Funny Doctor Story #2

I order the office supplies for our department.

Earlier this week I had a request come to me from Dr. Bachchan (a regal Indian doctor on the other side of the hall who reminds me of the famous Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan) for some bottles of office duster. I was informed by Miss Money (our budget gal) that she'd ordered 8 bottles back in December - 2 for Dr. Freakout and 6 for storage. If they weren't in storage, she said, then Dr. Freakout must have them. I was to ask him for the excess.

The following email exchange proceeded:

To Dr. Freakout:
Dr. Bachchan recently asked me to order him some bottles of pressurized duster spray for his office. Miss Money then informed me she'd bought some back in December, some for you and some for storage. Do you know where the extras are? They aren't in our store room.

To Me:
I think that we have a few of these, but I don't know whether Miss Money ordered more for storage. I can give one or two to Dr. Bachchan if that's all he needs.

To Dr. Freakout:
Could you please give two to Dr. Bachchan? That would fix all the problems of the universe.

To Me:
I already did, and none of the problems of the universe has been affected in any way.

To Dr. Freakout:
Sorry, should have clarified - the problems in MY universe were affected. Thank you!

Dr. Freakout came to my office later that day and informed me I had a very small universe if office duster spray could solve it's problems. I told him that office mascots always have very small universes. He then declared he was going to share some of his universe with me so I'd have something to do.

"You're going to offload the parts of your universe that are problematic onto my desk?" I said.

This was my fatal sentence. I was then told I was misusing the word 'problematic' and we spent the next 15 minutes looking through various dictionaries - bound and online - to try and determine who was right. He insisted it didn't mean 'problem filled' - but that it was something closer to 'enigmatic', which means mysterious or hard to solve. He was right, but I still didn't see how what I'd said was wrong. After 15 minutes I repeated what I'd said and he admitted he'd heard me wrong and that I'd used the word correctly.

"But most people use it incorrectly," he said, "and have been for the past 100 years or so."

"Well, if they've been doing it for 100 years, is there nothing to be said for the evolution of language?" I asked.

After a pause he said "Well, there is, but not to those of us clinging to 17th century English."

I shrugged - can't argue with that.