Yes

Dr. Grumpy: "How are you doing?"

Ms. Random: "The morning is a complete loss so far. Truck empty. Overdoing it. Couldn't focus. Throwing things. Cats. Dogs. Crashes. Broken stuff. Shit. You ever have that kind of day?"

Modern technology

Mr. Galliform: "Annie asked me to type up my concerns and bring them in before my wife's visit."

Hands me a paper.

Dr. Grumpy: "Thank you, let me see. So sleep has been an issue?"

Mr. Galliform: "Yeah, she's often up pacing the hall and mumbling."

Dr. Grumpy: "Is she still driving?"

Mr. Galliform: "Yes, and I'd like you to discuss it with her, she's had all kinds of problems, and I think she needs to stop. I wrote some of that down towards the bottom."

Dr. Grumpy: "Oh, okay... she WHAT?"

Mr. Galliform: "Um, she's still driving, and it's causing problems."

Dr. Grumpy: "NO! Here, you wrote 'she frequently locks turkeys in the car'! When did that start? Why turkeys? That's a new one to me."

Mr. Galliform: "WHAT? Let me see... Oh, that must be autocorrect, it should say 'she frequently locks her keys in the car.'"

Pause

Mr. Galliform: "I have to admit, your version is more interesting."

Dr. Grumpy: "I bet."

Occupation

Dr. Grumpy: "Are you allergic to any medications?"

Ms. Golconda: "No."

Dr. Grumpy: "What kind of work do you do? Or are you retired?"

Ms. Golconda: "I'm a kept woman. And I'm very good at it."

Somewhere, across the sea, my readers write

Reader Alan K., from Israel, says his local grocery store recently had some issues with their "translate to English" website feature:

 

Little Shop of Horrors

This is Craig, reporting from the bakery.

For unclear reasons Local Grocery recently had a day where the store (for that matter the entire strip mall) was overrun with flies. We have no idea why. It was kind of like The Amityville Horror, but with a produce section and canned soup aisle.

Since this isn't exactly the kind of thing that attracts people to grocery stores, the management pulled out all the stops to get rid of them, with exterminators, zappers, No-Pest strips... everything short of calling Rent-a-Frog.

 

Hi, Ho. You rang?

 

Anyway, this particular night my shift-mate happened to be a girl named Marie (I kind-of know her, which can be kind-of embarrassing).

As the shift died down and closing time inched up, we began running out of things to clean, donuts to box-up, and cake orders to enter. So Marie decided to turn her attention to dealing with the flies.

She wandered off to get a fly-swatter, but came back with something entirely different.

Apparently, Local Grocery's floral & plant department had recently gotten in a shipment of Venus Flytraps for Halloween.

 

 

 

Oops, I meant Dionaea muscipula:

 

 

So Marie noticed them, piled them into a shopping cart, pushed it back to the bakery, and set them all over the counter, cake display, cookie island, and pretty much everywhere people looking for baked goods would be thrilled to encounter a carnivorous plant.

Marie, apparently having seen the Rick Moranis musical WAY too many times, was under the impression that the plants were aggressive stalk-and-ambush predators, capable of annihilating the store's swarm of flies in a matter of minutes (why they hadn't done so in the floral department didn't occur to her for some reason, and I learned long ago that arguing with her was pointless).

"I'm a mean green mother from... uh, the bakery department."

 

 

She got out her phone to film it, apparently thinking we were about to witness the Grumpyville Flytrap Massacre and it would really boost her YouTube channel. She was still waiting when the shift ended.

As anyone who's actually owned Venus Flytraps can tell you (like my Dad, who she apparently doesn't listen to), if they catch 1-2 flies a year it's impressive, the ones they do catch are the stupidest, slowest, ones of the swarm (it's called evolution, folks), and it takes at least a week to eat each one.

The store closed at 11. I got woken up at 3:00 a.m. by the morning shift donut & bagel baker, calling to find out why there were Venus Flytraps all over the bakery. I told him to call Marie and went back to sleep.

I heard her phone ringing in the next room as I dozed off.