the general fecking public

[brenda]

skweeky's 'hilarious' thread reminded me just how mental the general public are, no matter what job you do there is always a never ended number of Joe Public's readyto baffle you with their stupid questions and comments. my favourite 2 are as follows......

1. I worked at the cinema and we sold 2 varieties of popcorn. When a customer asked for popcorn but didn't specify which one we would ask "would you like sugared or salted popcorn?" Around one in 3 people would ask "what's the difference?"

2. This happened only a couple of days ago in the coffee shop. A guy ordered a coffee, I said "is that just a regular white coffee?" he replied "no I'll have a black coffee with some milk in it thanks"

[Aaron_T]

A similar type of thing happened to me at work today, somebody wanted 30 bags of ice and there was a call put out for me to come to the desk.

a woman was waiting and i asked what it was she wanted and she said i want "30 bags of frozen ice, make sure its frozen" i stood there in bewilderment at that for about 2 minutes before i finally made my way into the back

[Skweeky]

I agree.

my whole point to that thread was that there are some obvious things everyone just knows amd yet there is still the odd weirdo out there who seems to have spent his or her entire life on some different planet.

A classic I remember from my years at uni;

We were asked to pick a password for our recording sessions during English so we could access our recordings at home as well.
A girl was getting quite upset at the PC and shouted the lecturer over because it wouldn't allow her to enter a password.
She said 'I'm trying to put in "orange", but every time I try to type it in, the screen just shows me ******'

[DorisInsinuate]

Just about everyone will say:

"I'm crap at maths."

and be quite proud of it.

[Tempestv]

I was at work this summer, framing a deck, and a guy walks on the job site and asks me if I'm the electician. (at the time, I was nailing together the deck with a nail gun, wire no where to be seen)

I was sitting in geography class discussing current events and a current event about someone doing something very stupid came up (I forget what the exact story was) and one of the people in the class described the stupid person in the story as "this person that has the brain of a rock". anyways, a good ten minutes later, one of the slower people in the class says "wait, I don't get it, rocks don't have brains"

[j2k4]

I've got one.

There is a member here (who must also be a member of some public, somewhere) who thought a living will was a good idea, because if you died, and you then you wanted to change it, why, it would be much easier.

[Chewie]

Isn't it incredible the number of complete numpties there are in the world?

I work in a truck dealership parts dept.

When ordering a part for a customer it's not uncommon for the conversation to go:
"That'll be here for you first thing in the morning."
"What time do you open?"
"We open at 6"
"6 in the morning?"

Those that endeavour to turn up at the last possible minute often like to entertain us in similar fashion:
"What time are you closing?"
"8 o'clock sharp."
"8 o'clock tonight?"

Last Saturday I served a guy who claimed to be a tyre fitter running his own company. He turned up at 06:15 and wanted a bumper corner. I asked him for the vehicle registration or chassis number as the bumpers changed design. He couldn't tell me. I also pointed out that they're different on long- and short- wheelbase models too, but he didn't know.
After about 30 minutes of him trying to contact the owner of the vehicle or someone who could look at the reg plate, he finally decided to guess.
On Monday evening (having changed to the late shift for this week) he turned up again, with the part I'd sold him. It was the wrong one obviously, and he'd come to change it for the right one.
That done, he told me he wanted a part for another vehicle.
"OK, what's the reg?"
"I haven't got it."
"Chassis number?"
"Um... he didn't say."
Now what sort of professional can forget what kind of information he's going to need a mere two days after he's had so much trouble for not having it?

[j2k4]

Here's one from my days selling auto parts.

One Saturday, a nice-looking lady came through the door with a look of trepidation on her face...there was a bit of a lull in customer traffic, so I stepped out from behind the counter to ask if I could be of assistance.

She told me her husband's birthday was looming, and, as he was a fairly accomplished hobbyist mechanic/handyman, she wanted to get him some sort of nice toolage, but he already had so many implements she wanted to see for herself what we had on display.

I walked her up and down the aisles, showing her this and that, with an eye toward certain esoterica which would not ordinarily be owned by your average spanner-spinner, and soon enough, her head began to spin-she told me she might better consult with her son as to what might be appropriate, and to insure she didn't mistakenly purchase something he already had; she told me she would go home, talk to her son and call me within the hour.

Sure enough, about an hour later she called, relating that she'd been in our store a short time ago, shopping for her husband's birthday.

I told her I had waited on her, and told her I was ready to help her further; she replied, "No, it wasn't you."

I asked her to describe the fellow she had spoken to, and was told, "It was a big guy...the biggest guy behind the counter."

I told her she had the right guy, I was indeed the biggest guy in the store, and even described her (to her) to establish my bone fides.

She replied, "No, it wasn't you, I'm quite sure."

Sensing an impasse, I decided to default to merely offering my help anew, to which she said, "But the man I talked to knows what he showed me...I'll just have to come down there again."

I hung up, wondering what would happen next.

About a half-hour later, the door opens, and here she comes.

She marches straight up to me, and says "My God, I just called here and had the strangest conversation..."

I wasn't about to tell her I'd just had one myself.

[hamm]

~there is still the odd weirdo out there who seems to have spent his or her entire life on some different planet.

Yes, of course. The aliens walk among us.

[Tempestv]

A friend of mine was telling me that he sold a car to a friend of his. The car was one of those ones with the gas fill spout hidden behind the license plate, which ment that the friend could not find it. So he thought that it was under the hood. He found near empty plastic jug with no markings, and as the gas gauge said the tank was near empty, if the jug was near empty, that must be it, so he filled it right up to the top with gas. he got about two miles when he reilized what happens when you fill the radiator overflow with gas!!

back when I was in high school, I was sitting in classand one of the kids mentioned that he needed a new oil plug. The teacher asked what happened and the kid said, compleatly serously "I was driving home the other day, and the oil light came on. Then like five minutes later, the engine just quite. I got out and looked and the oil plug was gone, so I think I need a new oil plug."

I was in a welding class in highschool and there were two compleat idiots in class.

the first one never tried to learn to weld, then when he found out that he would fail the course if he didn't turn in some welds, he tried to bribe those in the class that knew how to weld such as myself to do his welds for him. I remember when he came up to me holding a piece of aluminum and a piece of steel, and asked me to weld them together. I told him that if he was going to try and beg someone to do his welds, that he should at least bring them something that was weldable.
later, he decided that he wanted to make a weapon, so he convinced one of the other welders (as I said, he didn't know how to weld) to weld a hooked blade shaped cutoff about 2ft across on to a five foot piece of square tube. keep in mind that building weapons in class is illeagal. anyways, fresh off the bench, he grabs it and takes it and runs around where the teacher is and exclaims "look, it's a back scratcher" of course the teacher took it away and the kid couldn't understand why the teacher wouldn't beleve him
the second kid claimed that he could weld aluminum to a brick. enough said