(On my way home from college, I’ve stopped at a popular sandwich chain for lunch. The cashier looks to be about my age.)

Cashier: “That’ll be $8.28.”

(I hand her a $10 bill, a quarter, and a dime. She takes her sweet time examining the coins, before pulling out a calculator.)

Me: “…it’s just two dollars and seven cents.”

Cashier: *after confirming on the calculator* “Oh, so it is!”

(I worry about my generation.)

(I’ve just started work at a bar/restaurant in a hotel. As I’m trying to start up my own business, I go to weekly early morning breakfast meetings (early as in a 6:30 am start) at the same hotel every week on Thursdays. The hotel knew this when I started working there.)

Me: *reading my first week’s schedule* “Hey, [Manager], I see you put me down for closing shift Wednesday evening. I asked for it off because you know I come here for meetings on Thursday mornings.”

Manager: “Oh, sorry. Can you please just work it this week?”

(I agree, and work til about half 12 that Wednesday, leaving me about 4 hours of sleep that night. When next week’s rota is put up…)

Me: “[Manager], you’ve scheduled me for Wednesday closing shift again.”

Manager: “Oh, sorry, I forgot again. Write the reason you can’t work on the rota request for next week.”

(The next week…)

Me: “I’m scheduled for Wednesday again!”

Manager: “Yes, well, no one else can work Wednesdays.”

Me: “I can’t work Wednesdays.”

Manager: “Yes, you can. You don’t have anything on in the evening, just the next morning.”

(I resolved to put down that I can work until 11, rather than can’t work at all, because that way I didn’t get scheduled for closing shifts and managed almost six hours of sleep! Luckily my business took off and I was eventually able to quit, but I was very sleep deprived for those six months.)

(I’m an Irish woman but often travel to a mostly male UK office for work. One coworker thinks he is hilarious and tells me either a sexist or an Irish joke every time I visit. I always laugh it off or ignore him. One morning he is trying harder than usual to get a reaction and I am totally ignoring him until:)

Coworker: “All I’m saying is, a hundred years ago women didn’t have the vote and we had an empire. Now women have the vote and we don’t have an empire.”

Me: “Well, you shouldn’t have lost all those wars, then!”

Other Coworkers: *loud laughter*

(The funniest part is a few months later I met him outside of the office, with his wife. He never said a single sexist thing in front of her and seemed terrified I might tell her what he’s like in the office. I was nothing but polite and he left me alone after that.)

(I’m Irish, everyone else in the room is British. We are stepping through a complicated calculation checking for errors. Each row of the calculation is labelled alphabetically.)

Me: “There’s an error in row R.” *describes error*

Coworker #1: “Which row?”

Me: “Row R.” *describes error again*

Coworker #2: “Sorry which row did you say?”

Me: “Row R!”

(All look confused, looking a each other.)

Me: “Row R!” *pointing and wondering how I can say it any more clearly*

Coworker #3: “Oh! It’s Irish for ‘Awww’!”

Everyone: “Oh! ‘Awww!'” *laughter*

Me: “…”

(That’s when I learned that English people pronounce the letter ‘R’ without making the sound ‘R’ actually makes!)

(I am attending a friend’s wedding that has an open bar. They have two kinds of whiskey available, Dewar’s and Woodford Reserve. Most of the bartenders are inexperienced and are confused by my order of a neat whiskey, but this one was the most clueless:)

Me: *handing my glass over* “Do you have ginger ale?”

Bartender: “Yep!” *gets the bottle and gets ready to pour the soda in the glass*

Me: “Actually I want a whiskey ginger, so could I get some Dewar’s mixed in with the ginger ale?”

Bartender: *grabs a bottle of Merlot and proceeds to fill my glass to the top*

(I am confused but figured that the wine was for someone else.)

Bartender: *grabs the bottle of ginger ale and starts pouring the soda into the wine*

Me: “No! I wanted whiskey with ginger ale!”

Bartender: *blank stare*

Me: “You know, whiskey mixed with soda?”

Bartender: *blank stare*

Me: *takes the bottle of whiskey from the shelf and hands it to the bartender* “Please put this in the glass with some ginger ale.”

Bartender: *grabs a new glass and fills it easily halfway with whiskey and then fills the rest of it up with ginger ale*

Me: “Perfect! Thanks!”

Bartender: *tries to put a large scoop of ice in the glass, which would make it overflow*

Me: “No ice! That’s perfect!” *grabs the glass from her hand and walks away before she tries to add anything else to it*