Puzzling things that people do

Mundane and pointless things follow. You have been warned.

  1. I have a yard service that mows my postage-stamp-sized yards (back and front) every other week. They’re called MowManagers.com, and my lot is so tiny that they’re in-and-out in 20 minutes. They come like clockwork, and I don’t interact with them at all. Most of the workers do not speak much English, and I don’t speak Spanish. Sometimes they come when I’m not home. One time they came so early, I slept through the whole thing. They’re great! The charge shows up on my card the next day.

When I first signed up with them I had a bicycle cable with lock on the gate (chain-link fence) to my back yard. I did give the company the combination so they could get into the back yard when I’m not home. Several months ago, I added a second bicycle cable with lock, and I never got around to giving MowManagers the combination. But on the day they’re due to come, I usually unlock both locks, so they can easily get into the back yard. No prob.

When they came three weeks ago, I was home, and I didn’t want them to come in the back yard. So I didn’t unlock either lock and I also tied one of those yellow caution strips around the gate/fence as a visual clue that I assumed would convey the message, “Do not go in the back yard.” Here’s what that looks like. On that day, I happened to walk into the back yard when one of the workers was headed to that gate preparatory to mowing the back yard. I went over to the gate. He had already unlocked the lower cable, which they do have the combination to. I said, “Don’t do the back yard today,” and he said, “Okay.”

But here’s the puzzling thing. He only had the combination to one of the cables. He was not going to be able to unlock the other one, so why did he unlock one of them? Not to mention the yellow caution tape. Was he planning on breaking it?

So maybe it was just that guy, right?

But yesterday they came on their regular day. It was a different crew. I was home and I was sweeping the sidewalk in the back yard when the worker headed to the back gate. The gate was just as shown in the picture: both cables locked and the yellow tape in place. I met him at the gate and said, “No back yard today,” and he said, “Okay.” He had already unlocked the lower cable–the only one he had the combination to. WHY?? :confused:

This is not a problem, and I’m not looking for a solution, just commenting on something I find puzzling. On those days when I don’t want them to do the back yard, the person will eventually figure out that he can’t get into the yard when it dawns on him that he only has the combination to one of the locks. On the days when I do want them to do the back yard, I unlock both cables myself.

  1. There’s a local chain of Starbucks-type coffee places here. I bought one of their stainless steel coffee mugs like this one with their name and logo on it. Invariably, when I walk up to the counter and say, “A latte, please,” as I hand the person the empty cup with the top off, he or she replies, “In this?”

I guess they’re being super cautious, or just making chit-chat, but… um…yeah, in **that **cup with y’all’s name on it. I guess if I want to avoid that question, I could hand them the cup and say, “A latte, please, in this cup,” but that almost seems insultingly obvious and more than a tad patronizing. I dunno.

Other people’s stories welcome.

Having worked in a coffee shop and being yelled at for such things as putting a toastie in the toaster, putting espresso in the cup after the water (as company standards dictate) and not knowing a guy’s ‘usual’ order when he’d never been to that branch before, but was a regular at a different branch, that surprises me not in the least. Some tit will have handed it over, waited til his latte was done, then said ‘Oh! Not in there! That one has a leak and I need a new one!’ at some point.

Agreed with Filbert. I would recommend, “Can I get a latte in this cup?” to make your request clear without sounding insulting or patronizing. The fact that they ask suggests to me that they’ve been burned before.

I was once dressed down for 5 minutes by a customer who was upset that she had to tell me she wanted her bagel toasted with butter and that in the Northeast, which is where one is supposed to derive their bagel customs apparently, this is the only way to serve a bagel. You never know what will set someone off so the rest of us have to live with confirmatory questions.

I think similar reasoning of unpredictable customer behavior explains the mowers. That bit of yellow tape really doesn’t convey the message that you intended as clearly as you think it does. If there are standing instructions to mow the back yard, and you haven’t given any other instructions, I think I’d ignore that tape - who knows who or what it’s intended for, and maybe the owner will get mad if I don’t mow the lawn as usual. I’d try to unpeel the tape and then put it back after. If I had the combination to one lock, and I saw a second combination lock, I’d open the first one, and then try the same combination on the other one. If it didn’t work, I’d leave a note for the owner explaining that I tried but could not get in. If I was non-native speaker who probably wasn’t carry pen and paper to leave a note, I might well leave the one padlock unlocked to convey the same message - that I had tried my best to comply with the standing instructions.

It’s possible they assumed that both locks have the same combination. It would seem that you interrupted them prior to their trying the second lock, so how could they have learned that the locks have different combinations?

My wife has an odd habit of putting things almost, but not quite, where they need to go. If food needs to go in the fridge, for example, she will pile it on the counter next to the fridge, and then when I come across it I wind up putting it away. Or, if the kitchen trash needs emptying, she will take the trash bag out of the trash can, tie up the top, and set it in front of the door to the garage. So then when I’m going out to the garage and trip over the trash bag, I figure “I guess I’ll take this out.”

If there is more than one person that comes to cut your grass, could it be that the “foreman” has the combination and unlocks the lock, even though it’s a worker that will cut the grass?

My job had to get a new roof and they hired a company that employed non english speaking workers.
They were all hard workers but did some very odd things while doing the job. For instance, they had to lay tarps on the ground when they were removing the old shingles. Our building is very large and the only way they would have gotten everything done in one day would have been to have about 10 times the workers there, so they did it in stages over multiple days. Even though they were only removing shingles from the front side on day one, they tarped around the entire building. By day three they were done with removal and installation in the front, but were still tarping all the way around the building; even though they were only removing them from the back. To clarify, the way our building is built, there is no way for shingles from the back of the building to end up falling towards the front…
From what I could gather from the workers, the company was very strict and they had to tarp around the whole building if there was any removal at all going on; if they didn’t, they would get fired.

Just a guess, but if the lawn care company is strict like that, they may have to follow a strict list of directions, Step 1, Step 2, etc. If it says to unlock the gate, they will unlock the gate.

Y’all are both right, of course. Not ever having worked in that sort of customer service job, I forget that people can be real jerks.

Thanks for the comments on the yard situation. It makes sense to leave one lock unlocked to convey the message, “I tried.”

My ignorance was fought today. :slight_smile:

I had MowManagers for a long time, but I suspect that they are not allowed to think. Which led to the following happening at least twice:

My driveway floods whenever it rains. I have a pump to pump out the water, but it has to be turned on manually, and if we are having long stretches of rain, I tend to let it stay flooded for a while. Also, I’m at the bottom of the hill, so if it’s rained recently, the driveway can flood after I’ve pumped it dry.

In the fall, I end up with leaves in the water getting soaking wet, and since there are more coming, they tend to stay there for a while.

Finally, I would rake the leaves out of the water to dry, so I could bag them. But that takes more than a day, so I would leave them drying until the next weekend.

Meanwhile, the MM people would come by and blow the leaves back into the water. :smack: I called them to tell them not to do that, but it only lasted a few months until they got a new team lead or lost those instructions, or something.
Now I have a private individual that I can IM with instructions, and another guy who does all my non-mowing yardwork. He’s pretty strong, so he can rake the leaves, bag them and drag them out to the curb even if their still wet. (also, he’ll run the pump when I forget to)

Yeah, to add: if I were (say) your friend who you’d asked me to water your plants while you’re away, and I unexpectedly saw that tape, I wouldn’t touch it, I’d just wait until I could get in touch. But I think for someone doing work like that who can so easily be fired, it’s much more important when in doubt to show clearly that you’re not trying to shirk doing your job.

Well, a couple of times I used the tape inside the back yard to indicate a part of the yard I didn’t want them to go into, and it worked. <shrug>

I agree that MowManagers is robotic and without nuance. Calling with instructions is pointless. My yard is so simple and small that they work for me.

I guess I’m puzzled why you don’t just leave a note on the gate: “Por favor, no cortar el patio hoy.” That’s what Google translate give me when I type in “Please do not mow the backyard today.”

You could make it more casual with a “Can I get a latte in here?” or something like that. Something to soften the “In this cup” aspect and make it sound less like you think they’re too stupid to puzzle out what the cup is for.

This is a minor one but it still puzzles me: At my old job, we had a bathroom that was single use. It had a toilet in it next to a urinal. One day I go to use it and, as I’m coming up on the door, the business owner (a man) exits the bathroom. Inside, it’s obvious that he used the toilet since the seat is up and the water is moving/refilling. Why on earth did he lift the seat and stand to urinate into the toilet instead of using the urinal right next to it? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Sounds like she’s got you trained just the way she wants. :wink:

Whenever my late husband would open a drawer-- kitchen, desk, dresser-- he would never close it all the way. He would leave it open a couple of inches. I never understood that.

argh here’s a goddamn puzzling thing

when people get an error message that says something like “User ID or password Incorrect” why do they send it to me with the message, “What does this mean?”

:mad: :mad: :mad:

I personally know of two people (my brother, and my girlfriend’s father) who use microwaves in the same strange way.

They’ll set the microwave for some arbitrary number that’s longer than the time they intend to leave whatever they’re nuking in.

Which, I can understand in a lot of situations - if you don’t want to bother sleeping/sick people in the house with the finish signal, for instance. But both of these men have the same ‘WTF?’ addition to this - they will not reset the timer after they’re finished, leaving it to the next person who wants to use the microwave to do.

Which is annoying enough, in general, but more than once I’ve spent several seconds trying to figure out why the microwave wasn’t letting me input anything, because enough time had been left on, I’d reasonably thought it was the clock displaying, not the timer. (That is to say, frex, it was set for 5 minutes, used for one or two, then I tried to use it mid-afternoon.)

That reminds me, the other day I emailed someone and my message said, (paraphrased) “This is the number you need: 12345”. They replied to the email, “12345?” Uh, it’s right fucking there! :confused:

Now, I’m not saying that I actually plan to kill my stepson. But if I did, this would be the reason why.

Well, it’s pretty vague - I mean, is it the User ID or is it the password?:slight_smile:

Our microwave has a feature where if you just push one of the numbers from 1 to 6 you get that many minutes on the timer and it starts running automatically. So if something needs to go in for 4:30, I just hit 5 and stop it early. Much easier than [cook time] 4, 3, 0 [start].

There is no excuse for leaving time on the timer though. :mad: