1. The entrance to the subway consists of about four doors all next to each other, all interchangable. One door is out of order. The sign says "Out of order. Please use other door. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."
I love that "may have caused"! They're subtly putting the inconvenience not only in the hypothetical, but in the past. There's a bunch of other doors, you use one of them, the inconvenience is over! I must remember that trick!
2. There's this clothing repair place I go to for sewing that's too difficult or important to do myself but can't wait until I next visit my mother. The proprietor is a very large and intimidating-looking man, and he always addresses me as "my friend." Never "ma'am" or "miss", always "my friend". That's a very masculine form of address without being explicitly masculine - if you extrapolate from his accent and appearance to fill in the blanks about his history with stereotypes, you can totally see him in a market in the Old Country addressing some man with a beard as "my friend" while haggling with him for a purchase. And that's actually a good thing to do in his position, because if I went to him for alterations our interaction would become far more intimate - he'd have to stick pins in me and scrutinize how clothing drapes over my curves. Addressing me as "my friend" is an indicator that he sees me as a pants-wearing equal, which helps the balance of power and professionalizes our relationship should it ever involve his manipulating the fit of my pants. (It hasn't completely worked - I'm too shy to have any stranger of any gender put darts in my pants so I save those jobs for my mother - but I can see what he's trying to do and appreciate the cleverness of the strategy.)
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