(I work for a daycare centre. I am saying goodbye to the children before we close, when a young boy asks me a question.)

Boy: “Can I bring my dog tomorrow?”

Me: “Sorry, but we aren’t allowed pets.”

Boy: “What about imaginary?”

Me: “Oh, imaginary is fine!”

(His face lights up and I say I’m looking forward to meeting his dog. The morning after, the owner comes into the office where I am printing the register for the day.)

Owner: “Did you tell the kids yesterday that they could bring pets?”

Me: “No— Oh, there was one boy who wanted to bring an imaginary dog.”

Owner: “[Boy]? Well he’s brought a REAL dog.”

(I follow the owner out and see a bunch of children playing with a border terrier puppy.)

Boy: “Miss, come see!”

(I walk over and pet the pup. It’s seems perfectly content.)

Me: “I thought you said you had an imaginary dog?”

Boy: “I do!”

(I look at him and then his father, who looks rather amused. The owner then tries to convince the boy that he’s wrong, with the boy adamant that he’s right. Then the thought hits me.)

Me: “May I?”

(I pick up the pup and check its nametag. I’m actually silenced by the revelation and show the owner. She looks equally as stunned before laughing hysterically. The dad then owns up and admits he wanted to see our reaction before taking the dog home. The owner was impressed enough that she decided to let it stay as long as the other parents were ok with it. A couple weren’t pleased, but after seeing how happy their children were, decided to go with it. So Imaginary the dog got to spend the day with us.)

Teacher: “There will be three units to complete. Unit 1 is weighted at 40% and Unit 2 is weighted at 60%.”

(Long silence.)

Me: “Does that mean Unit 3 is optional?”

Teacher: “Excuse me?”

Me: “Is Unit 3—”

Teacher: “Are you talking back to me?”

Me: “I’m asking you a question.”

Teacher: “It sounds like you’re talking back to me.”

Me: “…”

Student: “So is it?”

Teacher: “Detention! You and [My Name]!”

(We never found out if the ethereal Unit 3 was optional.)

(I work in my local Oxfam, mostly on one of the tills. The other day a customer comes in and tries on a woollen cardigan. After she’s tried it she comes up to me:)

Customer: “Excuse me, but I don’t think this item should be on display. I just tried it in on and it left hairs all over me.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll let the manager know about this and she’ll decide whether it’ll be taken of the rack.”

(The customer then goes back to browsing. The manager then comes down to let me take a break.)

Me: “I had a customer tell me that she didn’t think this cardigan should be on the rack. It left hairs all over her.”

Manager: “Okay.”

(She then puts the item back on the rack and takes over from while I go have a break. About 10 minutes later I come down from my break and take over the till again.)

Manager: “You didn’t tell me that she hadn’t left the shop.”

Me: “Oh, sorry.”

Manager: “It’s okay.”

(I get back to the till, a lack of customers paying for items leaves my eyes to inspect the store just as the manager comes down to put some stock out. At this point I notice something going on at the other till.)

Me: “I think that [Volunteer] might need your help with something.”

(The manager then goes down to the other till to check up on what’s going on. It gets sorted out, and she comes back and tells me what happened.)

Manager: “Funny story. That customer who you dealt with earlier came back, only this time she started looking for the cardigan, just so that she could complain about it still being out.”

(Our teacher gives us twenty minutes at the end of a lesson on Friday to ask the most random questions and then debate one of them. We write them down and put them into a tombola for her to pick out of. The last few weeks every topic has been asking whether a prominent historical figure was gay, so this week she has pleading and praying that there isn’t another one.)

Teacher: *picking a topic* “Oh, for pity’s sake!”

(She turns around and writes the question on the whiteboard.)

Question: “Was Leonardo da Vinci gay?”

(She sat down and took some ibuprofen before letting us debate. Unbeknownst to her, we have all been putting those questions in the hat this month!)

(A colleague contacts me on Instant Messenger to ask about project progress. I need some background so I ask him for the project spreadsheet.)

Colleague: “It’s on [sharelink].”

(I try it out and I don’t have access to that sharelink. So I ask him to email it to me.)

Colleague: “Can’t email it to you; it’s too big.”

(Our mailboxes are limited to handling files of 5 megabytes. That is a h*** of a large spreadsheet if it’s bigger than 5 megabytes, considering the project has barely started.)

Colleague: “Okay, I’ve got access to that sharelink for you.”

(I access it, and see indeed, the file is 9 megabytes big. I can’t open it in situ, so I download it and open it locally. I find that it has one active sheet that consists of 75 lines of actual data, and another 1.7 million blank lines (blank, that is, apart from fancy formatting.)

Me: “Why is this file 9 megabytes big? Why has it got 1.7 million blank lines in it? The f*** are we wasting so much computer space? This is ridiculous.”

Colleague: “Well, if you’re so stupid as to be confused by a simple thing as spreadsheet structure, maybe you need to go on a training course to teach you how to use computers. I have a meeting to go to now. Once you have sorted yourself out and learned how we do things round here, I will contact you again.”

Me: “No worries.”

(I let him get on with it. He never got back in touch with me to ask my advice, which was all well and good, as I was able to spend the rest of the day, uninterrupted, fulfilling my role as technical design authority and performing a code quality review of his (not particularly high quality) code.)