Yes, that’s a true story. Just last week, in fact.
My boss - actually, my boss’s boss - pumps at work for her baby and stores the little bags in the break room fridge. Apparently, one day she … lost track of a bag? I don’t know what the hell happened. All I know is I was quietly working (or surfing the Dope ;)) and she suddenly comes stomping into my office, demanding to know if I knew where her breast milk was. I’m sure I had a stupid look on my face, and naturally, ten minutes later I had a zillion snappy comebacks.
Anyone seen the George Carlin routine that ends with “They’re *your *tits, ma. You keep track of 'em!”
So, it’s Friday afternoon and nobody’s really thinking about work anyway. C’mon … share yours.
“I thought that creamer tasted weird!” (vomits) “could you at least label that stuff?”
And from my own office, I’ve got a million of 'em. All of 'em gross. We used to keep a dry-erase board of “10 things you don’t hear at Starbucks” with people adding and taking from the list all the time.
Number one for quite a while was “Who put the uterus in the sink?”
This was an inadvertently funny comment during a potentially tragic event which turned out all right for all involved, so I can post it here.
I came back from HR earlier this week to find our office swarming with paramedics and security, and an ambulance roaring up to the back entrance. Seems that my next-office neighbor, who’d had a heart attack last year, was having a medical emergency. The rest of us were waiting anxiously up front.
After a few tense moments we all heard the unmistakable sound of my colleague loudly vomiting, and we all looked a little queasy. Then two of our secretaries decided to break the ice:
Secretary 1: “Yep, sounds like he’s vomiting back there.”
Secretary 2: “That’s something you don’t want to hear, vomiting.”
Secretary 1: “Hope it doesn’t smell bad.”
ETA: Whoops, forgot to mention: my work colleague actually had an inner-ear infection and will be fine.
The guy in the cubicle next to me has a loud voice that tends to carry, so sometimes its almost impossible to NOT overhear his phone conversations. One day he was talking to his wife, who was about to take one of the dogs to the animal hospital for some sort of surgery and was worried about their other dog’s reaction to the one being gone for a while. So he says “Put her on.” Yes, the dog. He starts talking to the dog on the phone, in that voice we use when we talk to pets and small children, telling her not to worry, everything is going to be OK… then he says “Say a prayer for her.”
That’s right. He told his dog to say a prayer for his other dog.
I had to get up and walk away, I thought I was just going to bust out laughing.
I had just stepped into the front office when one of the secretaries said. “Let’s tie string to their balls and hang them from the ceiling.” I turned around and walked away quickly. Turns out the owners had purchased some Christmas decorations and wanted the secretaries to put them up. When it came time to store the decorations I labeled the box “Betty’s Balls”.
“You know, it would be really hard to conquer the universe if you don’t have elbows.”
This really cracked me up, and I changed course to investigate further. Turns out they were discussing an old B&W scifi flick (apparently the “aliens” had really stiff arms). For some reason, that statement, coming out of the blue, was really hilarious. (had to be there, I guess:))
We all were forced to do the Myers-Briggs tests. The boss and I were in a little meeting and we were both Js, and were discussing the best way to do something. One of the managers from another department walked by, and she called out to him:
“Bob, could you come in here for a minute? We need your P-ness.”
When I did desk-side tech support, I - apparently miraculously - caused a coworker’s computer to stop malfunctioning. She looked at me and said, with great enthusiasm:
“Oooh! Are you a fairy?”
I stared at her, thinking Yeah, but that’s not the word I use.
Not the office really, but walking toward the pet store, there was a couple getting into their truck. Husband: “Should we take care of this out back behind the buildings?” I can only assume they were going to try to feed medication to a dog, or something.
The room next to my office was filled with office supplies, and once there happened to be about 6 women in there simultaneously, getting stuff and having about three conversations going at once. I wasn’t paying any attention to the chatter, but suddenly everyone was apparently done with their conversations except for one woman, who in the sudden silence finished her last comment which rang out loud and clear:It’s hard to swallow because my husband’s really got a lot of liquid in him.
