(I work in the data entry department of an accounting firm that specializes in religious organizations and non-profit charities. Believe me, there is no greater stinginess in the world than that of a megachurch religious group’s accountants and pastors when you want to take money away from them — to get our company and people paid or to help them pay their taxes, either or — rather than give money to them. Each of our separate departments has its own specialized software for their respective tasks, and thus a person in one department usually can’t fill the requests of a client for something needed from another department. I’m also one of two people in my office with the same first name, and the other [Shared Name] isn’t in my department. The phone rings. I am confused as DE usually doesn’t get called from outside numbers.)

Me: “Hello?”

Client: “Hi. It’s [Client] from [Church]. I’m calling back about the status of [job from another department].”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry, you probably meant the other [Shared Name]; there are two of us here. He’s in [other department].”

Client: “Well, I have you here now. So, about–” *starts going into complex detail about a job from [other department]*

Me: “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that, ma’am. I don’t work in that department. If you’ll hold a moment, I can transfer you to the other [Shared Name].”

Client: “No, don’t transfer me! I got you; you’re going to solve my problem!”

Me: “I can’t solve your problem, ma’am. It’s not in my department.” *internally: “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”*

Client: “Oh, yes, you can! I know you’re all hooked up to the Internet together in that office!” 

Me: “I’m just going to transfer you to [Other Person With Shared Name] now, ma’am… Please hold.”

Client: “Don’t you dare!”

(I put her on hold and, after calling in a coworker to show me how it was done — like I said, DE doesn’t get calls from outside often, and almost never work-related ones — finally got her transferred over to the right person. The secretary called me later and apologized for sending the client to the wrong person, and we had a nice little laugh over it. Apparently, this sort of behavior is far from abnormal.)

(Not long after I move into the city, my family drives over to see how I’ve settled in and take me out to dinner. My dad drives, dropping us off at the restaurant before going to find a parking spot. When he joins us, he tells us he parked at a meter and gave it plenty of quarters. We have a nice dinner, and then my dad leads us to where he parked the car. He gets to it first and sees something that angers him.)

Dad: “Oh, are you kidding me?”

Me: “What?”

Dad: “There’s a parking ticket on the windshield, but there are still ten minutes left on the meter!”

Mom: “Wait, really?”

(Sure enough, there are about ten minutes left on the meter from when my dad originally put money in it. The time stamp on the ticket shows that it was issued about ten minutes before we got there, meaning the ticket was issued with twenty minutes left on the meter! My parents take photos showing the ticket, the meter, and their watches to prove the mistake so they can contest the ticket. After this, they take me back home, and I forget about the whole thing until a few months later when I’m with my mom.)

Me: “Oh, hey, remember back when you got that parking ticket even though there was still time on the meter?”

Mom: “Oh, yes.”

Me: “You contested it, right? What happened?”

Mom: “They wouldn’t admit that the officer was at fault, but they still accepted our appeal.”

Me: “So, they agreed that you shouldn’t have to pay the ticket — the ticket that their officer left for no reason — but it’s still not the officer’s fault somehow.”

Mom: “Yep.”

(Gotta love city parking.)

(I’m working at an animal shelter in the dog area. A customer has just come out of our puppy area. The info sheets of all our animals list their age in years/months; the puppies in this area are generally two to three months old.)

Customer: “Do you have any smaller puppies?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry. We don’t get small breed dogs that often.”

Customer: “I mean, do you have any younger puppies?”

Me: “No, two months is about as young as they’ll let them be adopted. They have to be spayed/neutered and vaccinated before they can go home.”

Customer: “Yeah, but a two-month-old puppy isn’t like a baby baby puppy, like a nine-week-old puppy.”

Me: “I, uh… Well, actually, a nine-week-old puppy is slightly older than a two-month-old puppy.”

At our game store, we used to have a policy that customers could try out any game in the store. It really helped cut down on returns. This meant, however, that we would get a few customers who would abuse this policy.

One man would come in almost daily and spend hours playing games, rarely purchasing anything.

When this happened, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had come out. The man was coming in daily and spent literally hours standing in one spot and playing the game. 

I would inform him every half hour or so that he needed to take a break and could not just play games all day. He would save, walk away for a minute, and jump right back to it when I started working on something else.

After a few days of this, I was tired of him.

The next time he came in, he played Oblivion for a solid five hours. I didn’t bother him once. When he finally took his leave of the game and I was sure he was gone, I loaded up his game and dumped almost a week’s worth of progress in one part of the map. Then, I sent his character across the map to the woods and left his character naked and alone. Finally, I deleted every save file except this one, and shut the game off.

The next time the man came in, he asked to play Oblivion. I gladly obliged, put the game in, and walked away. I can still remember him sputtering and frantically trying to search for a way to get his progress back.

When he demanded to know what had happened, I politely told him that this was a store game and everyone had access to the save files. If he wanted to be able to play without the risk of someone else having access to it, he would probably want to actually buy the game.

He was practically in tears when he left, but he did finally buy the game and take it home.

(My grandfather recently passed away. In planning the services, my father and his siblings ask us cousins to be pallbearers. Even though we’ve known quite a few people who have passed, my sister has not been to as many funerals as I have and is not accustomed to some of the terms related to the event. When my father asks if we are okay with being pallbearers, my 26-year-old sister asks a very interesting question:)

Sister: “So… is it called ‘pallbearers’ because Grampa’s name was Paul?”

(She thought it was a Paulbearer for Paul, Tombearer for Tom, Marybearer for Mary, etc. My family and I had a good chuckle during an emotional week.)