I asked a coworker of mine today, “Is it true we have always billed a month in advance?”
He said, “Oh yes.”
I said, “Well then how come so many accounts are billed for two months, because of having switched to month-in-advance billing?”
He said, “We need to bill them for two months, to avoid losing a month’s revenue in the transition.”
I said, “But how can we be transferring to a system if we’ve always used that system?”
He didn’t understand the question.
The other day a couple of us were practicing interview skills. Afterwards, our practice interviews were evaluated, and a little picture series reminded us to behave; it was an ear, followed by “w / o”, followed by a picture of some with his lips pursed tightly. I asked what it meant. “Listen to reviews of your interview, without talking.” I asked them if the picture of the guy with lips pursed meant “talking.” They said No, it means, not talking.
“Doesn’t that picture series then mean, “Listen without being mute”?” They didn’t understand the question.
The other day I was watching a couple of training videos. The instructor was also the guy who had made the videos. The video footage covered a lot of computer monitors, which of course appeared on the TV to flicker, due to the incompatible frame rates. There were tons of flickering monitors, shown at various points during the video, plus a couple right near the end which failed to flicker. I found this sort of creepy, and asked why some of the monitors were not flickering. “It’s because the refresh rates are different for computers and video.” Differing refresh rates prevent flickering?
Later on I figured out that the non-flickering monitors were actually not associated with computers at all. They were for close-circuit security cameras, and thus had (presumably) the same frame rate as video. I felt better.