I am a college teacher at a school that has a lot of international students. I have decided to try giving my students online quizzes this semester.  

After a particular quiz, one of my international students comes up to me, complaining that she has answered every question correctly, but was marked wrong. I log into the system we use to administer these quizzes to look at her quiz. I quickly identify the problem: she answered the yes/no questions correctly… in Portuguese.

I gave her full credit and asked her to use English for these quizzes in the future.

(I am at a bagel place and have just placed my order.)

Employee: “Can I get your name for the order?”

Me: “Gregory.”

Employee: “We can only fit six letters. Can I put ‘Greg?’”

Me: “Sure.”

Employee: “Is there one ‘G’ or two in that?”

Me: “One.”

(A few minutes later:)

Other Employee: “Order for Gre! Order for Gre!” *he pronounces this “gree,” like “tree”*

Me: “Do you mean Greg?”

First Employee: “You said Greg with one ‘G.’ That’s what I put.”

(I work in a small retail store, in which we have a manual “sticker gun” that we use to create price labels for merchandise. You set the price, pull a trigger, and a price label comes out. Due to the noise it makes every time you pull the trigger, my coworker and I start calling it the “ker-chunker” and the labels in it are always referred to as “doo-hickeys.” We always know exactly what we mean when one of us says to the other “hand me the ker-chunker,” but we get weird looks from customers, which is expected. My coworker calls the supply company to order more labels. She gets on the phone with the supply rep, and completely freezes.)

Coworker: “I need… some doo-hickeys. For my ker-chunker.”

Rep: *without missing a beat* “Oh. Labels for your price gun? What size?”

Coworker: *amazed* “How on earth did you do that?!”

(I’m chatting with a group of friends about a TV show.)

Friend #1: “So, that fat black guy on the plane and—”

Me: “You mean Abraham?”

Friend #1: “I guess.”

(After a while…)

Friend #1: “He’s a pretty tough guy, that black one.”

Friend #2: “His name is Abraham.”

Friend #1: “Yeah, okay.”

(Continuing on…)

Friend #1: “So, that fat black guy’s a father now.”

Me & Friend #2: “Abraham…”

([Friend #1] refers to everyone else by their names, except the only black guy in the main cast, also the only one who is plump. Really?)

(My friends and I order pizza for delivery and it gets to us pretty quickly. Because my friend used her debit card, the pizza guy says:)

Pizza Guy: “I need your driver’s license number.”

Friend: “Why?”

Pizza Guy: “Ma’am, it’s the company rules, not mine.”

Friend: “Okay, why?”

Pizza Guy: “Ma’am, I have no choice. This is what they tell me to do.”

Friend: “No, I understand, but my driver’s license starts with the letter ‘Y.’”

(You could see the light bulb go off when he got it, but I blame her, too. He was cool, though, and laughed hard at himself. She actually gave him a decent tip for the laugh!)