Showing group of tourists the sites:
Me: And that side of the island is uninhabited.
Tourist: Why is that?
Me: Because nobody lives there.
Tourist: I see, and when was this fort built?
Checking people off the guest list:
Chancer Dude: I’m Alfredo Garcia
Assistant: Let me see, Garcia, Garcia <checks list>
Me: He’s already here … well, his head is anyway
Assistant: ???
I have to take peoples names over the phone constantly. Sometimes all I can hear is the “as in as in” bit. They bobble along with their cute little “as in this and as in that.” I want to say well, actually “O” is in box, B is not actually IN box, but on the outside edge of the word. Tell me your name first before you spell it out otherwise you’re Mr. & Mrs. Asin.
My parents were staying at my house, they’d come to town for a birthday party for my great-aunt. As we’re cleaning up after dinner, my mom muses “What do you get for a woman who’s turning 90?” I replied “You don’t get any green bananas, that’s for sure!”
My parents were aghast, looking at me like I just disemboweled their puppy or something.
Not a complete bomb, though, my boyfriend was in the other room out of sight, covering his face with a couch pillow so they wouldn’t hear him laughing.
Genius.
Reminds me of something. I must have dropped some pretty big bombs in my time but will need hypnotic regression to remember them. However, once when I was at school in an IT lesson I “realized” you could send messaged to people standing by the printers by typing something and hitting print. I saw a female friend over there so for some reason I wrote “SLAG” in big letters and sent it. Honestly I’m not sure why I thought she’d find it funny at the time, but because of the print queue she never saw it anyway. The female teacher covering that lesson did, however, find it and took it personally. So there was a lot of questioning about who did it, and of course it was actually possible to see which account had been used to print that particular gem. So I was accused and questioned, but had already worked out that teachers were quite powerless if you denied everything.
At my new job I was planning a trip to a local convent/retirement home and one of my coworkers was explaining to me what a beautiful building it was. She described what she considered its most unique attribute (and I still don’t totally get this) but somehow the bathroom was a part of the wall.
Enter my boss, who was coming with me. As me and my boss stepped out the door, my boss mentioned he had been there once before. With complete earnestness, my coworker asked, “Did you go to the bathroom on the wall?”
You’d think I’d learn after the same line has bombed several times, nonetheless I can’t resist using it since in my own juvenile mind I think it’s a gem.
Every time I’m in a Kohls department store with someone I point to the men’s Sonoma line of clothes and say “I hear they also make a womens line… Sonoma Bitch”
Never once did I get a single ‘ha’.
Ha.
I couldn’t figure out the joke, then realized that it only works when written and not when spoken, due to how “Sonoma” is pronounced typically. :smack:
Yeah–maybe I’m dense, but I’m still not getting it.
Maybe it’s a regional thing. How do you pronounce the word “Sonoma”?
My guess was that he pronounces it more like “Sunuma” so the joke is that it kind of sounds like “son of a bitch.” In comparison, I have always heard it pronounced with two long “o” sounds (like in the word “no”).
I was talking to a teacher who was the advisor of the Model U.N. Club at her high school. Her students were going to represent the Soviet Union. (This was in the 80’s.) I joked, “Well, don’t let them bang their shoes on the table.” She didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about. (Khruschev, a former Soviet leader, was famous for losing his temper during a speech at the U.N. and doing that.)
Someone brought doughnuts to my class one day. A very religious guy in my class said he didn’t want any doughnuts. A girl in my class asked him if he didn’t want any because of a religious reason, and he said no. I said, “But doughnuts are religious. They’re holey.”
The religious guy didn’t laugh at my comment. Well, at least the girl thought it was funny.
The worst one I can think of is when “Polack” jokes were popular in the 1970s. I told one on a camping trip, not knowing that the wife of one of my parents’ friends was of Polish descent.
Forty years later, I still feel like a complete ass about it.
Same here. Whenever I’m checking out at a store and the cashier asks if I have a penny or two or three to make things easier change-wise, I respond by shaking my head and replying with some variation of “I haven’t any cents”, in an utterly deadpan manner. One of these days, someone will at least give a smirk.
I heard this song on the radio the other day. I think the singer’s name was Crazy, but she wanted people to call her Maybe?
…
(I actually find that pretty funny.)
Had a problem with my amazon.com account one time, I got customer service on the phone, the young woman helping me explained that she would reset my password to “12345”.
So I said, “I have the same combination on my briefcase”.
She said “You do?”
Two co-workers who were marries to each other and I were in the snack room one day discussing an upcoming basketball game between UNC and Duke (bitter rivals). I’m a UNC grad and he was a Duke fan. Assuming she would be a Duke fan also, I made some comment about whether she would be pulling for Duke, and she said no, that she went to UNC as well.
So, feeling witty, I said, ‘Ah so you two are in a mixed marriage then?’ About two seconds before it registered on me that in fact, he was black and she was white. Fortunately, they were more amused at my faux pas than offended.
I don’t get it. It flew right over my head and just kept on sailing. Ha Ha sorry but it is Midnight. Maybe I’ll get in the morning! 
Him: Are you ready for your class? Got your pencils sharpened?
Her: Nope, I bought pens.
Me: Wow, you must be really confident. (zing!)
Everyone: (confused, awkward silence)
Me: Y’know, 'cuz of the pen thing.
(silence)
Me: 'cuz you can’t erase 'em…c’mon, really?
Her: That was really bad.