There’s a scam where people from India call you with “job offers” and ask for “the right to represent you” but after 20 years, I’ve never so much as gotten a phone screening. I think they’re trying to act like a temp agency and failing. I work in a small shop making SciFi and fantasy leather goods, and my boss likes to mess with scammers. Since started brushing up on my Spanish with DuoLingo, I’ve decided to answer unknown numbers in Spanish.

One day at work, an unknown number from Virginia calls.

Me, in Spanish: “Hello! Good day!”

Virginia number with foreign accent: “Hi, I would speak to (mispronunciation of my name).”

Me, in Spanish: “She is not here.”

Virginia number: “Can you please speak English?”

Me, in Spanish: “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English.”

The scammer hung up.

I laughed because I speak better Spanish than he speaks English. I think it worked and they put me on a Do Not Call list because after a few instances of this, I stopped getting these calls.

I had to go for a scan to the Department of Nuclear Medicine. I went into the reception. The sign said, you will not leave through this door. Ominous! I went to the counter window. The lady inside came out through the door and held up a piece of paper “I cannot speak due to surgery. Please state your full name, date of birth and post code”
For some strange reason, I replied in a whisper. My wife looked at me with one of those ‘don’t mess about’ looks. I said in a normal voice, sorry.
She turned around the paper and on the other side it said “Everyone does that!”

We all smiled. Her colleague walked past and said on passing “And it’s lovely and quiet in the office”.

It’s also very odd that in the loo is a notice saying “Gentlemen, please sit down to go – when you stand up, you spray – and when we use the geiger counter every evening, we have to use special chemicals on the floor to neutralise the radiation”. I think us fellas are not as clean as we think.

Our washing machine has broken down. We have already considered replacing it with a washer-dryer, but are concerned the installation – which requires cutting the power cord – might void the warranty. We have planned calling the store to ask, but have not yet done so. We have just performed our final attempt at getting the old one to work, and I’m cleaning up.

Me: Guess we’re getting a new one.
Girlfriend: (difficult to hear) What do you think about the warranty, then?
Me: Let’s just call [electronics store].
Girlfriend: …what exactly do you think I asked you about?
Me: The warranty? “What do you think about the warranty, then?”
Girlfriend: I said “What do you think about the war in Iran”!

It’s a major international crisis, but we can just call [electronics store], they’ll fix it!

Content Warning: Gross

(This is another story from my crazy life as a library worker.)

I work at a library in a small town. Sometimes, we get gross situations in the bathrooms that are a hell of a ride to deal with. To make matters worse, our janitor rarely shows up, so the dirty work usually falls on me. This time, it was a clogged toilet. Honestly, clogged toilets are one of the worst things to deal with.

As I was trying to contain the mess, a woman ran into the bathroom looking completely frantic and bolted into the stall next to me. Let’s just say I heard a lot of “brownies being baked.” As she was leaving, she walked up to me.

Woman: “Hey, I’m so sorry, but I just tried to flush the toilet and it’s not working…”
Me: “It’s okay! I can fix it.”

Great… another chore for me. I finished unclogging the first toilet and looked over at the other stall. Inside the toilet was a massive mess that I didn’t even know a human being was capable of producing.

Yeah, we definitely need to hire a new janitor.

My uncle was a great lover of music, and appreciated many genres. One year, the law firm he worked for held a Christmas party, and he volunteered to assemble a playlist for them.

At the family Christmas party, his wife (my aunt) read out a memo he’d received from them after the event. Summarised, it said:

Memo: While we appreciate you volunteering to assemble a playlist for the [Law Firm] Christmas party, we advise you to consider what music is appropriate for such an event. To give a few examples from your playlist, Beethoven, Frank Sinatra and The Doors are examples of appropriate music. Ice-T and Rammstein are not.

He was not allowed to prepare a playlist again.