I was working tech support for a company that made printer (not Canon)
Customer: If I can’t get this printer to work I am going to buy a canon and SHOT THIS THING WITH IT!!!
Me: I am sorry, but that would viod your warranty.
Customer: (laughing) I like someone who gives as good as he gets.
This happens a lot:
Random college student wanders into our English Dept. faculty lounge/workroom, usually during finals week, and asks anyone who’s in there at the time: “Would one of you nice folks like to proofread my paper for me before I turn it in?”
All of us: “No, we wouldn’t/We’re not a free proofreading service/Why don’t you go see a tutor?”
(Okay, it’s not all that unbelievable from our side of things, but it’s astonishing that some students think it’s okay to pester a professor and ask that person to do pro bono work for them.)
And from inside the classroom:
Student: “Are we doing anything important today?/I was absent last week; did I miss anything important?”
Professor: “Of course not. We never do anything important in here. What made you think we did?”
Yowza. I came out with something similar, albeit inadvertently…
At work, I have a weekly meeting with another group to review, accept/reject and prioritize software development requests. There’s an online tracking form to fill out for each of them to indicate the status, reasons, etc. for what we do with them. It is a fairly new process so the form was still evolving, adding fields and values for clients, priority, etc. To reduce paperwork, we update the form in the meeting as we go along.
This being an intersection with the technical world, many of the terms used are acronyms, particularly when logged into a web form. And one day a few months ago, I dismissed a somewhat fatuous request as unnecessary and technically difficult with the statement, “not a good enough business justification” (a buzzword phrase in our area).
But what I typed into the web form was, “Not a good enough BJ”.
There was a sudden pause as everyone took notice of this. (A mixed gender room.)
One of the guys in another department has a habit of calling and saying “Is Frank handy?”.
I usually answer “Well, that’s debatable, but he’s here. I’ll just pop you through”. It always seems to get a chuckle.
I often take calls from people asking to speak to the Greek Love God. We all know who they mean. When I started working there, that’s actually how they introduced him to me.
From my brief foray into shoe-selling:
First, let me set the scene. I was working at Dillard’s, a southern department store chain between Sears and Bloomingdale’s (closer to Bloom) in quality, in a fairly wealthy part of the city. The shoe-selling job was not quite as odious as one might expect as a good portion of the clientele was bored-but-hot upper-middle-class women on their way to or from the gym. Even so the work was often frustrating because women would come in searching for a pair of shoes to match a particular outfit but not have the sense to bring the outfit with them, making them involve much more guess-work than necessary.
One morning I wake up in a dangerous mood–dangerous because I felt like being completely honest. This is not something you can do in retail. In retail you must be tactful, you must be discreet, you must not tell the blunt truth. Abe Lincoln could not have done retail. If I’d been wise I’d have called in sick and gone back to bed, but of course I was feeling to honest to lie–and you can’t call in honest. So to work I went.
My first customer of the day was one of those hot upper-middle class women, searching for a pair of shoes to match a dress she’d just bought for a party she was going to that night. She was also fairly tall–5’9" at least–and well-endowed in the mammary gland area. They were overlarge, but rather well-formed, bouncy, symmetrical–quite nice to look at.
So I’m searching for shoes for this woman. As I said she was upper-middle-class, so we stayed on the expensive end; I don’t think anything I brought out cost less than $300. And since a good chunk of that will end up in my pocket, I was willing to work for it.
At last we narrow the shoes down to two pairs. Both are dressy. Both are about $400. Both match her dress. One has a fairly high heel; the other is much less pronounced. So she asks me, “Do you think these make me too tall?”
Being utterly honest, I say, “Well, ma’am, here’s the thing. The only way a pair of shoes can make you too tall is if they cause the men you’re talking to to stare at your breasts. But you’ve got excellent breasts. I’ve been staring at them for twenty minutes, and you’re wearing flats. So I don’t think it matters. Buy whichever YOU like best, because men are going to stare at your breasts either way.”
There is a long, pregant pause. My friend Caroline, a few feet away, whips around to stare at me. The customer looks at me without blinking. And I think, “I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fired. Not only does this CUSTOMER have to think that’s funny, but EVERYONE in EARSHOT has to think it’s funny.”
The pregnant pause ends with a charming laugh that makes the customer’s very excellent boobies bounce wonderfully. “I can’t BELIEVE you said that,” she says. “I’ll take both pairs.”
So I ring up the sale. Afterwards, as I’m putting back all the shoes I’ve pulled, Caroline comes up behind me and says, “You must lead a charmed life. How have you never been fired?”
“I guess Jesus likes me,” I said. “He’s a breast man too.” 
Me: “This is Six Slant with tech support. Howdy!”
Him: “Uh, hey, uh I didn’t expect you to answer so quick.”
Me: “Oh. Sorry about that. Here.”
Me: Taps hold button, sending Him to Corporate Hold Music.
Me: Picks caller back up after counting to 7.
I do that about four times per week.
Me: “This is Six Slant with tech support. Howdy!”
Him: “Hi, This is Jim. I have a Flobulator 4000…”
Me: “I’m sorry.”
Him: “I said I have a Flobulator 4000.”
Me: “I heard you the first time, I’m just sorry to hear about it.”
Probably twice a week on that.
Just so you know, they’re in Arizona too. But not in California AFAIK.
This is what I usually say to people who say they’re from Kansas or Iowa. I got to use this a lot in the Air Force (for Kansas, not Iowa). I also said “I’m sorry” when a waiter in Omaha bragged to me about how he was buddies with a New Orleans Saints lineman who had recently been fined for ripping someone else’s helmet off the guy’s head and throwing it across the field or something. I was actually apologizing because the Saints were so bad. But I think he took it the wrong way. I didn’t order soup, so I think I came out OK regardless.
This is the one I wanted to post here earlier but forgot about by the time I finished reading the thread. I’m joking around with my supervisor in the server room during an IT internship for a local Bluetooth devices company that has since been eaten up by Broadcom. I don’t remember what we were joking about, but he said “Are you sassin’ me?” It was an awkward line to drop at that point, but he seemed to be kidding, so I kind of laughed and smiled and ignored it while I continued to gut computers. Then he repeated: “Are you sassin’ me, boy?” Again a joking tone, so I said “Yeah, I’m sassin’ you.”
Awkward silence and crickets chirping. That was a weird day at work.
I picked this up from my husband and you’d think people would learn to take advantage of it:
Co-worker: Can I ask you a question?
Me: Four.
Co-worker: ::blank look::
Come on guys, I do this to you all the time. You know the answer is going to be “four” start asking me questions that fit the answer. This is the conversation I want to be having:
Co-worker: Can I ask you a question?
Me: Four.
Co-worker: How many reports can I get you to run for me today; or how many letters do you have time to finalize; or how many extra days can I have to turn in my timesheet?
Start taking advantage of my straight lines you bastards!
I spend inordinant amounts of time talking to strangers about my name, especially on the phone. If you didn’t know me you’d wonder why I am forever having conversations that go like this: Ecology, this is Frosti. Yes, just like the snowman*; yes, that is my real name; no, I wasn’t born in the winter; yes, I was born in the 60s; no, I don’t think my my parents did a lot drugs; why, yes, I do think my parents are strange; no, my brother didn’t get a weird name, too; yes, I’ve heard that before; why thank you, I’ve grown use to it and think it’s a nice name, too.
All of this before the person will tell me what they called about. The plus side of this is that by now I’ve talked to the person so long that we’re like old friends–they feel like they know my parents!–and I can be usually be a lot more casual which means my inner smartass can get away with more. Having an unusual name has its benefits.
*I don’t usually get into the fact that I spell my name with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’. I used to care, but now I just…don’t.
Mine is:
Co-worker: Can I ask you a question?
Me: You just did.
Co-worker: ::blinks in confusion::
Some of the smarter ones have tried:
Co-worker: Can I ask you a question?
Me: You just did.
Co-worker: ::long pause for thought:: Can I ask you another question?
Me: You just did.
I have deep and abiding respect for this guy:
Co-worker J: Can I ask you a question?
Me: You just did.
Co-worker J: Can I ask you a third question?
They’ve made it at least a little into CA. I live in a little town now with one. As if anyone cares about this.
My favorite:
Customer: Do you have marbles?
Me: No ma’am, I’ve lost them.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve never heard of this movie, but for some reason, I have a feeling I will identify with it.
I always thought that my pet cemetary job would be a good thing to throw in my kid’s face when he was complaining about his summer job. As in “you think YOU had it bad? I dug graves for animals by hand!”
When I was in the auto parts business
Customer: I have a Puegot 404
me: you have my sympthaies.
Or
Customer: Well if you don’t have a brake cylinder for my Citroen 2CV where would you suggest I look?
Me: Try any junkyard in France.