Receptionist: “Can I get your date of birth, please?”

Me: “[Day], December, 1988.”

Receptionist: “December?”

Me: “Yes.”

Receptionist: *looking around confused and asking her colleague* “Umm, December?”

Me: “Umm, like [Day], 12, 1988.”

Receptionist: “Oh, that’s much better. I didn’t know which month December was.”

(Her colleague gives me a sympathetic look as the receptionist finalises my registration. I head into the waiting room. They are just within earshot.)

Receptionist: *to colleague* “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Colleague: “I didn’t know either.”

(At least they were honest about it.)

(Our six-year-old son has watched a scary film he shouldn’t have. He is being obnoxious and unrepentant, claiming that he is old enough to watch them, and so is being punished with early bedtime.)

Son: “I don’t want to go to bed!”

Me: “Well, you should have thought of that before you sneakily watched a grown-up movie.”

Son: “But the monster under the bed will get me!”

Me: “There isn’t a monster under the bed. You’re just scared because you watched a movie you are too young for.”

Son: “No! There is a monster! It will get me!”

Me: “Fine, I will go and look under the bed for you. When I can see there is no monster, you’re going to bed.”

Son: “Okay!”

(I go up to his room, and make a big show of looking under the bed. I go pale. I see my husband under the bed wearing all manner of scary Halloween masks and pieces of costume. He looks, quite frankly, terrifying. He stifles a giggle and mouths to be quiet. I catch on.)

Me: *to son* “Okay, there are no monsters here. You need to go to bed now.”

Son: “What if I stay up but be quiet?”

Me: “No way. You know what you did wrong. You need to be punished. To bed. Now.”

(He flops onto the bed and I close the door to his bedroom behind me. Ten seconds later there is the loudest scream you can imagine coming from his room, followed by the sounds of my husband laughing. I walk back into the room.)

Husband: “I thought you were old enough to watch scary stuff?”

(I know it sounds mean, but he never watched an age-inappropriate movie again, especially a scary one, until well into his late teens!)

(Most of my friends and I have picked three to four A-level subjects which are heavily coursework-based, meaning we have to do work in our spare time. Towards the end of the academic year, some person at the college keeps setting off the fire alarm. Initially it’s a bit funny, but it ends up that we can’t go a week without at least two alarms being set off. It is now the day of the final deadline for both my English and media journalism coursework, so I am with several classmates in a computer room, working away on our final pieces. The fire alarm goes off, and we pause. One plucky volunteer goes out into the hallway and investigates. He come back and sits back at his computer, resuming his work. Prank fire alarm. Again. We go back to work. A teacher comes past and quite literally double-takes.)

Teacher: “The fire alarm, guys? Get up and go!”

Classmate: “It’s a prank, though.”

Teacher: “It might not be.”

Me: “Willing to bet on that?”

Teacher: “Okay, it likely is a prank. But you still need to follow policy and leave, in case there is a fire.”

Class Friend: “We have coursework due today, though.”

Teacher: “You could burn to death.”

Plucky Volunteer: *dramatically* “We may burn, our skin peel off and bones crumble, BUT OUR COURSE WORK WILL BE COMPLETE!” *thumps desk*

Rest Of The Room: “Aye!” *also thumps their desks*

Teacher: *laughing* “Out, now!”

(It was another prank. However, that time round my English teacher, a tall, somewhat terrifying German woman, spotted them, and it didn’t happen again.)

(It’s my birthday. I am surprised to open a present from my girlfriend: a brand new Xbox. I am even more surprised to see the box open, and every game open, too. I turn on the console and find game files for each game. I question my girlfriend.)

Girlfriend: “Yeah, I gave it to my brother.”

Me: “You gave my present to your brother? Why?”

Girlfriend: “Well, he wanted to try it.”

Me: “Try it? He has completed some of the games, and the console is filthy!”

Girlfriend: “What? I don’t see what the big deal is here.”

(The family was a constant issue the whole time we were together; it eventually caused us to break up, then ruin her eventual marriage. She blindly defends them even today.)

Related:
Ex-Box, Part 3
Ex-Box, Part 2
Ex-Box

I am looking for a new job, having been made redundant at short notice from my previous company. I have a really good interview with a company on a Thursday morning, but I feel the job isn’t right for me. I feed this back to the recruiter on Thursday afternoon. I hear from a different recruiter on Friday afternoon that they’ve got a temp job for me starting Monday, so I go along to that on Monday morning. It’s not brilliant, but I know how to do it, and it is only for a couple of weeks, with no notice period, so I’m happy to stay there until something more permanent comes up.

At lunchtime I look at my personal phone for the first time since I arrived at 8:30 am. There are three missed calls from a number I don’t recognise, two missed calls from the first recruiter’s number, and two voicemails.

The first voicemail is the person who interviewed me on Thursday, asking very nicely if the recruiter actually let me know what time to start, etc.

The second voicemail is an angry tirade from the recruiter’s manager, asking why I hadn’t turned up.

I phone back to explain I hadn’t actually taken the job. The recruiter is off on holiday for two weeks, so I am put through to the angry manager. It appears the company told the recruiter to offer me the job before I’d told him that I didn’t want it. He’d accepted it on my behalf, and to meet his bonus target before the end of the month, hadn’t told them I didn’t want it. He’d actually gone to the trouble of filling out all my details on the paperwork I was supposed to do on that Friday. His boss is not happy when I tell him I haven’t done it.

About a month later when the temp job comes to an end, I apply for another role with the original recruitment company, which I eventually take. I ask what happened to the original recruiter.

“Oh, he left,” I am told. “What happened?” I ask, feigning ignorance. “Well, he got back from holiday, there was a lot of shouting in our manager’s office, and he walked out.”

I explain what happen to me.

“Oh, he did that to you, as well? Yeah, that was one of his tricks. I guess he tried it too many times.”