...that the UK and US truly are "two nations, divided by a common language". Many years ago, as a then-recent expat to the US, I was asked for directions to a colleague's desk in the office building. Without thinking, I said something like "down this aisle, turn left at the large pot plant ..."

Protip - that term has very different connotations in a land where there are now marijuana dispensaries on every street corner. I got a very funny look.

Of course, many of you will cry "bullshit" on my anecdote, but trust me, though hard to believe, it's true - people really did travel to so-called "office buildings" to work together, once upon a time, long ago. Most of the time we had to get dressed below the waist too... no lazy Zoom shortcuts back then... and did I mention that we wore onions on our belts, as was the fashion?

potted plant = a plant in a flower pot. pot plant = wacky tabacky !

Pedant as he looks like the he enjoys the latter!

[1]Onions?

[1] https://youtu.be/YE70jrhOrjk

Neighbour A kept a plant in her window that looked very much like cannabis. Neighbour B told me it was cassava, not cannabis. I later found out how he knew when the police came to his house with a search warrant. They asked him about one of his plants and he told them it was a "pot plant". It took them a while to work out that he was being honest and did not just mean "a plant in a pot".

Grow lights use a considerable amount of electricity. Be sure to have a good explanation for your electricity bill if you grow plants indoors.

[1]Local plod investigated a suspected cannabis farm (drone picked up excessive heat), found a bitcoin mine illegally tapping the grid.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-57280115

"Grow lights use a considerable amount of electricity."

Not necessarily. The ones I use in the nursery greenhouse use little more electricity than standard fluorescents.

"Be sure to have a good explanation for your electricity bill if you grow plants indoors."

One valid answer could be "I'm mining crypto currency". (Actually. in my case I have a couple of mainframes and a small cluster of vaxen running most of the time ... but they are making far more money than mining bitcoin ever could).

I had the exact same situation several decades ago. A previous manager was having problems with the SIM in their mobile phone and when looking at it, there was some clear dirt ingress on the pads and SIM socket, so I said go and find a rubber and we will clean it off. I got a very confused look an an "Excuse me ?" that said a heck of a lot more than the words themselves.

I did not know that a rubber in the USA is not something that was used with pencils to erase the mark. I now know the difference in American between a prophylactic and erasers.

I was aghast on my first day of primary school in Blighty. One of my new classmates asked to borrow a rubber ... This Californian knew about prophylactics at the ripe old age of 9ish, but had never actually seen one, much less been in possession of one. Fortunately, the teacher had a few cross-pond clues and translated for me. I think she was more embarrassed than I was ...

I moved from the far north of Scotland to Hertfordshire for work, and one of the first things I learned was that people get confused by the word criac.

This was after I was pulled into a managers office for asking someone "what's yer criac was today?" (Scottish for how are you) and they interpreted it as me offering them drugs.

I really wish I was making that up. Good job I didn't do the c-bomb (as is standard in casual Scottish conversation), they'd probably think I was pimping...

My accent and language have mellowed since.

Steven R

I had the opposite experience when contracting for an Anglo-Dutch company. I was invited to the company Christmas party in Oxford, and a very senior Dutch executive asked me if I knew where to score some cocaine. I guess he realised he'd made a mistake from my shocked expression, but made it worse by trying to justify his specifically asking me by saying "well you have long hair, so I guessed you would know".

Those that have worked for a certain fruity company will know about Bob's Meds, apertures, and the ability for a CRT to send you across the room

The ITV company I worked for once upon a time hired summer work experience students. One summer the maintenance department were contemplating putting calibrated markings on the floor by the monitor repair bench so they could estimate the EHT voltage by how far their student jumped/got thrown back when he touched the internals in an inadvisable manner. You'd think he'd have learnt after a couple of shocks, but this went on for weeks...

"and the ability for a CRT to send you across the room"

There is a reason they call it a flyback transformer ...

As a Field Engineer, I remember going to a call out to a factory that manufactured expensive pottery/china/plates etc and being presented with a PC Monitor that had been accidentally dropped into liquid clay. Was told it was not working and could I take a look and fix it !

They were most upset when I said it was beyond repair and as they were responsible for dropping in into the liquid clay they would have to buy a new one at their cost. The factory manager was most upset and said there was no point in having a maintenance contract if we would not fix problems.

All their kit on the factory floor and vast accumulations of clay/china dust, it caused all sorts of problems that we generally did fix but I always though if this stuff is killing PCs etc what is it doing to the people who work there !

Surely the standard method of fixing a bendy display like this is to whack it hard on the side...

Used to work for a monitor I had that would make a loud whistling noise from time-to-time. A good whack 1/3 of the way down on the right hand side soon fixed it.

I also had one that whistled, but only when displaying a certain amount of white on the screen. Minimise Word, or even change the paper color and it went away.

I had several mates who were firemen, I think TV/CRTs were second only to smoking as a cause of house fires.

And dodgy fairy lights if you go back a bit further.

That's what my dad told me anyway, and he was a fireman in the 70s and 80s

I was doing support for one of the Olympic games. One of my colleagues told me about the Badminton finals. The computers were underground amongst the pipes. Because of the large number of people in the audience the toilet facilities were stretched. He went down the morning of the semi-finals to find the floor was wet, so he reported it, and they sent an engineer down to fix it. I dont know what they did, but it resulted in more "water" on the floor. They said it would take a few days to fix - so as long as it holds out - they would live with it. If necessary they would get a taller table to put the computers on.

On the day of the finals - the "water" was about 9 inches deep. My colleague had to wear boots to go and turn the machine on (then leave and get back to base).

The finals were played. My colleague had to go and turn the machine off - the water was just below the top of his wellies. He left the kit there for someone else to remove, and went for a shower before meeting us in the bar.

I can trump that - as a young man (I was one once) I was watering the office plants. Shortly afterwards the entire office's computers went off. One of the plants was hanging above the partition. Above two mains sockets. It had been overwatered. I'm sure you can join the dots here.

This was in the days when compiling could take quite a while, sometimes hours. Turns out fellow software engineers don't like such compilations to be interrupted. They did see the funny side... eventually.

Desk toy magnets usually, move magnet and to there amazement usually fixed, and don't forget the odd Degaussing button if it had one.

Also had the "i need a bigger monitor", followed by "i need a bigger desk".

When i eventually retired my two home desktop monitors i was told at the local refuse site that they are company waste as no-one has two extremely large monitors on one computer , therefore i must be dumping at the household site as a company.

Two trips to two other sites later and bye bye monitors.

Who the heck DOESN'T have 2 monitors? Certainly nowadays.

One day, Facebook engineers in the Menlo Park campus had to be reminded that MacBooks are not good substitutes for umbrellas…

My Old Dear did the same years back.

Plant watered and duly seeped into the top of the telly.

Cue a Dude in a brown lab coat with a bag of valves muttering to himself.

Yeah , that ages me :(

Many years ago we kept a spider plant in a hanging basket above the (CRT) television set in the front room. One day the inevitable happened while I watered the plant and water ran out of the bottom of the pot and straight inside the TV set. There was a little cracking sound and the TV died. I face palmed at my own stupidity.

Server room at one place I worked was the former toilet block, dead centre of the ground floor. At least the urinals has been removed, but on warmer days there was a certain smell...

Anyway, the AC was crude - a domestic, wall mounted unit above the fridge sized Vax cabinets and various Sun 4 series boxes sat on tables. One weekend the AC unit had a fault, and managed to condense so much water that it poured all over the machines before crapping out.

So on Monday morning we arrived to find the remaining PC and Alpha servers overheating and the room like a sauna.