Originally Posted by leeinct
A few months ago I was in a bathroom stall in Columbus Ohio getting changed out of my suit into a pair of khakis. I have my cell phone on full blast. As I am in the stall, I put my suitcase on top of the shelf in back of the toilet (not realizing that the sensor to auto flush was right there. As I was getting changed, my cell rings and it was my biggest customer on the other end. He is praising our products, etc and just as he is about to hang up, the damn toilet flushes. not once, not twice, but three-four times!!!. I explain to him what I was doing and I have yet to here the end of it since.
I've got nothing as risque as phones tucked in cleavage or portable contreptive devices or even flushing toilets, but I thought one incident I had was pretty funny, at least in retrospect. I was traveling in Japan for two weeks with my family and had arranged to stay at a Buddhist monastery for a couple of nights on top of what is something of a holy mountain. The monks were somewhat snarky as we'd arrived later than we said we would. One of my clients, a Fortune 500 company, arranged a conference call that would include me. I would have to start the call at 4 AM in Japanthe next morning but the call included the chairman, the general counsel, other execs and senior partners in a major law firm and me so of course I agree to get on the call. I did tell them at the time that I would be staying at a Buddhist monastery. So, I found an isolated room with a payphone in case my cellphone doesn't work. At 4 AM, I join the call. There are photographs of WWII kamikaze fighter planes plastered all over the walls and models of the planes. It is absolutely freezing as there is no central heating -- monks are tough. I'm wearing pretty much all the clothes I've brought. A little before 5 AM, heavy incense starts pouring into the room. At 5 AM, someone bangs a huge gong maybe 10 or 20 times. It is so loud that the call was stopped dead in its tracks -- I swear the gong must have been two feet behind me -- and I almost jumped across the room. It happened again at 5:15 or something like it. The chairman commented that I was working very hard to make my implausible story about staying in a Buddhist monastery credible. It was absolutely hilarious in a surreal kind of way.
The monks complained to my wife that I didn't join them in prayer. We're not Buddhists and don't speak Japanese, but when in a monastery, do as the monks do, I guess. The gongs were apparently the call to prayer.
I don't know if this qualifies.