I got a haircut a few days ago—always a liberating experience—and the woman who cut it was competent, courteous, and made just the right amount of small talk to ameliorate the boredom without straying into mindless jabber. I was happy with the results. It was almost the perfect haircut. Almost.

Things were fine as she began shearing a month’s worth of shag from my dome, until she turned the chair around and set about clipping near my face. When she spoke, I had to suppress the urge to wince and recoil. Her breath was foul. It would be no hyperbole to use a familiar, if vulgar simile: it smelled like shit. I’m not kidding; the second whiff confirmed that the corrupt fumes wafting from her chops smelled exactly like dog droppings.

She was pleasant and proficient, so I gave her a respectable tip, flirting with the idea of saying something as I handed it over- but how does one broach a topic like that, especially with a stranger? I hadn’t really devoted any time to consider the idea, though the chances were good that even if I had, I’d still manage to blurt out something ridiculous or stutter unintelligibly, ruining any chance at subtlety. So I said nothing.

How does one go about such a potentially delicate, or even disastrous, social task? I’m guessing there’s really no foolproof way to approach it. If she’s still working by the time I need my next haircut, I’ll at least have had a month to think about it.

One adjective that can be fairly used to describe the unit I work for now is “mercenary”. Though we are an IT group, our boss’ only-half-joking position is that it doesn’t matter what someone wants us to do, if they can scrape together the money to pay our rate, we’ll do whatever the hell they want.

With this in mind, I was still taken aback the other day when a research professor from the Plant Biology department called my personal line, inquiring about how to package a soybean sample. Specifically, how to ensure that the soybeans within a shipping container would not be inadvertently mutated, should the package be put through an X-ray machine.

Only the day before, I’d been finishing up a three-day project for a different fellow in Plant Sciences, and assumed he’d given my number out to his colleague. So my mind raced- does UPS offer X-ray-proof containers? Would writing “DO NOT X-RAY” on the box be sufficient, or would it simply spur the DHS/FBI/Interpol into opening the box (and a dossier) on the professor?

I gave him several different ideas about container types and places to inquire about them. He seemed a little irritated, and hinted that my failure to provide a confident answer put my competence in question. Baffled and slightly peeved, I put him on hold and asked my colleagues for their input. Being similarly IT-oriented, they didn’t have any further insight into the problem either, which seemed to only vex Professor Soybean further.

Finally, I recommended he simply contact one or more parcel carriers and ask their advice, or if they had any readily available packages or shipping options that would keep his precious beans safe from the terrible ravages of Röntgenstrahlen. At this, he issued a little gasp of consternation; it was clear my answers failed to satisfy, and he asked (politely, but firmly) if there was, in fact, anyone there who had a fundamental grasp of nonmutative transport solutions, and if that person could be sent to fetch the package and deal with it properly.

While “the customer is always right”, I am not always willing to go down without a parting shot; not, at least, when my professional fitness is unjustly questioned. Besides, he was going to have to start ponying up the simoleons if he wanted to pursue this any further. I asked him why he’d called me to help him solve this problem. “Because I want a package shipped!” was his exasperated reply.

When I explained that while we were certainly willing to provide assistance, our purview was information technology, not transport. After a short silence, he asked whether or not he had reached the office of the campus Postmaster. I suppressed my impulse to point out that I had identified both my own name and that of my unit when I answered the phone, and told him that, no, the number he had dialed was not the Postmaster’s. Appropriate noises of contrition having been offered and accepted, we parted ways.

Not five minutes later, someone else called to tell me that they had a package ready for pickup. I found the correct number and gave it to them. Since then, I’ve fielded three similar calls. The wierd thing is that I’ve had this line for a couple months now, and all of a sudden I’m getting these calls. At first I thought maybe there was some sort of weird “shipping period”. Then I found out I wasn’t on our group’s internal mailing list. Maybe there’s something my boss is trying to tell me…

During this morning’s shower, I read the back label on a tube of Nair (no, it isn’t mine). Besides the direction for use, there were warnings against using it in predictably sensitive areas: around the eyes, the perianal area, the genitals, and “breast nipples”.

I had to read it again to make sure I hadn’t misread the thing—no, “breast nipples” was the exact term. This implied, however, that the product might be safely applied to nipples of the non-breast variety. While I am aware of other kinds of nipples, they do not grow hair. I understand that mutants have been known to contaminate the gene pool with extra nipples, but what properties do these superfluous fleshnozzles possess that makes them impervious to the chemical ravages of depilatory salves? What strange secrets (or stranger customers) are the makers of Nair hinting at? Do I even want to know?