25th August, 2003.
A couple of female workmates are discussing a particularly well-camouflaged and extremely graphic pornographic e-mail that slipped past their filters. The Cow-orker feels left out of the conversation and decides to insert herself into their conversation form across the room:
"My mother sends me stuff like that sometimes!"
Pause.
"Why are you looking at me funny?"
The Spawn's childcare service are in for a world of pain. When the Cow-orker collected her precious offspring ("the horrible little brat keeps sending me on a guilt trip") last week she discovered that the childminder hadn't cleaned out some of The Spawn's soiled clothes as thoroughly as she should have. The Cow-orker takes this personally, and is convinced that not only is this a deliberate act of provocation, the childminder is sending her a message.
Exactly what sort of message one can send with dirty underclothes, I don't know - perhaps a Godfather-style "your child sleeps with the faeces"?
Two hours later and most of the known world is aware of what my manager referred to simply as The Bag of Pooh. I've been subjected to the whole saga several times over as she relays her paranoid conspiracy theories to everyone she speaks to on the phone. Then, finally, someone tells her that a Bag of Pooh just isn't the done thing, and that she should think about moving The Spawn to another service. Suddenly the Cow-orker has a purpose, and a fresh round of phone calls begins as she starts calling every childcare centre between here and her home to find someplace that can admit The Spawn at short notice.
Of course it doesn't actually occur to her once to ring the offending childcare service and ask for an explanation...