“S” is a competent user of Windows Live Messenger, and was chatting with a friend of hers over matters foreign to me. “Girls…gosh” I was thinking, but my photoshop project had reached a halt. I needed a bit more information before I could proceed. I turned around to ask her a question, and we got in a heated conversation about working here, and problems that we face, when I notice her monitor blinking. My eyes wandered around the room, and finally made their way to her monitor. Her friend, (who’s name I could see) had sent her an instant message, “He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have a big cock like this one”. I tried to act coy, but she noticed that I was looking behind her, and when she turned around to see what I was looking at, she exited the Instant Messaging window as fast as she could and we both started laughing hysterically for the better part of 10 minutes. She explained to me that her friend had tried to send a picture of a “well-endowed” man to her husband, and it had never gone through. She was interpreting his lack of response as anger, and was explaining her point to “S”.

Needless to say, I now ask if I can turn around before I ask her any questions face to face.

It was one of the first days of my very first job. At that time I was a shy person and terrified by the possibility to do anything wrong. So this very day I had to call a customer to get some informations about a topic which was also new to me. I took about 20 minutes to figure out what to say and how to say it and told it to myself a few times until I finally gabbed the phone (his name “Smith”, my name “Henderson”):

He: Hello, company xyz, Smith?
Me: Good morning Mr. Henderson… eeeh
- silence -
He: Did we marry? Sadly, I can’t remember. Or is it an offer? (laughing) Have to ask my wife first…
Me: BLUSH BLUSH BLUSH Please excuse me STUTTER STUTTER MOREBLUSH

Hehehehe, I needed a few moments until I remembered what I wanted to say.

—–

I didnt see that an important customer was sitting in the room as I stepped in to tell the secretary that one of the toilets is out of order… Unfortunately I said it in a very colloquial form and added some malediction

But luckily he had enough humor, so he just smiled, waved to me and said “Nice day today, isnt it?”.

My (female) friend IMed me with the question: What size underwear do you wear?

I’m pretty sure the IT guy could see how red my face was.

Just as a side note, my friend was asking because I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, and she got us all cute underwear with “Bridesmaid” embroidered on the butt. Hence the question…just thought I’d clarify.

When I first went to London, I was in a crap admin job (dictaphone typing, filing, etc) at a Chartered Surveyors office. The day after I started, the whole team went to lunch, leaving me to answer the phones.

Phone rings:
Me: good afternoon, XYZ Company
Caller: edguivr hggsykj udgv. Ggdd my farm jjkdh Kent hgdtuv dyjbf?
Me: [what the f...?] Uh, sorry sir, could you repeat that?
Caller: (repeats gibberish)

all I’m getting is “my farm” and “Kent”, I literally cannot understand ANYTHING else this older, (presumably) English fellow is saying.

Me: sorry, who did you want to speak to?
Caller: (more gibberish, getting cranky now)
Me: thank you sir, I’ll leave a message.

Now what? 50 surveyors in the building, and I have to go door-to-door after lunch, asking each of them if they had a client with a farm. In Kent. His name? No idea, sorry… Number? No, I didn’t catch it (because you gave me the shit phone with no caller ID on it), sorry…

No one knew anything. 3 weeks later, I was called into a meeting to explain to the senior Surveyors why on earth I hadn’t passed on a message from Lord Bbbb. Oh. Shite.

Because I couldn’t understand him when he rang, no one had called him back. Offended, Lord Bbbb had taken his £2million business elsewhere.

I was summarily dismissed.

My manager arrived a few minutes after I did, and since the seats next to me had filled, he wound up sitting directly across from me. The meeting got underway, and I started taking notes on a ruled notepad I used for everything.

About twenty minutes into the meeting I had a question, so I leaned forward – notepad in hand – and started talking to the room. I felt like I was being professional, turning left and right to address each of the the different managers.

I didn’t notice the strange looks I was getting until I saw my manager opening his eyes very, very wide in some type of warning signal to me. I stopped mid-question, and my manager gracefully interjected a “…what Steve was asking was…” and took over for me.

It was only a minute later, when everyone’s attention was diverted to a projector screen, that my boss silently directed me to flip over the notepad. It turned out that I’d used the back of the pad – an entire 8.5 x 11″ sheet of paper – to draw a very detailed, fully-inked rendition of Wolverine. His mask was half ripped off, his head tilted back in a rage-induced scream, claws above his head, bloody from some unforeseen enemy he’d just dispatched. It was a very detailed, very violent illustration.

Realizing that I’d been holding this in front of me as I spoke – inadvertently displaying it to everyone in the room as I thought I was being professional – gave me the chills. My boss just let his eyes fall to the table and slowly shook his head from side to side. For the rest of the time I was at that company, I always made sure to check the back pages of my notepads before going into meetings – or I’d just grab a fresh one from the supply closet. That was always the safest way to go.

One day I was sent to go pick up the CEO’s Porsche 911 from the repair shop. ‘No problem’ I thought until I got there and discovered it was a manual drive with me only being able to drive an automatic. I rang up my boss in a panic and she quickly dismissed it saying ‘It’s easy’ and ‘I don’t have time for this. Just drive the damn thing back here’.

So I managed to crawl my way out of the repair shop, slowly crawl my way across town (stalling the car many times in the process) and make it to the parking lot at my work. Just as I thought ‘Victory! I’ve done it!’ I put the car into the wrong gear and slammed the car into the parking lot / office wall. Everyone in the office rushed out to see what had made so much noise and all raised their hands to their mouths in horror when they saw me in the CEO’s Porsche all smashed up.

I wasn’t fired and he had insurance so it was OK in the end. I did use the opportunity to remind my boss to never, ever make me drive a manual car for work again though.

Little did I know that the sheath of my dress had slowly ridden up and static had taken over. My entire backside was now facing the award ceremony.

It was a good thing I had the fashionable instinct to at least wear black underwear and not hot pink.