so I go in a little blind. Halfway through the interview, I realise that the job doesn’t match the description at all. I stick out the rest of the interview to decide if it is something that I could make work.

After a night’s sleep, I realise that, no, it isn’t something I am interested in, and I will let the recruiter know when I speak to them next.

It isn’t long until I get a call from the recruiter.

Recruiter: “Hey, how did it go?”

Me: “Well, the manager seemed nice and the company looks solid. But the job isn’t for me.”

Recruiter: “What? Why? We spoke the other day and the job role was perfect for you.”

Me: “It is, but that’s not what they are looking for. In fact, it was like I was interviewing for a completely different job.”

Recruiter: “No, that can’t be right. I spoke to [Manager] and clarified everything.”

I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m not lying; I was the one in the interview.”

Me: “What can I tell you?! He was talking about legal and claims. I’ve never worked on anything to do with that stuff.”

Recruiter: “Well, there might be some of that, sure, but you could pick that up quickly.”

Me: “I’m not interested.”

Recruiter: “But I’ve already told them you would take the offer!”

Me: “Why did you do that?”

Recruiter: “They loved you and offered you the advertised rate.”

Me: “As I said, the job didn’t match the description at all. So, no, I won’t be interested.”

Recruiter: “Fine!” *Hangs up*

Not only did the recruiter waste my time, but I would bet money that he blamed me for turning down the job!

[Coworker] should have retired years ago, but somehow he convinced the senior management to let him stay on a few days a week to “help out when needed.” Instead, he pokes his nose into things and picks faults, even things that have nothing to do with him or he knows nothing about. When he gets called out, he claims he was only trying to help and offer opinion.

Luckily, he leaves me alone as I’m mainly working on an IT project that he has no ability to even access. Then, he badgers my boss to give him access to check something or another and I set him up with limited access. I am reluctant to do so.

One day, I’m pulled into my boss’s boss’s office. My boss and [Coworker] are there.

Boss: “We have some concerns with your project.”

Me: “Okay.”

Boss: “You said to me last time that 90% of the work had been done, but all of the files are gibberish.”

Coworker: “I’ve checked it myself; you claim it’s working but clearly you messed something up.”

Boss’s Boss: “I don’t pretend to understand all this, but is it true that there is a problem?”

Coworker: “All this money spent on computerising stuff and it’s worse than paper. What a waste!”

Boss: “Okay, calm down, [Coworker].”

Me: “This is lorem ipsum; it’s a placeholder text. It’s an industry standard used to give you an idea of what it will look like.”

Boss: “So, the documents are where?”

Me: “Where they have always been. It would be pretty stupid to load live documents into a test environment.”

Boss: “In English, please, mate.”

I demonstrated that the documents were, in fact, fine and how quickly the document could get transferred over when finished. [Coworker] sneaked out during this, so I took the opportunity to complain in detail about how he had been doing this to every project and slowing things down, making up issues and pretending to have solved them. He was moved onto one project at a time and not allowed to give any feedback without the project’s owner being involved.