I can't believe your brain works well enough to keep you breathing

The BBQ Pit
1

OK person one, so you called company A to get information. You got information from company A, printed on company A’s letterhead, with company A’s phone number on it. I work for company B. Why the fuck are you calling me about something company A sent you? You were either bright enough in the first place to call company A the first time, or else you called here and we directed you to company A. Was that your one thought for the year, and now your quota is exhausted?

Person two, you called me wanting to know why we didn’t pay your insurance claim. The explanation we sent you says right on it, charges applied to your deductible. It’s printed at the bottom of the page, and you tell me that you didn’t bother to read the entire page of the one-page form before calling me? Oh, and by the way, you do have a deductible on your policy, and it’s always been there. Don’t blame me because you signed a contract without reading it.

Person three, you called me with a question and I asked you for your customer number. You looked at your card and asked me which number I wanted. Oh, I don’t know, the one that’s labeled CUSTOMER NUMBER maybe? Then, after I tell you that, you STILL read me the wrong number!

Feel free to share your stories of people so stupid you’re amazed they can maintain their body temperature. I’m sure I’ll have more in a minute. After all, I’m at work.

2

Well, the other day my boss let me know that we need to collect e-mail addresses from all of our customers so that we can start sending them shipment notifications.

I suggested we print out the customer list and split it up (like 25 to each person) so we can get them all called and entered quickly.

He had a better idea: Why don’t we e-mail them instead?

::sigh::

I gave him a “re-do” on that one.

Zette

3

I just wanted to pop in and say that I found the thread title very funny. That and “people so stupid you’re amazed they can maintain their body temperature”. Very good. :slight_smile:

4

Ooh! Ooh! I just had one like this the other day.

There’s this woman in her sixties, let’s call her “Mulva,” who is an acquaintance of two of my friends. A few years ago she decided she needed a computer, and our mutual friend “Alice” helped her buy one. So far, so good. Alice also mentioned to Mulva that she thought I was “a computer genius and might be able to give her some lessons. (I’m no genius,” but I will admit to being smarter than the average bear, and I’ve maintained several computers for my home business. I’ve also given a few friends, including Alice, beginner tutoring.) I was busy at the time, so I politely declined.

Fast forward to two days ago. Mulva calls me up. “Hi, you probably don’t remember me . . .” (Unfortunately I do.) She’s having problems with her e-mail and is “just so confused by all the technical terminology” that the phone techs are using with her. She wants somebody to come to her house and be on the phone with the tech(s). :rolleyes: She’s had this computer for 3 years and she can’t follow tech instructions? They’re usually oversimplified, if anything. I politely explain to her that I work at home and I have a deadline this week, so no, I can’t come over. I mention a few tips to make dealing with phone tech support (the poor slobs that have to deal with her) and get her off the phone.

The next morning, I get an e-mail from my other friend “Sophie,” who sheepishly admits that she’s the one who sicced Mulva on me. I make her feel like the appropriate size turd by telling her that I thought of sending Mulva HER way, but relented because I know her life is crazy right now. She tells me a few choice things about Mulva like how she refuses to even take a computer class at the local seniors center, and is always bothering Sophie with her latest computer tale of woe. Great. I guess I’m on the list now. I tell Sophie that I thought about giving Mulva the name of my tech guy, who’s very good and does tutoring for a living, but I was afraid that he’d think I was a turd and never come back to my office when I needed him. She says that Mulva does seem to respond to the idea of having to PAY for help, and maybe I should think of charging her. Heh. She doesn’t have enough money. Nobody does.

About an hour later Mulva calls again.

“Oh, I’m just so confused and I wonder if you could fit in some time to help me maybe next week.”

“Gosh, Mulva, I’m just terribly busy. I’m running two businesses here and my husband just got a new job and we’re trying to finish some work on our house . . . the next few months are just a mess.”

“Oh, well could you suggest anyone who could help me?” (Didn’t we have this same conversation yesterday?)

I sigh and dig out Mr Tech’s card, explain that he’s a very good tech who’s helped me and Alice in the past and he does tutoring. I don’t mention his rates ($42/hour) – let her find out SOMETHING on her own.

Oh, and in the middle of this she tells me (as if I care) that the Dell people told her to contact her local ISP and have them send her one of those, "um, those Internet things, what do you call them, those little round things . . .

(wait for it)

a CD?" <my jaw drops> AAARGGGGGHHHHH!!! “You see I just get so befuddled with all this stuff that after a while you just don’t trust yourself anymore.” (Speak for yourself, lady.) “I’m afraid to put it in.” <bang head on wall>

HOW CAN SOMEONE BE THIS STUPID AND STILL FUNCTION IN SOCIETY???%#%^&%#*(**??? She’s had a computer for several years, and doesn’t know what a CD is? “Little round Internet thingy”??

Later I e-mailed Sophie about this latest call, and she tells me that Mr. Tech was already out to Mulva’s place once, and all she did while he was there was bitch about how it was so expensive and no one ever explains anything clearly. She doesn’t think he’ll go out there again.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that Mulva is A PHARMACIST?? Sophie used to work with her – she said, “The owner needed someone there with a license and there’s such a shortage of pharmacists that I think he’d try and stuff her if she were dead and hang up the license in back.” I understand that at least one person has had a trip to the hospital on Mulva’s dime.

Mulva appears to have no retention whatsoever. She refuses to help herself at all. She can’t follow simple instructions, apparently. She has the balls to call up a virtual STRANGER and ask for a FAVOR? As I told Sophie, ignorance is bad enough, but willful ignorance just doesn’t fly with me. God help Mulva if she calls me again. I’ll give it to her with both barrels.

5

Person four: I talked to you 15 minutes ago and told you your claim wasn’t on file. Did you think by waiting 15 minutes and calling back it would magically appear?

Hey idiot at the cable company: do you think next time, instead of making me go without cable for two days for a “cut line” when there is no cut line, you might just tell me to unplug the cable box for ten seconds to fix it?

6

Scarlett67, I believe I took my computer courses with Mulva and her associates. I catch on to computers pretty quickly, so I was having a great time in class, working ahead and getting my money’s worth out of it. Then the Mulvas in class find out I know a little bit about what I’m doing, and voila! I’m their personal tutor for the rest of the classes. Instead of asking, oh, I don’t know, maybe THE FREAKIN’ INSTRUCTOR who gets paid to answer their dumbass questions, just ask me, because turning your head and asking is so much easier than raising your hand and waiting 15 seconds. And don’t even suggest the idea that you try to figure it out for yourself first, and actually learn somelthing. :rolleyes:

7

I deal with dipshits like this all the time. If you don’t know your password don’t call your ISP tech support. If you don’t know your email address, You shouldn’t own a fucking computer. Don’t fucking call me to hear yourself bitch. Did you see Pulp Fiction? Do you remember the part when John Travolta and Harvey Keitel were talking? O.K., I’m Harvey Keitel and You’re John Travolta. I think fast, I talk fast, so pretty please with sugar on top, do exactly as I tell you, keep yer fucking yap shut except when I ask you a question. If I ask you a question, answer the question only. Don’t bitch and moan, I don’t care what the previous techs told you. I am a level 2 resolution specialist, they’re not. There’s a reason for that. Time is of the essence here, there are dozens more moronic, knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers who want to look at free porn waiting behind you.
Oh, and you stubborn retarded fuckwad, when I tell you there is a known issue with your brand of computer, your brand of modem and your operating system, (it’s windows millenium, dipshit. You are not running windows 2000 professional or w2k advanced server on your box. and there is no such thing as ‘windows 2000 millenium’.) and that your modem drivers are corrupt, and that your system freezing everytime 30 seconds means that it has operating system problems and I cannot fix it, don’t fucking ignore what I tell you. Don’t make me tell you 4 times that it is outside of my support boundaries. I doubt that I am the only person unfortunate enough to have to talk to you that prefaces every repetition with ‘listen’. Why do you think we say ‘listen’ so much? Becuase you’re not listening. Go waste someone else’s time.

8

When I started working in industry (after teaching), I was amazed at how dumb most people were. They couldn’t seem to figure out computer problems and when I figured it out and showed them, they wouldn’t remember what to do the next time it came up. I felt sooooo important and received so much praise (and computer trouble shooting wasn’t even my job!).

When my first review came around, I wasn’t promoted and received a paltry raise. I brought forth arguments about how well I troubleshooted computer problems and they said “That is a low level task and not important to the bottom line of the company”.

The light came on!! Duh!!! They were smart and I was dumb! They pretended they were dumb so I would take up the ‘low-level’ tasks freeing them up to concentrate on ‘higher-level’ tasks. I wised up real quick and refused to do it anymore. Management tried to convince me to officially take it on, but I used their own words against them saying I didn’t think taking up ‘lower level’ tasks would be rewarding/further my career goals.

What I am trying to say is that Mulva is probably smart, since she is a pharmacist, but doesn’t want to learn these mundane tasks. If people are smart, they can figure it out. If they don’t then they don’t consider it valuable.

Or I could be wrong…

9

Oh man, can I sympathise with this :confused:

I too work for an ISP, and the package I work for is being withdrawn soon. All customers are being given the chance to transfer to an alternative package that is very similar, half of these people don’t even know which package they are signed up for - even less know what they are actually paying for.
The new package only accepts a different payment method, this apparently is my fault. After all these customers have ‘been with you for nearly a year now’ not to mention that ‘we realise that you have some competition, what’s to stop us moving to another ISP?’

Nothing! Please do go somewhere else, absolute dumbasses!!

Of course with the change over there’s plenty of room for utter stupidity…

‘I can’t remember my password’ - (aren’t we all sick of that one :slight_smile: )
‘I can’t connect to the new service’ - Well ring THEM ffs!!
‘I had a computer engineer friend come and have a look, and he says my computer is fine’ - How come EVERY single person out there with a problem, a) knows a computer engineer and b) doesn’t need to phone tech support, because they KNOW it’s not their computer. (And ususally know it’s a local call to us, and 50p a minute to Tech Support)
And my absolute favourite ‘I can’t remember the telephone number that my computer is connected to, I only use it for the internet’ - How can anyone NOT know their own telephone number ??

I can’t believe these people can make it through the day unaided, before doing this I used to work for a catalogue - and I thought that the people there were thick. It would seem they all have internet connections too :slight_smile:

It’s so nice to be able to share this with people who understand, almost theraputic :slight_smile:

10

I suggest y’all read the Dogbert’s New Ruling Class Newsletters from the Dilbert website. Each newsletter is full of tales of dealing with dumb customers, bosses and co-workers. You can even submit your own True Tales of Induhviduals.

11

I get e-mails from people I’m surpised have figured out where the on button on a computer is. I have a fan site for The Sims. A nice, medium sized site, which is what I strive for, since I’m making all the downloads myself- this weekend I’m finishing a flamingo-themed bedroom set that the sprites for will probably take 10 hours by the time I finish. I don’t mind people e-mailing me to tell me there’s something on the site not working (I encourage it, actually) or to ask where I got x,y, or z that show up in the backgrounds. But people e-mail me for tech support! And not just for the game, but for programs people created for it. Why?? I didn’t make the game, and certaintly not the programs, nor do I offer any programs as downloads, so why are you e-mailing me, instead of the people who made the programs, or MAXIS tech support about the game itself? I run a site for free, they’re paid to answer questions…do you see the difference? And if I’m answering all your questions, when do you think I’m going to have time to make all the stuff you mentioned(as an afterthought) you like? I don’t even know why you got half the error messages, anyway. Bug MAXIS, not me!!! <shakes head>

12

I work for an awards program at a Large University. Our entry deadline is Monday, so this time of year we get tons of calls. This year’s “Huh?!” prize goes to the following voice mail message:

Caller: “Yeah, hi, I’m looking at your entry form here and I see that it says you want VHS tapes. Do you want VHS tapes?”

No, we just say that to throw you off.

13

[QUOTE**

And my absolute favourite ‘I can’t remember the telephone number that my computer is connected to, I only use it for the internet’ - How can anyone NOT know their own telephone number ??
**[/QUOTE]

I have a confession (hangs head in shame). I have two lines in my house, the regular phone line and the one my computer is connected to. I don’t know the number of the computer line. When I really need to know it, I just call my regular line and look at the caller ID. 10 minutes later I forget it again since I don’t need it.

If you think it will make me a better person though, I’ll go memorize it. :slight_smile:

14

If you want stories about stupidity, including computer stupidity, go to work with some government engineers. In 9 years at the Texas Department of Transportation (a whole, extremely long rant on the subject might be forthcoming), I think I met one engineer who didn’t need his hand held and his nose wiped and basic math and science patiently explained to him over and over again by someone making half as much money.

For example: A chemical engineer named John was the first one in the lab to get a computer. About two years after the computer was put on his desk, he came to me and asked me to help him with his computer because “this thing isn’t big enough for me to read it.” It turned out he needed me to show him how to re-size a fucking window!

Soon after that he was everyone’s boss.

15

At work, we often use online database like Infomart and Lexis-Nexis to pull up newspaper articles and other info. After a couple weeks of having to filter my requests, I finally convinced my supervisor to hand over the passwords to use these systems. “You’ll have to get trained,” she said.

Training, by the only person the company thought was qualified to use these services, consisted of opening a web browser, and going to a search engine to find the Informart website. She was stunned when I showed her how to bookmark a site.

Then it turns out she hunts through the site to find the ‘telnet’ connection. She screamed “Omigawd” when I clicked ‘run telnet xxxxxx’ from the start menu in Windows.

For the next 3 years she came to me with every computer glitch-- which was certainly a factor in my pushing to be moved to different shift hours :slight_smile:

16

Barbarian’s post reminded me of my own boss. I work in a bookstore, not in tech support, but we have a couple computers hooked up to the net to do research and access our distributer’s database. So my boss is using one of the computers to write a memo, but has gotten distracted and walked away to do something else. I needed to check something on the web, so I minimized her MS Word window and did whatever it was I needed to do. A moment later, she starts screeching about how I deleted her document, she was working on something, what the hell did I do with her memo? She was amazed when I maximized the Word window. She is completely helpless with computers, and I have had to show her how to cut and paste several times. On the other hand, I’ve also had to explain C&Ping several times to my mom, who is an intelligent person. But my mom doesn’t act like she knows all about computers, like my boss does. (She’s the BOSS! Of course she knows more than me!)

Our distributer rearranged its databse to include all sorts of neat functions, and they sent a rep to come and show it all to us. I didn’t want to attend the meeting, since I figured that it would all be old information, but I went, and to my surprise, learned quite a bit. My boss was unable to participate, so afterwards, I offered to show her some of the new stuff, and she declined, saying that she can always find everything she needs. Yeah, right! You know so much about how computers work and how to use them that you don’t even know how to minimize a window!

I’ll stop now before I go into a rant about how very very much I hate my boss. I need a new job now. She is likely the only person in the world who could make being in a bookstore absolutely miserable.

17

This is a case of very specific stupidity. Several years ago a friend and I took a Chinese cooking class. There was a woman in the class, that through some some bizzare mutant genetic defect, had no space in her brain to store information about Chinese chilli peppers! The first night of the class was about basic ingredients and techniques. The instructor took some of these little pointy red peppers, stir fried them a bit, and stored them in oil. The next week he made something using the peppers, and mutant-brain lady pipes up with “What are those? How did you make that?”. The instructor reminds her that he made it last week. Third week, same thing. Fourth week, same thing. On week five, we went on a ‘field trip’ to a local Chinese market and the instructor was showing all the different stuff we’d been using. As soon as he reaches for the little peppers, everybody else in the class looks at each other and cringes because we all know that mutant-brain lady is about to go off again. She didn’t dissappoint and jumped in with something like “What are those? We haven’t used that have we? What do you put it in?” The instructor showed great restraint in not leaping on her and rubbing pepper oil into her eyes!