As a former receptionist,I’ve fought using that one myself.
When employees would call in for messages then scold me for putting them on hold, I also repressed: Let’s see. I can put a customer on hold, who is trying to give money to the company, or I can put you on hold, who is taking money from the company in the form of a salary. Which do you think I should do?
This happened yesterday, my supervisor calls up my desk and asks if Scott (a co-worker) is out here.
“No,” I said, “I don’t see him out here.”
“What do you mean ‘no?’”
** here’s where I resist the temptation to offer to speak more slowly if he can’t grasp the meaning of the word, "Noooooo . . ." **
Instead I say, “I think he has the day off.” I check the schedule and say, “Yeah he’s off today.”
“He’s off today, how’d that happen?”
** *resist the urge to tell him, “It probably happened when you wrote up the schedule last month and GAVE HIM THE DAY OFF” ***
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve complained about my supervisor in the past, saying he is so stupid he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the bottom of the heel.
There have been a couple of things that I can’t believe I DID say:
While working at Foot Locker in my youth, a customer came up to me and asked if I worked there. So I look down at my referee-like uniform and say, “No, I’m just here in case a football game breaks out in the hallway.” Thank $DEITY that he had a sense of humor, or I would have probably gotten fired.
One night while in bed, I asked my wife if she had checked the locks on the door before coming to bed. She said, [sultry voice] “Why don’t you come over here and check me?” {/sultry voice]. I responded, in my best Al Bundy voice, “Because, Peg, I know that nobody is gonna try to break into YOU tonight.” I was literally kicked out of bed.
Thanks a lot! I’ve now almost said this to my last three callers! Are you trying to get me fired? 
“What’s the magic word?”
To people who have neglected to say ‘please’ with their request.
I have to bite my tongue sometimes.
When I worked as a cashier in a grocery store, someone gave me a key ring that said “HAVE A NICE DAY!” in big letters, then beneath it in smaller print: “(elsewhere)”. Actually used said that phrase once, to a customer who was paying attention to me only long enough to perform random acts of rudeness. He didn’t notice.
Oh yes, I just KNEW that everybody would hate me for that, I thought that if I stated that first, then people may understand that it’s only a passing thought that I would NEVER say- except in the presence of friends of mine who have the same sense of humour.
I think some people are “allowed” to joke about it more than others.
For example, yes, i once was an angst-ridden teenager who thought it was a good idea to slice myself up and hope somebody would notice.
I don’t do it anymore, but when i see it on others, I have a mixture of empathy and disgust- the disgust is a leftover feeling of disgust for myself. I wonder what might have happened if somebody made that remark to me back in those days, but that’s the sort of thing that NO ONE WOULD EVER SAY- dig?
I was following the thread- “things that you would NEVER say but cross your mind.”
Thank you, those few people who understood where I was coming from.
I was laughing at myself a bit.
Here’s another example, don’thave a hissyfit this time-
I was also sexually molested at a young age. I don’t talk about that much.
But I confided in a special friend of mine. He made it better, a little.
And once, months after i told him, he said in a relevant conversation-
“I think little girls get molested because they are asking for it- wearing those sexy clothes and what have you”
I laughed. And i laughed and i laughed until my sides hurt.
That was the best thing he could have said, because it was so absurd, and it showed to me that it wasn’t so awful and horrible and shamful that it was taboo to joke about. It lessened the importance I placed on it, that I had carried with me for so many years.
The only person who ever joked about it.
Big warning though-
I am not saying that everybody should joke this way. But for me, it was the right thing to hear. It was funny.
I should know by now that in this medium, with a bunch o strangers, not everybody is going to see what i’m trying to do.
And-
c’mon, the absurdity of the thought of saying something like that to a cut-up person is funny, but only the idea-
m’ kay?
I also think it’s funny that the people who thought I was insensitve assumed I was male.
Lazlo:
What you don’t understand is that “We don’t care, as long as it’s healthy” is a polite way of saying:
“Sure we might have a preference, but it’s none of your business, and we’re certainly not going to share it with you so that you can make smirking jokes about it to our child should it happen to be born the “wrong” sex–and furthermore, you’re only the 6,000th person to have asked us the question. Try to be more original.”
I have a friend to whom this just needs to be said:
“You are nowhere near as liberal, compassionate, caring, and giving as you think you are. I don’t care how goddamn many charitable boards you sit on, how many homeless people you mentor. When you make a cxack about people living in manufactured homes and shopping at Kmart instead of Ann Taylor? It’s HYPOCRITICAL.”
Apparently, in her little world, if you’re poor enough to be homeless, you deserve compassion. But if you’re only poor enough to live modestly, you’re classless, tasteless scum.
I know, I know. But unfortunately he seemed to be the only person in the entire office who didn’t notice his incompetence. Working at that place was like walking into a Dilbert comic.
I worked in a shoe store a few years ago and every day it was a struggle not to make some smartass comment. One time a woman came up to me and complained that the boys shoes were ugly. I kept thinking, “well, no one is making you buy them.” When I told one of my co-workers about the woman’s comment she just sighed and said “I’ll go have a talk with the elves, ma’am.” I wish I’d thought of that one.
I do this at home all the time. Gets em every time. Or I’ll pretend I’m a sex hotline, which is harder since there aren’t maney male ones.
I can’t think of any I don’t say, cause I can be real obnoxious But they usually can tell I’m joking…
You are my new god…or goddess. Leave me alone for awhile…I’ll be busy setting up my Auntie Pam shrine.
I hope you like tobacco and oranges…with a little sandlewood wafting around the room?
I’m with you on this one Cher3. When Mrs. Nipples was preggers with our 1st child, it didn’t really matter what sex the baby was…just as long as he/she was healthy.
When you think about all the things that could go wrong when cells are dividing, and parts are being made, and you’ve seen, for the 50th time, those TV ads where there’s kids with downs syndrome, playing and cavorting around and you watch the news and someone’s 3 yr old died of whatever, and so on and so on and freekin’ so on, that you don’t give a flying effus if your child has a penis or a vagina…** AS LONG AS THE BABY IS HEALTHY**
It’s not really much of a problem if you are tired of hearing that response. Expecting parents are tired of answering it. To be fair to you, I did have a preference with our 2nd and 3rd children…not with the 1st…I was too much of a wreck to care.
A friend (who is bald as an egg) and I were watching a retro 80’s show, and they were showing off “The Mullet” hairstyle.
He casually remarked “I never had a mullet.” And I came this close to saying
“But you’d kill for one now, right?”
A co-worker showed me a photo of his newborn son. I looked at it, and thought, “I just can’t see you gettin’ laid”. There wasn’t even a reason for me to think that!
Years ago, my new boss was talking about going shopping, and having to haul around a big bag. I actually said, “What’s your wife have to do with this?” YIKES! Fortunately, he had a great sense of humor.
I come from a family that prides itself on clever retorts and insults from nowhere, so I don’t have that natural “don’t say that” switch most people seem to have.
Case in point: At a company gathering, my boss - a vertically-challenged gentleman - mentioned that many of his fellow graduates from a prestigious university had become famous film directors. When a colleague asked him why he didn’t become a director himself, I immediately chimed in, “Because they don’t make camera tripods that short.”
Same boss, different occasion, discussing a mutual acquaintance with a jerky husband:
Boss: “I wonder what it’s like to be married to such a jerk.”
Me: “Ask your wife.”
I guess the difference here is that I don’t usually mean it when I say that sort of thing…usually. So truthfully, this post doesn’t even belong here. I just wanted everyone to know how very, very clever I am. Oh, I’m just kidding…sort of.
My boss turned 50 recently and his secretary and I did all these awful “Over the Hill” decorations all over the office. We had a big meeting that day, so we tied black balloons all over the chair he would be sitting in at the meeting. So we’re all sitting around waiting for the stragglers to get in and one of the bigwigs asks why my boss has the balloons.
My boss said someting bout how we had decorated and that we put the balloons on his chair to help him make a fool out of himself. At which point I piped up, “Oh, you don’t need us for that!” A moment of silence during which my heart stopped and then my boss and everybody started laughing hysterically. Phew.
Turpentine-
I think it is wonderful that you have managed to keep a sense of humor and are not afraid to laugh at yourself. Anyone can laugh at others, but to laugh at oneself shows a maturity and wisdom that unfortunately, many do not possess.
And do you know what I would like to say to people that can’t take a joke? I can’t say it 'cuz too many of them are reading this and that is not the purpose of this thread! Instead I will just say, Take a Nap!
Turp, I’m sorry I lashed out at you like that. I had just been having a bad day. I had wanted to say something along the lines of, “Don’t say that until you’ve gone through it yourself” but then you posted that you had gone through that. D’oh!
I think that’s great that you can have a sense of humor about things like that, really. I wish I could be the same, but around here it’s taboo to go around slicing up your arms. I find humor in my situation a lot, but no one else seems to. I guess it’s hard to laugh about things when no one laughs with me. Actually, I could say funny things about cutting to my one friend and he’d say humorous things back, but we don’t talk much anymore due to conflicting schedules. I miss that guy.
Similarly, I heard a story once about a doctor in a semi-rural area who was being interviewed by a journalist, for a feature article.
One question the interviewer asked was, “What do you charge for a delivery?”
The doctor said, “$100 or $200.”
The journalist asked, “Why the difference?”
“It’s like this…if, when I come out and tell the anxious husband that his wife has given birth, I listen to what he says in answer. If he asks, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ I charge him $200. But if he asks, ‘How’s my wife?’ I only charge him $100.”