For my sins
I worked at Royal Mail one Christmas. There were hundreds of us at a time, beavering away directing post, in six rooms across the building. In the room I worked in, there was a large group of Asian men who, naturally, chatted away to each other in (if you'll forgive my ignorance) whichever language they spoke.
Sitting near them was a mother-daughter combo. The daughter seemed quiet enough, but the mother always had something to complain about.
And on this particular smoke break, it was these men.
'It's a disgrace, they shouldn't be talking in their own language, they could be saying anything about us!'
Her rapt audience mmm-hmmed and nodded and 'they could be saying anything!' as if they're the fucking choir to her soloist. 'I mean, I talk in German to my daughter, but that's alright.'
(and now for someone completely different, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 1:14, Reply)