Only the ones who say that “Dames” have great “Gams.”
That reminds me of a guy who used to work be in charge of Customer Support at the (now defunct) 3DO company, who referred to AOL as “American Online”.
People who say “symbiosis” when they really mean “mutualism.”
Minor hijack: What is HR pattern matching?
When the HR department gets your resume and scans it into their database, so that they can search for specific words or phrases that match what they are looking for.
In TimeWinder’s post above the resume said “C++”, but the computer was looking for “Visual C++”, so no match.
Napier writes:
Not where I’m from. I’ve been associated with four universities and visited a great many more, and I’ve always heard “degrees Kelvin”. I’ve never heard “Kelvins”. If I ever did hear someone refer to “Kelvins” I’d ask the speaker who won the last world series, and eventually I’d turn up the Centaurian spy in our midst.
Why am I put in mind of that cartoon where Bugs Bunny is told by the chef to “dress the (live) chickens for dinner”? Later, Bugs has the chickens dressed out in tuxedos. Sheesh, I wonder if it was ever explained to her, and how much she blushed if so? She should familarize herself with terms law enforcement/military people are likely to use, including hunter’s terms.
Just about everybody I ever heard bitching about tenured teachers had no idea what the word “tenure” means in that context. They all seem to believe that tenured teachers cannot be fired.
So im a programmer, my family and friends all know this and so they insist on telling me everything about any new computer product they buy. Yea, I know, programming doesnt mean your a computer specialist! But they always fail to see that distinction.
So a few weekends ago im at a family gathering for a bridal shower. A cousin of mine comes up and starts telling me about this great new graphics card he bought. Hes going on about the memory, colors, rendering, shading, lighting etc…all these cool stats about the card. So I ask “PCI, AGP, or the new super PCI card”? He stares at me a for a second and says “its not external, its sits on the inside”. I about pissed myself I laughed so hard.
I don’t think it did, actually. I know the difference between schizophrenia and MPD, but Shabadu’s question (“How can you tell if someone is having auditory or visual hallucinations?”) doesn’t seem to make sense in that light. It’s probably bad phrasing on one of our parts, but the question didn’t make sense to me. How can I tell he’s having hallucinations? Because he’s asking questions that certainly seem to indicate so.
“Can you type this in English for me?”
Um, we’re not talking a change of font, here. It’s a little more complex than that.
Also, those who have absurdly low expectations in terms of deadline and/or price. No, I won’t translate your 2,000-word document for tomorrow for $25.
I’m used to my clients using certain terms interchangeably, but if anyone who’s actually supposed to know anything about insurance uses the term “liability” inaccurately, my internal alarms go off.
I should clarify that by “my clients” I mean the general public, who usually don’t know much about insurance, which is fine.
“Anyone who actually supposed to know anything about insurance” is defined as an underwriter or another insurance broker. And sadly, there’s way too many out there who don’t know even the basics.
Dunno where you live, but I live in New York State. They cannot be fired. You wouldn’t believe the things that go on in public schools- that most of the public never hears about- that cannot be used to revoke tenure.
My wife is a tenured teacher and a Union Rep in her building. I have a fair idea of what that word means, and at least around here, it’s a pretty strong "fuck you, pally ". You can skate by, barely doing a damned thing in terms of good solid teaching, using the same textbook for many years, shoving kids through who are failing, and giving them "Pass-Em-On " D’s…and enjoy that tenure all the way to retirement.
Cartooniverse
Well, okay. Lemme modify that, this IS the Straight Dope. They can be fired but it takes a felony conviction- things of that ilk- to have a tenured teacher removed.
[hijack]
My brother, a graphic designer at a small daily newspaper, told me about a “stop the presses!” moment in his office a few weeks ago. A local story had gotten national coverage, and rumors were rampant around the county. Apparently a reporter wrote the lead story based on one of these rumors. My brother says 600 copies of the paper were printed before the higher-ups realized the error.
I wish I could’ve been there to see if someone actually yelled “STOP THE PRESSES!” It would’ve been like being in a movie.
[/hijack]
In NJ, there are a few other things that can get a tenured public school teacher fired. (Private schools, as usual, have their own special rules.) One is any form of corporal punishment – hitting a student, for example, or making him write “I will not talk in class” 100 times. At least that’s what I was told a number of decades ago by the NJEA rep when I started teaching. There are other things, too, but there is a loooong due process involved.
Anecdotal evidence: I was on my local school board for about 9 years. At the time I was first elected, there was an ongoing effort to fire a tenured high school teacher who was widely believed to show up at school intoxicated from time to time. The students referred to him as “The Lush.” He was perceived to be unsteady on his feet, have slurred speech, and to smell of alcohol. However, this evidence, if presented by administrators, was insufficient. For some reason, he could not be required to take a breathalyzer or other sobriety test. So the school administrators carefully observed every aspect of his professional performance, documenting any and all shortcomings, providing all kinds of opportunity, as required by law and contract, for him to improve. Eventually, he was fired for failing to prepare lesson plans.
I suspect it means the same thing in NY that it means here: You cannot be fired w/o reason and w/o due process. Have your wife molest a kid and see how long she keeps her job.
I’m an organist so I have to talk to brides to plan the music for their weddings. They pronounce the music or the composers wrong.
Canon in D becomes Cannon in D. I try to get them to spell it right in the program by telling them it is not a big gun. Of course, this probably shows that I know very little about cannons or guns. To me all firearms are guns, including revolvers, pistols, rifles and shotguns. Well, this takes me further into a mess because I really don’t know what a firearm is. But I do know what a canon is, and it is not the same thing as a cannon.
The “W” in Widor is pronounced like a V, not a W. The “ch” in Pachelbel sounds like “ck.”
Once I played something in church that was English pre-Baroque, and the pastor told me it reminded her of Debussy. Huh? Not similar in any way whatsoever.
Cartooniverse, you’ll appreciate this.
Back when I worked for a cable network that was just starting up we had a hefty budget to equip the production and post depts. So naturally I suggested that we needed a Steadicam. To my utter joy they went for it.
But during the Cinema Products demo the big boss decided he’d be slick and mentioned how we’d been looking at other companies’ Steadicams and they had much lower prices. :rolleyes: Back then Cinema Products still held the patent and there were no other Steadicams. I wanted to crawl into a hole.
We bought the Master Series though! 