Unintellegence Attacks Mid-West 2

[thekl0wn]

It seems like I'm surrounded by more sub-par intellectuals than most on here, so I thought I'd share a few recent incidents from people around me.

Incident #1: A guy I work with was asking about different sandwich selections at a local Subway restaurant, and made his decision, but needed to know the price. He asks the girl behind the counter, "How much is a foot-long?" Her reply was holding her hands about twelve inches apart, and saying, "About that much." Dead-serious. No smile.

Incident #2: A friend of mine calls me, and asks, "Is Alaska an island?" My reply was, "You're joking, right?" She was not, however. She saw a truck in Indiana with Alaskan plates, and couldn't figure out how it got to Indiana, and her husband told her they probably drove, and she thought that was funny because everyone knows trucks don't float. Her argument for thinking it was an island, is that when looking at a map of the United States, Alaska is typically shown in a separate box in the corner of the map... Right by Hawaii.

Incident #3: Same girl from incident #2. She was helping her husband fill out a job application, and was going through the checklist the employer sent along. One of the items on the checklist was, "Be sure to include your return mailing address on the envelope." She got a blank stare, and looks at her husband going, "Honey, I know what our mailing address is, but what's a return mailing address?"

Incident #4: Eating at Hacienda (local Mexican restaurant) a few months ago, I asked our waitress what day that Cinco de Mayo fell on this year. She said she would check, and walks over to a calender to see. She came back and said, "It looks like it's on the fifth of May this year." I found that funny enough in itself, but didn't laugh, and simply said, "No, I meant what day? As in Monday, Tuesday..." She then came back with another classic line, "Oh, so it's one of those holidays like Thanksgiving that falls on the last Thursday of the month."

Incident #5: Same girl from incident #2. We were swimming at her house one day, and she got home about the same time as her brother-in-law was leaving. Well, after he left I told her that he dropped a cigarette in the pool, and burnt a hole in the bottom. She looked down, and saw a brown sap stain on the bottom, and flew into a fury! She was out for blood! Well, we got her calmed down, and then I simply told her, "Think about it. How could a cigarette burn the bottom of a pool full of water?" Her reply, "I know. I know. It would float."

Let's hear some of yours.

 

[SantaMufasa]

<still off topic>
James,

Were your parents Perry and Ruth? Did you live on 16th Avenue? If so, I'll bet I can find you lodging for your reunion. When is the reunion?

Rather than continuing to tromp off into the weeds in this thread, contact me via my signature, and I'll get you to your reunion!

</still off topic>

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[gbaughma]

ESquared:

I feel your pain, bud. I have a ton of those stories myself.



Just my 2¢
-Cole's Law: Shredded cabbage

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[traingamer]

I actually got a support call: "My computer hasn't worked since the power black out."
Me: "Is the power back on?"
Them: "Not yet."

Greg
"Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught." - Winston Churchill

 

[thekl0wn]

ESquared, I spit Mt. Dew on the screen reading the one about not knowing the difference between the monitor and computer!

One of the worst cases of unintelligence I have seen was with a lady I had to do an on-site motherboard warranty replacement for. I show up, and go to pull the PC from the cubby hole where it sat. I could barely move it. It was a newer PC, but it was heavy! Upon getting the PC to its side, and removing its side case I saw the problem. The front of the case had small slots in it. She decided this would be a good place to put her spare change, and had filled the case almost full. Upon asking, she said she had been doing this for almost two years. I'm amazed that the computer ran as long as it did without frying something.

 

[rjoubert]

Spare change in the PC? OMG!

That reminds of a related story. A help desk friend of mine told me about a person who called stating their monitor was not working. After running through a couple of checks over the phone, a hardware tech was dispatched to find that this person had put a sandwich (with cheese) on the back of the monitor to warm it up before lunch.

 

[mjldba]

A truck driver approached the front desk clerk in our IT dept. and stated he had a delivery to make, the package is heavy and he's going to need some help unloading it.

The clerk asks for the paperwork and, as the truck driver hands the paperwork to the clerk, he states "It's from someone called I-Bum".

It was a new AIX server we had ordered from ..... IBM.

 

[pinkgecko]

What's bad is I can visualize acquantances that I could totally see doing some of these things. MrMilson, for one.

[blue]Never listen to your customers. They were dumb enough to buy your product, so they have no credibility. - Dogbert[/blue]

 

[Bandenjamin]

Since we are throwing out some stupidities I'll share one of my all time favorites

C = Caller
M = Me

C: "I can't get mah checkmarks" (steps in process of performing a close)
M: "OK I'll take a look"
***Several minutes go by as I perform various troubleshooting and resolve issue get 1st 3 checkmarks and go back to caller****
M: "OK, looks like we are getting them now"
C: ....
M: "Sir? Are you getting your checkmarks now?"
C: ....
M: (thinking I was working on the wrong location)"Sir do you checkmarks on your screen?"
C: .... "Well I'm not sure"
M: (Very confused now) "OK you stated that you were not getting your checkmarks. Are you getting them now?"
C: "Well I guess I don't rightly know what a checkmark is"
M: ..... (This is where I had to mute phone, I also had a new analyst that i was training listening in on the call and had to get her headset unplugged as she was laughing uncontrolably) "Do you see those little marks right next to each line?"
C: "yep"
M: "That's a checkmark. Are you getting them now?"
C: "Yep"
M: "Thank you for calling"



--Dan
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

 

[SantaMufasa]

Back in the days when we distributed new software versions on 5 1/4" floppy diskettes, we had just distributed a new version to about 500 users. The only problem was for one user that called to say that the software worked fine one time, then the next time, the software wouldn't work.

I burnt a new floppy, tested it...it worked fine, and I sent him the new copy. Soon, I received a call from the guy who said, yet again, that the software worked fine once, but would not work the next day.

Rather than doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, I burnt a third copy, tested it, and drove across town to hand deliver the new copy and to troubleshoot the issue.

I arrived at the user's office, and asked him to bring up the software for a test. He did so, we processed several transactions with perfect results. Rather than drive back the next day to confirm whether or not the software worked, I asked the user to pretend that it was the end of the day, do his normal shutdown, then pretend that it was the next day, do his start up and let's see the result.

So, simulating his end-of-day procedures, he popped the diskette out of the machine, shut down the machine, then went over to his 4-drawer filing cabinet, where he attached the diskette to the outside of the cabinet with a refrigerator magnet.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[medic]

In the place where I work, a feeling-smart lady asked for technical assistance by email. She pasted a print-screen of the application in the email. The trouble was, she had the image resized to a point that nothing was readable.

Her email: Why are we missing data for this person?

My reply: Can you give the account number and name?

Her reply: It is on the print screen.

My reply: Sorry, I can't read the print screen image. It's too small.

The lady probably thought I was being stupid, so she came over my desk and showed me how to enlarge the image. Of course we know downsampled images cannot reproduce lost details when enlarged. She then left without a word and decided to have another co-worker communicate with me about the problem.

 

[IknowMe]

From

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=1356547

From now until 10 o'clock, residents can get a so-called "Sneak Peek" at everything there with a wristband. The wristbands cost $30, and you can do just about everything there for free--even eat!

At this rate I'll soon be unable to afford things being sold "cheap".

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[thekl0wn]

where he attached the diskette to the outside of the cabinet with a refrigerator magnet.

That's great!

My boss loves to tell the story of a lady who used to work for us, that was well known for being a "know-it-all". She said the lady called down to our department one day and said her printer wasn't working. The problem was one which she regularly had... She would send the report to her print queue, but not print it from the queue. (this was before my time) As if that wasn't bad enough, my boss told her to unhook the cable coming from her computer to her printer and to straighten it out, and then to hold one end of it and shake it. My boss told her that every once in a while a one (1) would get turned sideways in the cable and block everything off.

 

[medic]

ESquared, I spit Mt. Dew on the screen reading the one about not knowing the difference between the monitor and computer!

That is not uncommon.
Back in the early 90's, a customer brought a CRT monitor at a computer shop where a friend of mine used to work. The customer told him he needs to have his monitor fixed because he saw a computer virus appeared on it.

 

[BJCooperIT]

My husband is the maintenance director for a college apartment complex. Yesterday he was looking at a puddle of water next to an air conditioning unit when a girl popped her head out a window.

She: Are you fixing my air conditioner?
Hubby: No, I am checking a leak. Did you report the problem to the office?
She: Uh, no.

I guess she thought he was a minder reader and could just tell when something needs fixed. About an hour later he knocked on the door and her boyfriend answered.

Hubby: I am here to fix the air conditioner.
Boyfriend: There is nothing wrong with it.
Hubby: Your girlfriend said it isn't working.
Boyfriend: That dumb b****, I told her that I turned the breaker off because the electric bill was too high!

I am not sure which is worse, the airhead who cannot remember what she was told or the boyfriend who couldn't figure out how to set the thermostat!

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant Developer/Analyst Oracle, Forms, Reports & PL/SQL (Windows)
My website: www.EmuProductsPlus.com

 

[flapeyre]

OK. Everybody have a lauugh at this:

The Bleeding Obvious

Tibi gratias agimus quod nihil fumas.

 

[mrdenny]

Back when I worked for a major ISP here in the US we got a call from a customer. He wanted to get his new computer online. Simple enough. He said that he got to Fry's and saw a sign for Apple Computers "New Computer for $89" (Or something like that). Needless to say he bought it.

He thought that he was purchasing a new computer. What he actually purchased was an upgrade to OS 9. He had no Mac. He had no computer.

We sent him back to Fry's for a refund.

------------------

Another call which I remember...

User called sales and setup an account to get online. User was transferred to Tech Support for manual setup.

u: User
t: Tech

t: Thank you for calling ..... Technical Support how can I help use?
u: I just setup an account and the sales person said that you could set me up to get online.
t: OK, no problem. What kind of computer do you have?
u: I don't have a computer. I want to use my TV.
t: Do you have the WebTV product? (We were one of the supported ISPs at the time.)
u: No, I want to get on the Internet with my TV.
t: Unfortunately you have to have a computer or a device like a Web TV device to get onto the Internet.
u: Oh. What should I do?
t: You will need to purchase a computer to use our service.
u: I'd like to cancel my account.
t: Hold please, I'll transfer you to customer service.

--------------------
Same company, same job, another crazy user.

I spent two days on the phone with a user who was convinced that our servers were trying to hack into his computer. He had 3 firewalls installed, and two packet sniffers running (I'm not sure how the computer actually worked at this point) and every time we opened his web browser he got "attacked" by a bunch of different sites.

It took two days of me doing DNS look ups on the IPs that he gave me to get him to believe that this was simply his web browser making a request to the ISPs personal start page and all the various web servers which go along with that (ad servers, image servers, web servers, weather channel, various news sources, etc).

-------------------------------------

Last one I promise.

u: Looser
t: Tech

t: Thank you for calling ..... Tech Support, how can I help you?
u: I just spoke with sales and they said that you could get my Brother typewriter online.
t: Sure I can help you get your GeoBook online. (GeoBook is a small device from Brother which can get email and do basic web browsing. Good device for grandparents, not good for much else.)
u: I don't have a GeoBook I have a model Something Or Another type writer.
t: Do you have a computer as well?
u: No, I don't like computers.
t: I'm afraid that we can not get a typewriter on the Internet. I'll transfer you to customer service to get your account cancelled.

Needless to say we had a few issues with our sales staff.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[ESquared]

I know someone who is for the most part quite intelligent. However, he suffers little blocks every now and then. And unfortunately, once he has a block, something in his mental constitution makes it near impossible for him to get around it. This basically means that you can teach him new things, but you can hardly ever correct things he has wrong. It's quite frustrating.

Anyway, he wanted to pull a joke on a coworker who really adored some football team or other. So together we searched online for a good picture of one of the guy's favorite players, in just the right pose. He finally chose one image that was about 450 pixels high.

I spent at least 4 hours in photoshop turning this football player into a girlie-man, complete with eye shadow, rouge, lipstick, purse, flowers, and pastel pink and blue uniform. It really was funny and looked quite realistic.

When I was all done and my friend came over to my house again for me to display my masterpiece, he said it was great! Only, can I make it bigger so it will fill the whole screen when he sets it as the desktop background on his buddy's computer?

After my trying to explain (I'm not sure he ever quite understood) he just had to take my word for it that I couldn't make it bigger, and he was fairly upset with me for not telling him sooner that I couldn't enlarge the image later. I could only tell him that HE chose the image, and how was I supposed to know that he wanted to make it bigger? He claimed I should have known. Given his otherwise respectable intelligence, I never can really know when I need to pre-educate him on something or not. Sigh.

You know, now that I think about it, all those crime shows where they "zoom in" on some crappy security footage or low-res image is poisoning the minds of our nation to believe TV-drama-tomfoolery is real technological capacity. Sorry, folks, that one requires actual magic, not just the advanced-technology-indistinguishable-from-magic kind.

----------

Same friend. One day he said to me, after seeing my plastic bag full of cooked bacon strips that was part of my lunch, "isn't bacon good?"
Me: "Yes, it's great!" I replied.
Friend: "And isn't it strange?"
Me: "Strange? What do you mean? There's nothing strange about liking bacon."
Friend: "I mean, because it's skin and all."
Me: "Bacon isn't skin, it's meat."
Friend: "Well it may be meat, but it's skin."
Me: "No, meat is muscle [at least in this case]. Bacon is primarily muscle, with fat. It's not skin."

The argument goes on for minutes, and we part with it unresolved. I do what research I can. I can't find an authoritative source online to say definitively that "bacon is muscle, not skin." After several days of me trying to show him information online and such, we finally have to agree to disagree, with some ill feelings remaining in our friendship after that about me always having to be right and prove him wrong.

I honestly cared less about being right than about helping him not believe such a silly thing. Have you ever seen a side of bacon? It's huge: many inches thick, wide, and long. It's so obviously a large piece of the animal. It is NOT skin. And dang, even this argument failed on him--evidently to him, bacon is what you see in those packages at the store, and they're thin, so it must come from a thin section of the animal, and obviously the skin qualifies as that??? Heck, I don't know his reasoning. I wish I did, so I could help him correct his stuck functions and get substantially more mileage out of his otherwise high native intelligence.

---

I get paid every two weeks. Not too long ago I was talking to the same friend about how nice it is to get an "extra" paycheck twice in a year (three paychecks between paying my rent instead of two). He said, isn't it four times a year, I'm sure it's four times a year. Thinking I could clear it up easily, I said, no, look: there are 52 weeks in a year, 12 months times four weeks is 48 weeks, leaving four weeks out of 52, ergo 2 extra paychecks. His response: no, I'm really sure it's 4 extra paychecks per year. Experience being a good teacher, I dropped the subject right away so it wouldn't become yet another friction point between us. But you know, mistaken beliefs like this can make a person make real mistakes with real consequences in life. Imagine planning a tight budget on this? I guess it's good that his wife does the finances.

The irritation is not really at all that he can be mistaken about something (we all can), and not so much that it's difficult for him to rethink things he "knows for sure" (I've done it at least once,) but that he gets hostile with me when I continue trying to help him get things right. For him its simply about me selfishly having to be right. From my perspective, if I had something so wrong as these examples, I'd want a friend to keep harassing me until I figured it out, if only to save me from serious public embarrassment some day.

There are more of these from this friend, but I'd better stop now.

[COLOR=#aa88aa black]Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.[/color]

 

[ESquared]

I have to point out some "reverse unintelligence." That is, when a person thinks someone else thinks is stupid, but actually it's their own stupidity making them not understand.

I read the following at flapeyre's link above:

I work in a computer store. One day, at 1pm, a customer walked up to the counter. All the lights were on, and the staff was behind the registers, and he asked, "Are you open?"

Okay, I can see that one. But questions like this are not always stupid.

Today, I visited a restaurant at about 10:50 am. There are two entrances, the main door and the "to go" door, but they both let into the same room. I happened to park closest to the to-go door. I couldn't locate any hours of operation signs outside. So I tried the door, found it unlocked, and went inside. Immediately upon entering, after observing that no one was present at the front desk across the room and there were no diners at all in the whole restaurant, I turned to my left and stepped one step to approach the "to go" counter which had no one directly behind it but there were people doing various things within sight in the kitchen and behind the bar.

A man some distance away saw me and approached the counter. I asked "are you open?" He said something like "well, the door wouldn't be open if we weren't, now would it?"

Quelling my irritation at his implication that it was a stupid question--and yes, feeling stupid--I replied with a lame, "oh... okay." Turning to walk back outside (my wife was waiting in the car), I said, "I'll be back in a few minutes, probably."

The man said, "oh... are you going to eat inside?"
"Yes," I said, "that's the plan."
"Oh, well, we don't open for seating until 11."
Vindicated, I said, "Then my question wasn't so misplaced, now was it?"
His sheepish reply: "No, I guess not."

I know that I was at the to-go counter and had entered through that door, but all he had to do was answer my question, "the to-go counter opens at 10:30 and the restaurant opens at 11."

I have more than once entered a business establishment only to be told sorry, it was closed. The lack of diners and an attendant at the front desk was my clue that made me ask. It was not a stupid question.

----------------

One more reverse unintelligence example.

I recently went to a private warehouse sale my company put on for a bunch of old furniture and stuff they were getting rid of. I walked into the warehouse and showed a lady behind a table my employee badge. She told me I could go on in. Now, the section of the warehouse where the sale was going on was some distance away and I couldn't see it from the table she was at. So I asked, "what do I do?"
She said, "you just go on in and buy what you want!"
This being unhelpful (duh), I said "well, okay, but how do I do that?"
"Just go in and buy!"
"Okay... what do I do when I want to buy something?"
Sounding annoyed, she twitted me with, "just walk on over there and start buying, mister!"
What could I do but walk on over there? Arriving, now I could see that everyone already there had little red half-sheets of paper with them and I could see some sale items had such papers taped to them with names written on them.

So I walked back to the woman at the table, found the red slips there, and pointedly asked her if I could have some of them. Yes, I could! Sigh.

What is so hard about just answering the question a person asks without unnecessarily assuming he is stupid? I wanted to know the procedure for buying. Why would I walk out of sight into an unknown warehouse situation when a source of information is right in front of me? All she had to do was say "you take a few of these slips of paper, and when you see something you want to buy, you put the sheet on the item with your name on it." Oh, that's how I buy! Forgive me for not having come to one of these warehouse sales before.

Sheesh!

[COLOR=#aa88aa black]Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.[/color]

 

[jrbarnett]

This isn't in the mid west, but thought it was good enough to mention.

Yesterday I set up a new printer for my aunt and uncle to replace an ageing Epson device that would no longer print black, even with a new cartridge inserted.

I set the printer up, plug it in, install the ink cartridges, connect it to their PC and install the driver.
I then removed the driver for the old printer which hasn't worked for months and unplugged it.

I then run a WinXP test print which comes out fine, and create a couple of test pages in MS Works (they don't have Office, and this came with the PC which is more than adequate for their needs) and printed them.

Here's what happenned next:

M: Me
A: Aunt
U: Uncle

M: OK That seems to be working fine now. Is there anything else I can help you with?

U: Yes, can it print a map?
M: Yes, if you've got a map you want to print. Have you got one?
A: Well, we're off to <place> on Tuesday to see some friends and don't quite know how to get there. Can it print a map of how to get there.

M: Can I logon to the internet please (they use a pay as you go dialup account)
U: Yes
(dials their ISP)
M: Have you got the address or postcode (zip code to Americans) of where you want to go to?
U: <after faffing around looking to find it> Its xxxx xxx
M: Open IE, go to streetmap.co.uk and put the postcode in
Ensure that Postcode is selected then click OK.
map comes up on screen
I go to File -> Print and click OK
A: Oh, I normally click the printer icon at the top when I want to print. Is there any difference?
M: Well, the print option opens this screen asking which pages you want, how many copies, do you want to collate etc?
Whereas the print icon at the top just prints one copy of the current document.
A similar thing happens in Works (switches back to Works).

Anyway, their map comes out of the printer and they are happy. I go home, releived I'm no longer doing ordinary helpdesk work.

John

 

[Dollie]

A long, long time ago in another lifetime...

I went with my boyfriend at the time to go visit his mother in quite possibly the smallest town I've ever been to, home of the smallest minds I've ever met.

To wit...

*Baker's Hill was the hill across the street from the bakery
*The convenience store was called the Beer Joint because that is mostly what was sold (in addition to the pints of moonshine)
*The summer holiday parade was highlighted by the firetruck that was push started just for the event, and the ambulance that was actually a truck with a trailer painted white and a hand painted/splashed red cross on the side.

When getting a temporary fishing license, I got mine first. Presenting my Texas driver license (with the word Texas in large red letters across the top) to the girl, she studied it, then asked me "What state is Houston in?" When I pointed out the top, she rolled her eyes and said "Just making sure!" It got better when my boyfriend, recently relocated to Houston, presented his Georgia driver license. She studied it, studied mine again, then asked "Is Atlanta close to Houston?"

During a second trip, I was astounded at what seemed to be a remarkable memory at the Beer Joint. I walked in and picked up some Sun Drop (an exquisite confection to me at the time), and the cashier leaned across the counter and asked, "You're that city girl from Houston, aincha?"

Then I realized that I was probably the only out of town visitor to the town every year.