What happens when a humanities major works with an office full of engineers

It's a common stereotype that engineers are inarticulate and extremely literal-minded. (Apologies to Brent, Pascale et al if you read this...you'll see what I'm getting at, I promise!) Stereotypes exist in the first place because some people fit them. So I was reminded the other day while driving back from a business meeting with my boss and a colleague.

I was trying to do a verbal run-through of how a consumer would sign up for our service (which is finally being unveiled this weekend - yay!). "Let's say I'm buying a computer, and I already have an account with [our service]" I began.

The boss cut me off. "How did you sign up for us?"
"On a computer, like everybody else."
"But you're buying a computer now!"
"Right."
"Then how did you sign up if you didn't have a computer?!"
I laughed. He didn't. "I signed up on my old computer," I finally said. That seemed to satisfy him. I resumed my hypothetical case. "So I'm buying a computer and I have an account with us-"
Now it was my other colleague's turn to butt in. "Nobody has an account with us yet, David," he explained in a very serious, matter-of-fact tone. "We don't go online until this weekend."

You think he was joking. Nope.

I do like my job, really. The minor issue of being right-brained in a room full of extremely left-brained people is usually no big deal, and it's probably good for my job security. They need someone who can explain what we do in language a non-techie can understand, and I've gotten to be quite good at that, and they know it. Just that it can occasionally be exasperating.

Luckily, I got a taste of this back in France. I wasn't aware of it until partway through my second semester there, but I had something of a reputation for being "the literary one" of our class because of my unorthodox-for-HEC educational background. It popped up now and then in the form of suggestions that group-projects be done in my room because "Dave has all those books that'll inspire us" (just by virtue of their presence on my shelf, you'll understand) or my popularity as a resume-proofreader. As it was usually an enjoyable occurrence there, it proved to be a good preparation for the unintentional absurdity that occasionally happens here!