During my drive to work this morning, I heard about the “Best Story Ever” submission on the radio and started thinking what my story would be. My funniest story took place almost four years ago at the last place I used to work. Every time a birthday came along, a card would be passed around for everyone to sign and the person would receive it on their birthday – yippee, woo hoo. One day, a co-worker’s grandmother passed away and a sympathy card was passed around. Apparently, it made its way through a few people before landing on my desk so I decided to read what others had written so I wouldn’t sound as repetitive. Yes, I’d rather not be nosy but it’s not as easy to write stuff for a sad occasion other than repeating the word “sympathy” on the card. Seriously, how many times would anyone want to see that because once is enough! Plus, it’s no use passing around a card knowing others are likely to read things anyway.
Back to the main story… So, as I’m reading the short messages of sympathies and condolences, I noticed written near the centre of the card signed with the person’s name: “Have a good one!”. That stunned me at first and I thought it was quite a rude thing to say. Who would write such a thing on a sympathy card? Then I realized that person must have thought this was just another birthday card and signed it without looking at what it was. More reasons to read what’s inside the card! As difficult as it was for me not to laugh, I could not hold it in and I started laughing in my cubicle. That was quite the “oh crap!” moment for me. Who do I tell and what happens to the card now? Of course, being in a small sized office with three others working across, the quiet laughing generated attention from the others around who wondered what on Earth would make me laugh while signing a sympathy card. As embarrassing as it would be and as much as I didn’t want to point it out to them, I figured they would notice anyway if they hadn’t signed the card yet. Plus, I needed advice on what to do. No one was really sure either but we all were not that surprised that it happened. It was a small company and there were still quite a few people left to sign the card so everyone knew each other there.
Being the one who discovered the message, I approached the person who wrote it. Let’s just say I witnessed another “oh crap!” brief shock moment followed by “what have I done?” laughter. At that point, the person thought it was fine to leave it because of the humour factor and was eventually also the one to give the card to the co-worker with apologies for the message. They also worked with each other quite a while and were very familiar with one another, like friends. Anyhow, everything turned out all right and the co-worker ended up getting a laugh out of it.
