# Bizarre ways to misinterpret your comments **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 12, 2016, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-ways-to-misinterpret-your-comments/752036 "2016-04-12T20:04:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-ways-to-misinterpret-your-comments/752036/21 "2016-04-13T16:56:29Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Awww. I love this. > > We made fried rice last night too and it was delish! I am not a big fan of brown rice, I think it’s not really rice. I, of course, love the long grain basmati I grew up with. > [@Skammer](#): > > Sorry for the tangent, but does basmati make good fried rice? We like Indian food and often only have basmati on hand, but I’ve been afraid to try using it to make fried rice since I’ve only used… well, whatever regular white rice is in the US. > > I don’t care for brown rice, but I might like it better in fried rice than cooked normally. I use basmati exclusively. Regular rice is so … blah … after having the good stuff. Brown basmati is surprisingly wonderful. It’s not overwhelmingly branny like conventional brown rice is. It’s like white basmati only more so. It cooks a tad slower than white basmati & benefits from maybe 10% more water. Give it a try. Back to the OP: I could go for days at all the bizarre ways we can have communication failures at work. Unlike **Skammer** ’s fine workplace the Prime Directive here seems to be: “Those Other Department guys are just like your ex-husband. Only worse.” ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-ways-to-misinterpret-your-comments/752036/22 "2016-04-13T17:05:57Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > Once a boss relayed to me that another boss really disliked an email I sent even though she herself disagreed with him. She said she told him she’d “talk to me” about it, so I guess she had to in order to not make herself a liar. But if a complaint is stupid or unwarranted, then really, just let it die on the vine. Told the story before, but when I worked University security, I was driving a golf cart to respond to an alarm when some students decided not to allow me to pass them. I swore at them to get out of my way, I’m responding to an alarm! Well, they went and complained about me. Our Director told them I’d be ‘talked to’. Got back to the office, supe calls me into a room, asks me about it, I tell him what happened, he said “Well, the Director wanted me to talk to you, so I have. Got anything else you want to talk about?” ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-ways-to-misinterpret-your-comments/752036/23 "2016-04-14T19:40:02Z")
This would require some basic knowledge of the Swedish language. Traditionally, we have the pronouns _han_ (=he) and _hon_ (=she). However, to (in my own view!) the benefit of the language, we have also recently adopted the gender-neutral _hen_ (= _they_, as used in similar context in English). The problem is that, while in theory, as stated, gender-neutral, it has somehow come to signify a person with ambiguous gender, rather than any person. A few years ago, I mentioned in a drunken company of friends of mine of both sexes (but not necessarily best friends with each other!) that I had recieved some information (which I specified) from a certain person,which, much as _they_ was present, I didn’t want to specify, neither by name nor by sex. So I used the pronoun _hen_ when relaying the info. The problem was that the person which had communicated with me, and which overheard the conversation, afterwards accused me of using an inappropriate pronoun (_they_ is certainly not transsexual or anything in the way!). Now, we cleared up things, and _they_ accepted my etymological (_hen_ \< Finnish _hän_ = he/she) explanation. So we’re still friends, but I’ve learned to use new words with care! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bizarre-ways-to-misinterpret-your-comments/752036.md?page=1)