Case 1: I enter a store that sold electrical appliances and such, and ask the girl there to show me their selection of CD player units. She leads me to a section full of these awful all-in-one radio/cassette/CD/speaker/alarm clock/ food proccessor boxes. I’m about to get annoyed thinking this was one salesperson intent on selling me what she felt like. I specify that I want just a CD player, not a whole stereo. She looks at me blankly. Five seconds later I realised why, and spent two minutes explaining the concept of individual stereo components. She then proceeded to put her fingers on a groove of one of the aforementioned boxes to remove a CD player by pulling it loose. It was 1999, in case you’re wandering.
Case 2: I’m in the biggest bookshop of a city of one million, and am looking for the first volume of a two tome edition of Decameron. Another young lady working for the store offers to assist me. The name of the book elicits a blank look. I, standing in front of an old foreign lit shelf, pull the second volume out -which bears a piece of period art on the cover- and show it to her. “You know, the book Boccaccio is famous for, I want the first volume” I say, and the author brings a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. “Oh, let me find it for you.” She leaves the shelf I pulled the book from, and heads toward science fiction.
And I don’t even want to remember what happened on a two month transition period to the Euro, when both Euro and local currency was legal tender. Let me say it usually involved me doing the calculation in my head, then having them try to redo it on their calculators, then having me show them how to do on their calculators, then looking at me as if I just robbed them or something. Not to mention that the cab driver that had a fit and threatened bodily harm when three days nefore withdrawal of local currency I had to pay a cab driver in mixed currency and get change back. It took me ten minutes to go where I wanted to and twenty five minutes before he was satisfied. I never knew that divisions and multiplications could be so tricky for many people.
Then again I had someone in senior high that was having trouble with the notion of negative numbers, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. He wanted to study economics :D.
A number of years ago I was in a play in a community theater in California. One of the cast members was a 20-year-old native Californian who was going to college in California at the time. The current governor of California was named George Dukemejian. During a conversation on some current event I used the name Dukemejian. The kid said, “Who?” I looked for a grin, or something to tell me he was kiding. But he was absolutely serious. Obviously not all 18-year-olds should vote.
I remember once watching a network game show where they were giving the contestants the first name and occupation of two famous people and the contestant had to give their common last name. One of the clues was “Singer Aretha and Patriot Benjamin”. The contestant looked blank for several seconds and then guessed “Washington”.
On the other hand, this might have been an example of the “Kramden factor”. There’s something about being asked a question while a television camera is pointed at you that can cause your IQ to drop by thirty percent, as I have had the misfortune to learn at first hand.
I’m not sure if I’m reading this wrong or what, and this probably does look stupid, but isn’t the Eastern Orthodox Church a seperate branch/offshoot/whatever of Christianity then Catholicism?
Holy crap - I’ve been online for three hours, partially because this thread has been expanding almost as fast as I can read it. I’ve finally caught it now, though. I think.
Anyway, I have one short story of ignorance to share. A friend of mine did a year-long course in something Christianity-related. Not sure exactly what it was for, but everyone there was Christian. Something to do with becoming a priest, possibly. In any case, the following juicy nugget was heard by one of his fellow students: “Is that how you spell ‘Jesus’?”
I’m dimly aware that some are incapable of learning spelling for some reason but are in all other ways perfectly intelligent and capable. I hope this is the case with her, but I got the impression that it wasn’t.
I write a column for the campus newspaper. I included a joke about Halliburton a couple of weeks back.
My editor read it and said she didn’t think our readers would know what Halliburton was- because she didn’t know. She asked a few people in the office and came back embarrassed. The joke stayed.
Then the editor of the section came around to read the final draft. When she got to the joke, she said “What’s Halliburton’s first name?”
:mad: I’m a little surprised that anybody doesn’t know that. But newspaper editors?
In high school (I believe it was sophmore year) one of the girls in my advanced placement chemistry class came into class looking red-faced and embarrassed. She said the following classic lines.
“I’m so embarrassed, I just went into the boys room instead of the girls room!”
She looked at me and a male friend and asked,
“How do you guys sit on those little toilets hanging on the walls?”
My old office used to be near to a grocery store and occasionally I would walk over and order a sandwich from the deli on my lunch break. So one day I’m over there and the deli clerk comes up to take my order:
Me: I’d like point two (.2) pounds of turkey on wheat, please.
Clerk: Point two (.2) pounds of turkey? That’s not very much, are you sure that’s all you want? Really?
Me: yes please.
Clerk: ok, but that’s not very much.
So now I’m thinking to myself that yeah… maybe I should have ordered .25 lbs. I then watch the clerk place one single thin slice off turkey on the scale and it registers at .04 lbs.
Clerk: (in an incredulous tone) Are you sure you only want .2 lbs?
Me: (confused) Yes, I want .2 lbs.
The clerk then proceeds to tear the single slice in two and places one half back on the scale. It weighs .02 lbs.
Clerk: (pointing at half-slice on scale) You’re telling me that’s all the meat you want on your sandwich?!?
Me (looking at scale, confused) No, I wanted point two-zero (.20) pounds of turkey.
Clerk: (suddenly enlightened) OH! You mean point twenty! (.20)
Me: (flabbergasted) Yes, point twenty (.20) is what I want. You realize point two (.2) is the same amount?
Clerk: Well to me point two (.2) & point twenty (.20) are two different things.
I was astonished that this deli clerk had no idea how to relate to the base decimal system, especially considering she’s working in a business where the prime commodity is sold typically in unit price per pound. I’m sure if had ordered a quarter pound of turkey then she would have known what I wanted, but point two-five (.25) obviously would have thrown her off.
I related this story to several of my friends & coworkers. Everyone had a laugh. When I told it to my mom, she didn’t laugh or comment. Suspiciously, I then asked if she knew how much .2 lbs of meat was. She paused for a sec, and then said “ummm… 3/4’s of a pound?”
:eek:
I was discussing air travel with a friend of mine when he suddenly blurted out that “Planes aren’t affected by gravity”
eep
A fellow Canadian of mine did not know the maritime provinces were “provinces”. When I asked what they were classified as, his facial expression contained a mixture of confusion, and wonder.
I was eating lunch one day at university, when another student blurted out for no reason “I think a person’s sense of confidence is related to the color of their underwear” She then decided to tell us the color of her underwear. It was red.
A friend and I ran into a guy she knew and started talking to him. I didn’t know much about him except that he lived next door to our friend, Tami. “So, you live next to Tami, right?” I asked. “Tami who?” “Tami Lastname. Your next door neighbor.” “No, I don’t think so.” We spent about ten minutes trying to convince him that he did live next door to her. Her last name is on her mailbox…
An internet friend always said “ideal” for idea. The first couple of times I thought they were typos but when I realised they weren’t, I corrected him but he continued to use “ideal”, what can you do?
I’ve been asked many silly questions about Australia by Americans, eg. if we speak English, if we have our freedom and do kangaroos hop through the streets. Many think it’s very small or have no idea where in the world it’s situated. Most think there is just one time zone for the whole country and have never heard of the International Date Line or the fact the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere.
I’ve also been told on more than one occasion that we don’t have to worry here as we have never had to fight in a war or been troubled by terrorists…huh?
When telling someone about NZ, of course they didn’t know where it was, I said “that’s ok I get that a lot, in fact one person I was speaking with recently thought it was up near Greenland” they replied “where’s Greenland?”
While in Australia a few years ago, I met a 25-yr old girl from Queensland - gf of a friend - who thought Wimbledon (the championships were on TV) was in Queensland.
When seeing cars on TV, she asked in all seriousness if we had cars in my country (Britain). She asked the same thing about pizza.
I’d like to think she was kidding but it didn’t appear so.
