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This one elderly woman has been calling me all day because my desk number is the number of a company she worked for in the 1970s who apparently still have some of her 401K. She's actually managed to make contact with the company, but every time she gets confused, she calls me.

Last time she called, she was confirming an area code of a phone number someone else gave her.

"Is it 773 or 312? When I call 312 I get a busy signal."
"Well, ma'am, the best I can do is suggest you try 773."

While I was on the phone with her -- Phone #1 -- both Phone #1's second line and Phone #2's first line rang. And the UPS guy got stuck in the (broken) door, which was just as well because he prevented the food delivery guy from entering until I'd dealt with the Epic Telephones.

I knew I shouldn't have said I was coping better. Since then, it's been like some kind of industrial stress test only instead of a car it's my ability to deal with chaos.

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I can't decide if a video game of your job would be hilarious or hilariously difficult. Probably both.

It'd be like a horrific hybrid of Tetris and Call Of Duty.

Stay strong. Maybe if you're lucky she'll try to fix you up with her granddaughter. Old ladies love to do that when they have single granddaughters (EXHIBIT A: MY GRANDMOTHER. NO, I'M NOT BITTER.).

This. Except in my case it's not my grandmother, it's my father and step-father. "Yes, just come meet my cell mate*/grad student. I'm sure you'll get along."

So at least you can console yourself that your grandma is only trying to set you up with random strangers and not, say, people she met while she was in prison. :P

*sigh* Being a single woman is hard work.

*I am not exaggerating. My father really suggested that to me once.

Was your father actually in prison, or is cell mate some kind of affectionate nickname?

My spinster aunt used to do that to me, except she wanted ME to call her friends' sons out of the blue with no introduction.

I've left more than one phone message that's said something along the lines of "Hi, you have no idea who I am, but my aunt knows your mom, and apparently they think it'd be cool if we met. I'm up for it if you are, but if you think it's too weird and uncomfortable, feel free not to call me back - I won't be offended." Because my aunt totally would have found a way to find out if I didn't try and then spent ages nagging me about it.

Unsurprisingly, none of them ever called me back.

Oh God so awkward. That's worse than the random-man-approach and "Hey, my granddaughter is single, you should go out." Urk.

LOL, didn't we talk about this when I got propositioned by a yenta on a train in Philly years ago? Is she still doing it?

Probably and YES SHE IS. She was horrified when I broke up with my last boyfriend because I'm all of 23 years old and TURNING MEN DOWN. Never mind that he was totally not my type. She tried to hook me up with a waiter at Dave&Busters. -_-

Working at my university got me well-acquainted with that feeling of UNIVERSE, TAKE A NUMBER.

I feel your pain. My day was BANANAS, certifiably insane. It started with us not being sure if we would be able to open the library on time because there was a blockage in the sewage line (which runs right under the children's section) and at worst it was a collapsed line, which would mean RIPPING UP THE FLOOR (WITH A JACKHAMMER) TO FIX IT. Luckily, it was just a block somewhere that was fixed, we opened, and everything else continued to asplode.

Although, to be fair, it wan't a bad day. It was just one bizarre thing after another. Like you said, some kind of industrial stress test.

I had similar.

LETTUCE WAS COMING UP IN THE SHOWER.

LEEEEETTTUCE.

I...do we *want* to know more about this story?

How…how does that even happen? I am confused.

The neighbor's stupid kid got mad at his dinner.

dinner...and then flushed it.

I'm glad it wasn't collapsed! That happened in our HOUSE once, it was horrible.

Once I had a drunk guy call our firm five or six times over the course of a day. He was looking for a lawyer, but it was emphatically not my boss. He was looking for a SPECIFIC lawyer, who he could only remember the first name of, and he wouldn't explain what kind of lawyer he even needed. He was very clear on the fact that since said lawyer was a MAN, and I was NOT, he did not want to talk to me. He just kept shouting the first name he had at me as if I could just magic him up.

I've had people do that -- call because someone they knew worked here ten or twelve years ago, but they only know a first name and not what department they were with or anyone else who knew them...

You are RAYMOND JARDINE MADE FLESH!

Okay, I'll bite -- who's Raymond Jardine? All google turns up is a bunch of personal pages for people named that...

"Have you ever seen the commercial for garbage bags where they test the strength of the bag by seeing how many pounds of pressure they can put on it before it breaks?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So that's Jardine - a garbage bag hooked up to a hydraulic press, doing his best not to fall apart in spite of the guy who keeps turning the knob up."

(Jardine is the...hrmmm. His role is a little hard to define. Let's say...Jardine is both the challenge and the the hardly-even-subtextual homoerotic romantic object of Gordon Korman's wonderful A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag.)

Aha! LOL, that makes more sense now.

Why...okay, if I didn't have a headache, I'd run away screaming. Because damn.

At least it's just a broken door. I went to work on Thursday to discover a HUGE. 4 ft. long, 2 - 3 in. wide, crack in the block wall above the employee entrance. They shored it up with a pair of 2x4s and some yellow caution tape. This does not inspire confidence in how one's day is going to go.

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