(A classmate’s birthday was earlier this week.)

Teacher: “My birthday’s tomorrow, guys.”

Student: “My sister’s birthday is tomorrow.”

Teacher: “Oh! So you’re both virgins! Virgos!” *runs out of room*

(After two long and wonderful days at nearby theme parks, we discover that my daughter has the stomach virus that has been going around her school. She vomits all over our hotel bathroom and herself, and has not yet been able to take a break. From previous experience with my other daughter the week before, I know that it might not end anytime soon, and we really need the use of our bathroom. I call housekeeping.)

Me: “Hi, I was hoping I could get some cleaning products from housekeeping, since a family member got sick in our bathroom.”

Staff Member: “I can send someone to clean the bathroom.”

Me: “Actually, I’d prefer to do it myself, since she’s very sick and can’t leave the bathroom. Do you have any cleaning wipes or spray I could use?”

Staff Member: “No, we cannot leave cleaning products in the rooms for safety reasons. I can connect you to the onsite store to see if they have any, or perhaps you could take a cab to a nearby pharmacy to purchase some.”

Me: *sarcasm* “So, there’s really a big problem with guests drinking the cleaning products?”

Staff Member: “No, but we don’t want someone to spray it in their eyes or something.”

Me: “Fine, connect me to the store.”

(The store doesn’t answer. I leave a message and they call me back.)

Me: “Hi, do you carry cleaning products?”

Store: “No, we don’t, but you can contact housekeeping if you need something cleaned.”

Me: “No, they won’t let me use their cleaning products. And I don’t want them to come in to clean right now.”

Store: “I can give you the number if a pharmacy that delivers.”

(I am annoyed that the hotel expects me to pay for delivery of cleaning products from an outside store so I can clean my hotel bathroom, but I just want to get off a pointless phone call.)

Me: “Never mind, thanks.” *calling housekeeping again* “Hi, can you send someone to clean my bathroom? I have a sick family member.”

(About an hour later, a housekeeper showed up with plastic bags, towels, and cleaning product. Fortunately, given that she was the one who was going to clean up vomit, it wasn’t hard to convince her that I really needed cleaning, but I couldn’t let her come into our bathroom where my daughter was actively vomiting. She put everything down, told me she was going to get us some clean towels, and left me with everything I needed to clean up. Obviously, the people on the phone were blindly following a policy that forbade giving guests cleaning products, but at least the housekeeper understood that I couldn’t just let her clean around my half naked vomiting kid. I’ve never been so happy to be able to clean up vomit, so my daughter could maintain her dignity, and the rest of us could have a clean bathroom. She even got a tip from us for not doing the cleaning.)

(My fairly innocent younger brother and I are playing chess. He may be losing the game, but is clearly winning with his imaginative stories of the various pieces. Suddenly…)

Brother: “The black people are coming! Quick, put on your disguises!”

(I work at a fast food restaurant. For some reason, people don’t seem to understand sizes. I am often on the drive-thru, and you would not believe the frequency with which these exact exchanges occur, with multiple customers.)

Me: “Hi, what can I get for you?”

Customer: “I’ll just have a #1.”

Me: “What size would you like that combo?”

Customer: “[Soda].”

Me: “Okay, and what size?”

Customer: “[Soda].”

Me: “Small, medium, or large?”

Customer: “[Soda].”

Me: *over-enunciating* “Do you want the fries and drink small, medium, or large?”

Customer: “Actually, make that a [Other Soda].”

Me: *picks random size for them* “Thank you. Please pull forward.”

(Another incident: a customer goes through the process of ordering whatever food, and then…)

Me: “Small, medium, or large?”

Customer: “What does that mean?”

Me: “What size do you want [Item] in?”

Customer: “What does it come in?”

Me: “It comes in either small, medium, or large.”

Customer: “I’ll take a regular.”

Me: “So, you want that in a medium?”

Customer: “No, just give me the regular size.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll make that a small.”

Customer: “Just give me whatever size it comes in!”

Me: *picks size for them* “Thank you. Please pull forward.”

(Plot twist: sometimes the customer really wants “extra large,” which is not an actual size here, and pulls all the way back through the line to have us get their order “right.”)

(It is the mid 80s, and I have a coworker come to me with two full pages of computer programming source code.)

Coworker: “Hey, can you help me with this? This function is not working right.”

Me: “Sure. What’s it do?”

Coworker: “Well, on the first line I copy…” *drones on for a few seconds about stuff I can clearly read*

Me: “Wait! Let me interrupt for a moment. I can read the code. In 20 words or less, what does this do?“

Coworker: *long pause that tells me he’s having trouble seeing the forest for the trees* “It, um, converts a date that’s a string to three integers: month, day, and year.”

Me: “Ah! Excellent. And by the time you get the string, has it been sanitized? You know, guaranteed to be pairs of digits with a slash in-between, not blanks or words or other garbage?”

Coworker: “Oh, yeah, all the user input is cleaned up.”

Me: “Okay, good.”

(I scribble “sscanf(text, “%02d/%02d/%02d”, &month, &day, &year);” in a blank spot on the page.)

Me: “Throw out everything and replace it with that.”

Coworker: “You’re kidding.”

Me: “Not at all. Use that. It’ll work. Trust me.”

Coworker: *not sure* “Well, okay.”

(Half an hour later he’s back and looking a bit sheepish.)

Coworker: “That worked. Thanks.”

Me: “No problem.”

(It’s been 30 years. Unfortunately, the new generation of programmers is in the same spot.)