This is also a restaurant one, that happened just the other night. It was a bit snappy of my usually cheerful and empathetic manager, who we’ll call Laura. I had to stifle a laugh and just settle for a big smile.
A waitress, who we’ll call Alice, was a little swamped with all her tables. When you’re a server and you have 5 or more tables at once that all need refills, desserts, checks, gravy on the side, etc. it can get a little hectic. Laura, being the awesome manager that she is, was helping Alice by taking some drinks out to her tables. In the middle of all this, Alice comes up to Laura with a credit card slip, upset that the customers left her what she perceived as a bad tip. She says “Can you believe this…”
To which Laura snaps back “What, that I’m waiting on your tables for you?”
I already love Laura. I love her 10 times more after that.
Myself and the other weekend shift labbie started work at the same time. I already had quite some mileage; she lived in some kind of pink fluffy cloud. Here in Navarra and the Basque Country, wit contests are considered a normal mode of conversation; her shift manager was pretty witty and used to being wittier than people around him.
One weekend, the managers switched shifts. I get a sample, analyze it and call the manager with the results (4-digit number, a line outside woule have required 10).
Ring ring…
Unfamiliar male voice: “TelePizza, how may I help you?”
Me: “yes, I’d like to order two bigs, peperonni and hawaian. Six cans of Coke. We’re in the XYZ factory, I understand you’ll only deliver them to the bridge?”
Him: “UH?”
Me: “your solids are 42.3. And you know, maybe we could skip bringing dinner tomorrow and order pizza, we haven’t in a while.”
The other labbie fell for it every time.
About a year later, the factory had to run a project to change all the management software. The same guy and me (both still weekend shift trashies) are picked for the project team. Half a dozen americans come to meet with the team and we have a catered lunch in the factory’s cafeteria. At one point, this guy offers me some roast fresh onions and I refuse. He says:
“You know, you oughta try everything at least once.”
Me: “Really? In that case, dear, I know this guy who’d” (once-over) “ab-so-lutely love to meet you.”
He went Coke-can red. The finance guy, who’s usually as serious as a plaster wall, was laughing so hard he couldn’t eat. The factory manager informed me, very deadpan and lady-like, that I am a very bad girl. We refused to translate for the Americans, who were left wondering what the heck had been going on in that corner of the table.
I had to get up in front of my co-workers to give a short speech. I had on a shirt that had a bit of a sheen to it. When I finished, I gave the standard “any questions?” One wit piped up with, “Does your wife know you’re wearing her blouse?”
I said, “Well, I’m going straight from here to my night job as a pimp. And speaking of wives, tell yours she was late for work last night.”
A girl I was dating and I were talking about SAT scores. I told her that I had the highest one ever at my high school. Now I come from a fairly small, bucolic town. She said to me, “Yeah, but cows don’t count.”
I said, “Then why should I listen to YOU?”
This might just be a joke, but:
An American airline pilot was flying into a German airport. The air traffic controller spoke english, but was difficult to understand through his thick accent. After the American pilot asked the ATC to repeat himself a few times, the ATC snottily remarked, " Was the matter? Haven’t you ever flown to Germany before?" The pilot replied, " Yeah, back in the '40’s, but it was dark and I didn’t land."
From a Readers Digest some years back. An American G.I. is travelling in West Berlin a few years after the war. He gets on a streetcar, in full uniform, and the conductor decides to have some fun at his expense. At each stop the streetcar makes, the conductor calls out not only the current “Americanized” name of the place, but also its older, more properly German pre-war name. Apparently the other passengers find this rather droll, because they grow visibly more amused with each stop, while the American remains expressionless. Finally, the G.I. rises from his seat and heads for the door. Just before stepping off the streetcar, he turns to the conductor and says (in very good German) “Auf wiedersehen, formerly ‘Heil Hitler.’”
Maybe I’m missing something, but I think the manager was a bit rude. It’s the manager’s job to chip in when the servers get in the weeds so customer service doesn’t suffer. I’ve been a server, and five full tables can be quite a lot to handle by yourself. After all, the server is working for tips, but the manager isn’t.
When I was a bank teller, the assistant manager was this guy named Richard. He was pretty much a flaming loudmouth with a really annoying voice. And some days he simply could Not. Shut. Up. Real chatterbox, that one.
One day he was filling in for a missing teller. At the end of the day we were all counting out our drawers. Most of us were doing it silently. Not Richard. He was counting out loud.
“Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine. Perfect. I’m all cashed out. Geez, I’m good. Sometimes I scare myself!”
I’m a big, overweight, hairy (except on my head) guy. My standard reponse to “fuck you” is “You’ll never go back to women.” Works even if a gal says it to me.
When I was in college my friend happened to unknowingly ask out a 17 year old high school student. We doubled to the lake with him so it was me and my blabbermouth girlfriend 21 years each, my friend at 20 and his 17 year old date. The girl took off her coverup and exposed the most amazing figure. My girlfriend quit babbling long enough to lean over and whisper to me,“I sure wish I looked like that when I was seventeen”.
I replied,“Hell, I wish you looked like that now”
My girl didn’t say a thing for the rest of the day.
I was in a car going down to somewhere near LA, and Back to the USSR came on the radio. Several of us started singing along, and my friend Erin, who was driving asked us who sung the song.
One night I was in my local watering hole. It was pretty quiet, and the bartender was talking on his cell phone for a minute. He ended the conversation with, “I love you.”
I said: “Awww. Talking to your wife, huh?”
He gives me a look and says: “Actually, it was your Mom!”
I responded in my cheeriest voice with: “Wow. That phone can reach into the spirit realm?”
At a place where I formerly worked, there was a very loud cow-orker who would probably get slapped down quite hard for his sexist language. He had the habit of bragging about his trophy wife, and his, uh, maleness.
One day he started in on the first time he knocked boots with his trophy wife, and he asked her if she was afraid of heights. No was her response.
“Good. I like my women on top.” Chuckles from the listening office crowd.
I piped up with, “I thought it was so she wouldn’t be afraid to jump down off your ego…”
