Tale 1: “I was watching the local news this morning when the
anchor reported that the police had arrested two suspects for an
extremely brutal murder in our area. The reporter stood there
with a straight face and said that the District Attorney’s
office was going for the death penalty because they had proof
that the victim was alive just moments before his death.”
Tale 2: I bought a microphone for singing, which I returned to
the store after trying it out (according to their policy). The
salesperson asked me why I was returning it, and I told her that
I was returning it because it didn’t work properly. She
responded, “Did you open it?”
Tale 3: One day my (now ex-) wife called the Help Desk at the
hospital that I worked at to tell them that I had left my pager
at home that day. She was not sure where I was at the time, and
figured the Help Desk would track me down to tell me to go home
to get my pager. The Help Desk paged me with the Help Desk
extension displayed.
She then called the Help Desk again, and told them that the
pager was in her hand, and that paging me was pointless, since
it was not on my person. They paged me again, with my home
number, to tell me that my wife had my pager.
Tale 4: I am a reference librarian. I had an Induhvidual come up
to me yesterday wanting help finding Internet sites for her
class project. She found the perfect site the day before, but
being an Induhvidual, did not bookmark it or write down the URL.
So, the question I got was, “I need to find that web page with a
yellow background that I found on this computer yesterday.”
Tale 5: I recently had trouble with my cellular service. I
called the Support Hotline and waited thirty minutes for a human
response. The tech asked the make and model of my phone. I
informed the tech that I could see no model number on the phone.
He said, “Take the battery off and look inside. The model number
is printed there.” I said if I take the battery out, I’ll lose
the connection. He said, “That’s okay. I’ll hold.”
Tale 6: A customer called me the other day to complain that the
contract delivery people had scratched her countertop, and that
the delivery company would not accept the damage claim because
the customer’s maid had signed a form stating the damage was
pre-existing. The customer told me her maid Maria neither read
nor wrote English and would not have realized what it was she
was signing. When I called the delivery company to press home
this point, they replied, “The maid must have known what she was
signing because she signed her name in English”.
At that point I was at a loss for words.
Tale 7: There’s this Induhvidual in my office who got a new PC
that has a blank-screen screensaver that comes up after about
twenty minutes without activity. Returning from lunch the first
day, he was aghast to find his monitor “not working.” So he gave
it the good old-fashioned whack on the side. Lo and behold, the
vibrations carried to the mouse and his monitor “worked”!!
Now, every day, on returning from lunch, he fixes the “loose
connection” in his monitor with a whack.