I was the housekeeping supervisor at a motel (actually more of a go-between for the housekeeping staff and general manager as I had little actual authority). One housekeeper, a recent hire, was pregnant. We’d tried cutting her some slack, since (a) she was new to the job and (b) she was in her first pregnancy, but she continued to just…drag…along. One day I checked her clipboard and discovered she’d spent all morning cleaning a single room. (Ideally, she should have had 4-5 rooms done by that point.) I went to her and said, “We’re going to have to get you caught up here or you’ll never get done.”
She looked at me blankly, placed her hand on her stomach, and said, “But I always try to slow down after lunch. That’s when the baby is sleeping.”
As I wrote in my note to the general manager about the incident, I didn’t say anything in response because I just didn’t know what to say.
Once, while walking into a grocery store, I was stopped by one of the nation’s leading oncologists* who informed me that swinging your arms while walking was a sure way to get cancer.
Well - not to excuse the stupidity of the caller, but he might have misheard ‘address where’ and thought you were asking about the nature of the problem. Still, “I’ll tell them when they get here” is not a very good answer for that one - just less than mind-blowingly stupid.
This woman I knew had two kids and was complaining that her husband wouldn’t have sex with her when she was pregnant because he didn’t want the baby to grab his dick. She didn’t see any factual problem with what he said, she was just upset about not getting sex.
Situation: Wedding reception. Over half of the room is up on the dance floor dancing and has been doing so for the last 45 min. Drunk Lady: “Why don’t you put on some music that we can dance to”"
I was at Staples while they were getting a chair from the back for me (that shopping trip was a whole rant in itself). I was talking to the cashier and mentioned how I was probably going to go to Japan and she said:
“Those Chinese girls really love white guys, you’re gonna have a lot of fun.”
I… uh…
What!?
I just kind of muttered gibberish that sounded polite, because there was really nowhere to even start addressing that statement.
A coworker, devout Catholic, has just learned that I’m an atheist.
Her: “I can prove that you’re not an atheist.”
Me: “Huh?”
Her: “I can prove that you’re not an atheist.”
Me: “Ok, prove that I’m not an atheist.”
Her: “If you’re an atheist . . .”
Me: “If I’m an atheist . . . what?”
Her: “If you’re an atheist . . . then who do you pray to?”
She absolutely would not believe that some people don’t pray.
Sitting around shooting the shit back in my military days with my friend JW, who is black. Another guy came into the room and sat listening to us for a bit, then out of the blue asks JW: “So if you just don’t cut your hair, will it keep growing out?” We looked at each other in astonishment, then JW got up and left, muttering something like “stupid cracker” under his breath.
Upon seeing me cross my legs (manually, with my hands), I’ve had people (more than one!) say to me, “Oh, I see you can move your legs. So you aren’t paralyzed then?”
I used to have a Dalmatian who was born deaf. She was a liver (brown spots) and had blue eyes. I trained her with hand signals, and we did all the basic obedience stuff plus some agility for fun, and she’d do things like a flying down and go to the direction I pointed. She pretty much never took her eyes off me.
I can’t tell you many times I heard someone say (after watching me very obviously give her hand signal commands) “wow, she does so well for being blind!”
