So, it’s icy in Portland and I couldn’t get my car up the hill and took the bus with Mrs Blather. When we are coming home we show a transfer to the bus driver and she says: “Sorry, I don’t know if this is good or not. It says 21:04, I don’t understand military time”. Granted, the transfer was from a street car which is a separate entity from Tri Met (the bus service) but they accept each other’s transfers.
How hard is it to subract 12 from 21:04? How stupid does one have to be to not understand this? Our son could have done this when he was 7.
I’m pretty sure she just moved here from CA. You can tell the transplants: they keep trying to pump their own gas and they ask how much things cost “with tax”.
Not to get all pedantic on you, but a 24-hour clock isn’t “metric time”. Metric time (in computing, anyway) is measured in strict multiples of seconds from some arbitrary starting point (in Unix, 01 January 1970). Personally, I think Hex Time is a nice workable system, but then people have to learn to count from 0 to F, and most people seem to have problems just switching hands.
I’m always astonished at the basic knowledge that people lack, but I guess I should give up being surprised and resign myself to being the smartest human being on the planet. Well, second smartest, of course. Maybe third. I’ll give that ***** Marilyn a run for her money, though.
Oh, boy. 24 hour time doesn’t come naturally to most of us who don’t work in it every day, but it ain’t that hard to figure out. She sounds like one of my least favourite types of people, the wilfully ignorant - those who know they don’t know things, and are proud of it.
Did her inability to tell time interfere with your travels, though? Were you actually refused?? I imagine I would have tried awfully hard not to laugh and tell her to call the cops.
I know that the fucking 24hr clock isn’t metric time. I’ve known that since October 43rd. Perhaps I need to construct my sarcastic off-the-cuff remarks with greater forethought in future.
But they manage to get jobs working in transport? And don’t figure it out on the job? And aren’t embarassed by the fact when confronted with their inabilities in their job?
