I’m working the seafood counter.
Customer: “You’re lying. Those aren’t salmon. They’re regular cheap fish!”
Me: “They are real salmon. It’s illegal to mislabel them.”
Customer: “I don’t believe you.”
Me: “You can Google it.”
Customer: “Nice try! I know Google is in on it!”
I work in security dispatch for a mall. Mostly, I watch cameras and answer phone calls.
One day, I was watching the food court when I saw something that really churned my stomach.
This place in the food court sells, among other things, hotdogs wrapped in pretzel dough.
It wasn’t a very busy day, the mall was dying, and this was a slow day in a dying mall. I caught one of the workers — the only one on shift that day — prodding under her skirt with a hotdog.
I don’t know what, exactly, she was doing, but after she was done, she wrapped the hotdog in dough and put it in the cooker.
I pondered dispatching a security person immediately, but instead, I notified the owner, who arrived, fired the woman, and threw out the offending pretzel-wrapped hotdog.
I work in a big hotel outside Dallas. I had a state trooper call me one morning.
Trooper: “Have you been to room [number] yet?”
Me: “No, we don’t enter until after checkout time at 11:00 am.”
Trooper: “I just pulled over a speeding car near Louisiana. In the back of their SUV, they had a bunch of stuff with your company’s logo on it — two lamps, every piece of bed linen including mattress protectors, pillow, and towels. They had metal towel racks and a toilet paper holder and everything, all rolled up together. These guys said they thought that since they had paid for a room, they could take the stuff.”
No. No, you can’t. Soap and shampoo, okay. But lamps?
We got our stuff back and the manager didn’t want to press charges.
The funny thing was that rolled up, the stuff looked like a dead body. When he pulled them over, the state trooper drew his gun on the guys and demanded they get out of the car.
I am a twenty-seven-year-old engineer who works at an engineering consultation company. Basically, we work with large clients to help them solve their most complex engineering projects. Oftentimes, these are issues that a fleet of PhDs cannot even solve on their own, and we are giving these tasks to a single person —often with only a Bachelor’s degree to their name. This is a long way of saying that I work with a bunch of smart people.
I am one of two female engineers, surrounded by mostly men who are “older” than me and all have at least a Masters. (The oldest one is thirty-one years old.) This means I end up holding their hands quite a bit.
Coworker #1: “What is the password for the [Desktop]?”
Me: *Walks over* “Uh, no idea. Why do you need it?”
Coworker #2: “We are trying to connect to the VPN.”
Me: *Pauses* “Why?”
Coworker #2: “We are trying to access the shared folders and we need to connect to the VPN.”
Me: *Addressing [Coworker #1]* “First of all, the VPN is to access the Internet remotely. This guy is connected directly into the Internet via that Ethernet cable.”
He seems to get it.
Coworker #2: “But how does it connect to the Internet?”
Me: “See that green cord coming out of the computer and going into the wall right there?”
Coworker #1: “Oh, yeah!”
Me: “It is connected directly to the router.”
At this time, I get onto the URL that allows you to access data remotely on any web browser.
Coworker #2: “So, it is already connected?”
Me: “Yeah. Second of all, the login that you use for this computer isn’t connected to the network. It is a basic guest login. So, knowing the password to it to get onto the VPN wouldn’t have done any good.”
Coworker #3: “What do you mean by that?”
Me: “My login credentials allow me to log on to any company computer, right? Well, there is nothing like that set up for [Desktop]. I mean, you can log onto it using your credentials, but not to [Username]. That is a local account to store our network licenses on.”
Coworker #1: “I see. So the password wouldn’t have worked to connecting onto the VPN.”
Me: “Correct.”
I motion toward the website and show him me logging in.
Me: “We can also remote into the Shared Folders using our login credentials. As you see, there are the Shared Folders.”
Coworker #2: “But we are having issues with the share folders.”
Me: “Yeah, well, you can still access it using the method I just showed you.”
I log out so [Coworker #1] can try.
Coworker #2: “So, is this an [IT] issue or what? Because we cannot access the Shared Folders on this computer.”
Me: “Well, normally, you can put in your credentials and access the Shared Folders remotely from the desktop, but I am guessing this is a you-did-something issue. Restarting the computer can help.”
Coworker #3: “So, we should restart the computer?”
Me: “If you want to kick everyone off the network licenses, sure. Or you could just use the URL I provided to download files. It doesn’t affect me, but your other coworkers might be mad.”
Coworker #1: “I only have a couple of files anyway.”
Me: “Sounds good to me.” *Walks away*
This is the fourth or fifth time I have had this conversation with these three. Their heads are just so full of complex problems that the basic solutions elude them. Documentation doesn’t help. I’ve tried.
So, any time you are feeling down about yourself, remember the time a PhD, a PhD candidate, and a man with his Master’s in computer engineering all tried to connect a desktop to the VPN. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.
My boyfriend and I are doing some Christmas shopping. We decide to go into a department store to look for a kitchen item his mom has asked for. The entrance takes us by the jewelry section, so I stop to look at the pretty sparkly things. The main display we see is one centered around birthstones.
Me: “Oh, opal. That’s October’s birthstone.”
Boyfriend: “Oh, that’s too bad for you.”
Me: “Um… I think opal is pretty; it’s my mom’s birthstone. But I said it’s for October; it’s not my birthstone.”
Boyfriend: “Oh… right.”
Me: *Suspicious* “You know when my birthday is, right?”
Boyfriend: “Umm…”
I address him by his full first name instead of the shortened version he goes by.
Me: “[Boyfriend], when is my birthday?”
Boyfriend: “Listen—”
Me: “I know your birthday! It’s [his birthdate]. When is my birthday?”
Boyfriend: “I only know two birthdays, okay? My dad’s and my sister’s. I don’t even know my mom’s, because we always celebrate it on Black Friday regardless of when it actually falls.”
Me: “I know your mom’s birthday, too! It’s [her birthdate].”
In his defense, I only know this because his mom’s birthday JUST happened.
Boyfriend: “Um…”
Me: “Do you know what season it’s in, at least?”
He responds after way, way too long thinking about it.
Boyfriend: “Summer?”
Me: “Yes. Do you remember sitting outside at [Restaurant] for my birthday?”
Boyfriend: “Ohh, right. Please ignore me while I answer this totally unrelated text…”
Me: “You’re checking your calendar, aren’t you?”
Boyfriend: “[MY BIRTHDATE]! It’s [my birthdate].”
It’s been a few months. I’m not sure he’d remember if I asked him again!
