How Stupid can People Be

It happens to all of us. Just when we think we've heard and seen it all someone breaks new boundaries of stupidity. Here's a place to share them. Dialogue at a Coffee Bar. Me: I'll have a large decaf Counter Guy: OK a large decaf, what size? Me: Listen to what you just said? Counter Guy: (looks confused and stares off into space) Coutner Woman: He wants a large, never mind, I'll get it.

I've yet to hear anyone actually specify the thing they just asked like that, but it often happens that if you provide someone with more information than they're expecting, they'll ask for it anyway.

if you go into a fast food place and order something "to go" they'll still ask you "for here or to go?"

here's a good page that has a whole lot of similar stories. the restaurants section is truly unbelievable. their page dedicated to computer stupidities is also quite amazing.

pfshaw. who needs a computer stupidities list. I live this on the support desk.

"This is not inspiring confidence..." --Me, troubleshooting a customer's camera or computer problem while listening to said customer's smoke detector sounding its low-battery chirp in the background.

-- Pauley

at the airport�on the way home from vegas, i wanted some food at auntie anne's pretzels...

�me: plain pretzel, salsa cheese, and a diet coke,�no ice,�please.� counter woman: what size drink?� me: umm... regular.� her: ok, so that's a regular coke--er, lemonade.� me: (uncertain) um, yeah, whatever.� (pays, receives pretzel, cheese.)� her: i'll just get you that drink.... lemonade, right?� me: no, diet coke.� and no ice, please.� her: (about to put ice�in cup) no ice?� ok.� (goes to lemonade dispenser, fills cup)� here you go!��me: ok, fine, whatever.� (takes cup and leaves, shaking head in disbelief)

the people next to me were even starting to laugh.� i figured i was just destined to have lemonade.� it was fine lemonade... i was just hoping for something with caffeine.� *sigh*

in defense of�some fast food counter people, sometimes its the stress of the job and not stupidity that creates confusion among orders.� I don't consider myself stupid, yet when i worked counter at tim hortons awhile back, the customers, and moreover, my boss and fellow staff made me feel fucking incompetent. i lasted a whol two weeks there, before tearing off the shackles of the fast food industry that made me feel like pond scum. i truly have sympathy for these workers; they work hard and long hours and receive absoultely no gratitude, just disgusted looks if they screw up. i received a�whopping ONE day of training, and for someone whos never worked in that industry before, it wasn't enough. Most of the customers were sweet to me, seeing my frazzled looks and "In Training" tag, but the staff veterans treated me like i was from the planet Retard if a customer asked me for something i didnt know about or if i rang in the bill wrong, which i frequently did.

That has to go down as one of the worst jobs in history, working at Tim Hortons. i dunno about the rest of you canucks, but in my city Timmys has a bad reputation for how they treat their employees.� in fact, in the interview, when my incipient boss asked me why i wanted to work there, i was honest and said "i want to know firsthand if its as bad as everyone says it is."� I was not too far off.��I threw in the towel, figuring 7 bucks an hour wasnt worth me�coming home in tears every otehr day.

Moral of the story? I dunno. Sometimes when counter�or drive-thru people seem really stupid, they're not, they're probly new, having a bad day, or�close to freaking out like Micheal Douglas in Falling Down.

jen�

Sorry for those of you hearing this story for the thousanth time. My ex-boss once said. "I can't drink the cheap brands of water, they taste like water."

Comedian Bill Engval has a whole bit dedicated to stupid things people say.

My favorite one:
"One day I was driving along and an 18 wheeler had gotten stuck under an overpass and traffic was stopped. So I was on the side of the road there chatting with the trucker when a state police trooper pulled up. He looked at the truck, and then looked at the trucker, and I thought "He can't say it. He's a paid government official." Sure enough, he goes "Didja get yer truck stuck?". And the trucker replied, "Nope, I was delivering that there overpass and I ran outta gas." Heeeeere's your sign!"

I live near a couple of low overpasses and about every other week there's a truck stuck under one of them. Friday morning there was another. It wasn't just stuck. This guy tried to go thru at full speed, the truck was peeled open like the proverbial sardine can...

I used to work at a cheap theater. I have stupid customer stories. Examples:

The concession stand is about 20 feet away from the restrooms, facing them. There are ENORMOUS signs that say "Men" and "Women" on them. You seriously cannot miss them. Somehow, some people always did. They came up to the concession stand asking where the restroom was. I stared blankly at them and the restrooms until they picked up on it.

We classified stupidity sometimes. The two main classes of stupid customers were innocently stupid and militantly stupid. The innocently stupid ones would mispronounce a movie title (e.g. "A 1" instead of "A.I."). The militantly stupid ones would demand nachos ("Y'all got nachos?" was always the initial question) when we assured them that we had none. They would then demand slushies from our lemonade dispenser. Some would demand that we rewind the�projector so they could see the movie, which, as I'm sure Zilpha could testify, is impossible.

Finally, I can't stress the stupidity of the people who tried to sneak into a movie that would otherwise have cost them a mere two dollars.

Two Dollar Movies? I haven't seen that in more than 20 years.

There was one cool theater in the 1976 charged 76 cents. The next year they raised the price to 77 cents. I'm not sure what year they stopped doing that, I think around 79.

there's still a $1 theater around here. it generally shows movies that are six months to a year old.

There was a $2.00 second-run movie theater in NYC about 12 years ago, the Cineplex Odeon Worldwide located on 50th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue. The price slowly crept up ($3, $3.75, $4). I think it closed down a few years back. Now there's the cheap theater the State Theater in the Virgin Megastore, where you can see second run films for $5.50 a pop....which is cheap relative to the $10.25(!) they are charging now for movies in Manhattan

There's a dollar theatre in Burlington, VT.

That's where I saw the South Park movie.

We have one here too.

It used to be a first run movie theatre in the 70s and 80s. In the 1990s it changed to a 1.50 theatre and then moved up to $2. (I never went there after the building had a carbon monoxide leak in Feb 2001.)

In the 70s and 80s, they used to show old movies on the weekends. That's where I saw all the old Vincent Price movies. :)

In Knoxville, TN, there use to be two such theaters, but one closed down. At the other one, you could go into the pizza shop next door, get two candy bars for a dollar, and then tickets for 2 movies for $4. It was great, 4 hours of entertainment and snacks for $5. The movies had been out for a while, but it was cheaper than renting, and you still got to sit in a theater.

Back when i was 15ish, we had a dollar theatre here; i went all the time. Then that shut down and a 2 dollar theatre came. Then after some years THAT closed and was replaced by a 2.50 theatre. Now said theatre is up to 4 bucks. STill relataively cheap, but im gonna cry for the day when "cheap theatres" rise to like, 8 bucks a movie.

jen

you're all out of nacho's? hen I demand a free icee!

there were people making noise in my theater, I want free tickets! DID YOU COMPLAIN TO SOMEONE WHO WORKS HERE WHEN IT HAPPENED? no. DID YOU DEMAND YOUR REFUND WHEN YOU WERE DISTURBED? no. SO YOU WAITED UNTIL YOU HAD SEEN THE ENTIRE MOVIE AND NOW HAVE COME OUT TO TELL US THAT EPOPLE WHO HAVE ALREADY LEFT MADE YOUR VIEWING UNNACEPTABLE AND YOU WANT YOUR MONEY BACK AND FREE TIKETS? yes. GRRR...

there is a piece of the story missing from your copy of ROTK. I demand that you find the missing piece, put the movie back togther and then let my children and I watch it again for free.

customers are insane.

This is an email I got today.

Dear Citi Mebmers,

This message was sennt by the CitibankOnline sevrers to veerify your email
addres. You must cpmotlee this psceors by clicking on the link
below and enttering in the small window your Citi ATM
full Card number and pin that you use on local Atm.
That is done for your poctretion -w- becourse some of our membres no
lgoenr have access to their email adesrsdes and we must verify it.

To veerify your e-mail adderss and akcess your Citibank-Online account, clic on
the link bellow. If nothing hapneps when you klick on the link -M copie
and paste the link into the address bar of your window.

If you are running a scam don't you'd think it would be at least worth your while to spell check? The only believable thing in the whole letter is the URL, it is at citibank.com.

well, for one, the url is NOT citibank.com - it's meant to look like citibank.com, but probably has an '@' in the middle, which makes it a "login" on another site that's so cryptic it's hard to tell.

secondly, I'd guess anyone dumb enough to be taken in by such a scam wouldn't notice the spelling issues.

There is no @, here is the URL, where is the catch?

http://www.citibank.com/?vRxPtO5k1oVJvEN1l6aM4Pp4yBQU4PBAT8q1YxmZWtJrWyttFD

Ahhh, OK I found the catch. That is what I see but the link location is:

http://www.citibank.com:[email protected]/?Th9qYGDZTaMktZH

So the copy and paste part would not have worked. And I can now see that the source is Russian.

I've seen typos, but this many?

STILL NO LUCK ENRGAILNG IT?

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Penny-Arcade did a great comic about such spam. I'm sure most people here have seen it already, but still...

While at work a co-worker told me this one. customer:"Is this a movieco theatre?" co-worker: "No, this is an AMC." customer:"Are you sure?"at this point he proceded to check the letters embroidered on his shirt to realy make the customer fell dumb, she left before he finished.

That's not so shocking. People come to the counter wanting to pay their Rogers bills all the time at my store. When I tell them we're not Rogers, but Blockbuster, they say, "So? Can't I still pay this here?"

I've been going to the Toronto Humane Society a lot recently (I've got six pets and counting) and it's amazing how rudeness and stupidity go hand in hand there on the part of people wanting to adopt pets.� We once saw a lady who went in with her 5 year old daughter to get a cat and her conversation with the *volunteer* worker went something like this:

Lady:� I'd like to adopt a cat.
Volunteer:� Yes m'am.� The adoption centre opens at 12.� I've got 11:55 on my watch, so, you'll be able to go in and pick out your cat in a few minutes.
Lady:� I don't have time to wait!� I came here to adopt a cat.
Volunteer:� Yes m'am, but the adoption centre doesn't open until noon.� The staff isn't ready yet.
Lady:� I came here out of the goodness of my heart wanting to adopt an abandoned animal instead of a pet store.� Why are you impeding my efforts to get a cat?� Do you want these animals to remain homeless?
Volunteer: If you'll wait just 5 minutes, you can go in.
Lady:� I have a child!� I promised her a cat and you are making us wait.
My boyfriend (interrupting):� Listen lady, your kid�can last the 5 minutes.� In fact, she looks pretty heathy, I think she'll last even 15 minutes.� Why dont you just sit down and wait.�

I think being rude and stupid to customer service/food industry employees is horrible but it's somehow worse when it's a volunteer, especially if it's a volunteer at a charity devoted to taking care of puppies and kitties.

Sometimes I'm glad�that stupid people make poor choices.�� Removing themselves from the gene pool�is�truly a noble act.

�http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/