Our house is currently under renovation and we have a few constant workers who help out.

Worker #1 is a German woman who is rather rough around the edges while Worker #2 is a Hispanic, very religious, and happy-go-lucky man. Neither of them is fluent in English but Worker #1 is notably closer to fluency than Worker #2 and the language barrier makes many of their casual conversations rather amusing.

Worker #1: “[Worker #2], do you curse?”

Worker #2: “Curse?”

Worker #1: “Yeah, when things go wrong. Like s*** f***! I’ve never heard you do it.”

Worker #2: “Oh yes! I go ‘oh woooooow!'”

It took more than a few minutes for me and Worker #1 to get our laughter under control.

Back in the day, when we had a fairly fresh (barely a few years old) PC at home (this was also a time when most people wouldn’t have a private or company laptop to bring home, just a PC workstation), my father was a keen enthusiast of new computer stuff. He used quite complicated stock exchange analysis software, and even wrote some himself. He had a website. However, sometimes he would just…

Time and again, I would come home from school (say 4 pm) to find that the PC is showing a window saying something along the lines of ‘Are you sure to install [Software]?’ or [Make changes permanent?] from a piece of software that I have never seen before. The conversation between me and my dad would usually go something like this:

Me: What’s this?

Dad: I woke up and I found this piece of software that I think would be really useful to me.

Me: Okay.

And at that point I would click on any relevant button that would let the software proceed with the installation.

Dad: It’s that simple, huh?

Me: Yes, dad, and you could have done this yourself earlier; why didn’t you?

Dad: I was afraid something might happen.

Me: [Rolls eyes]

Normally, nothing happened, but I did have to clean out the PC more often than not because of the lost of new software my dad tested out.

When I was in 4th grade I had a really nasty accident on the playground. My right (dominant) arm was in a sling with several fractures, my left wrist was strained and in a brace. My glasses were broken and the lens was severely damaged. I could barely see without them, and I don’t know the complete story of the financials but essentially we couldn’t afford a back up pair of glasses and we ordered new ones but they took two weeks to arrive. I was off school for a few days, and when I came back it was understood by the school that I really wouldn’t be able to do much without my glasses. My friend took notes for me. I was in a lot of pain, I was bored and I really wasn’t paying much attention to the goings on in class. On my fourth day back, I heard the person sitting next to me call the teacher Miss B. I nudged him and asked what he was talking about, our teacher was Mrs. A.

Well, it turns out that Mrs. A had been very sick with the flu that week. Our teacher had been Miss B the whole time, and I simply hadn’t noticed.

I am an American working as an English teacher in China. Most of the locals are only vaguely aware of the system of measurements used by the United States and sometimes by England and Canada.

Despite it being in late September, it’s still quite hot and muggy out. I’m sitting inside with one of my coworkers. She has just arrived from outside.

Coworker: “Oh, it’s so hot! How hot is it?”

Me: *Pulls out iPhone* “Let me check.” *To phone* “What’s the outside temperature?”

My phone: “It’s 107*.”

Coworker: “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?”

Me: *Laughing* “What’s the current temperature in [i]Celsius[/i]?”

Coworker: *Sheepish laugh* “Oh…”

My phone: “It’s 42*C.”

I ended up switching my phone over to metric. It made it easier while over there and I’m at least competent at both systems.

One day I go to a bookshop
Me: hello I’m looking for [ book]
Bookseller 1 ( look at her computer) normally, there’s one left but I’m not the one who stocks the human science shelves ,I’ll look for .
She’s looking
She (grumbling): I can’t find it, my coworker doesn’t keep anything in order,she IS messy, can I have your contact details, she starts at about 3.00 p.m. she’ll call you back (I look and she writes the title of the book I’m looking for)
I accept, living nearby, and I go home. When I don’t hear from her, I call around 5:30 p.m. and am put through to the bookseller concerned.
Bookseller 2: oops I had seen that there was a note, but when I saw that it was from [ bookseller 1] I didn’t read it. I thought she was still criticizing my storage system.
Me: But what about the book?
She : sorry, I sold it between tempe

So as much as I’m disappointed not to have had it, in fact it wasn’t an “official order”, on the other hand, finding myself in the middle of a dispute between employees annoyed me. You’re entitled to not like others employees, but customers shouldn’t be involved in your squabbles.