I was at Outback Steakhouse with a couple of friends. We were talking about how we eat at home versus how we eat when we go out. My husband and I only eat meat when we’re out because I don’t really like handling it to cook it, and my husband doesn’t really enjoy cooking period. So I said, “I don’t like handling meat that much, so we don’t eat it unless we’re out to dinner.”
Which prompted a friend to ask, as I was shoveling a big piece of medium-rare steak in my mouth, “Are you guys vegetarian?” And she was serious. :smack:
You did better than Robert Benchley in this vignette from Ask That Man.
“Confronted once by a buckboard literally swathed in banners which screamed in red letters, ‘This bus goes to the State Fair Grounds,’ I had to go up to the driver (who had on his cap a flag reading ‘To the State Fair Grounds’) and ask him if this bus surely went to the State Fair Grounds. He didn’t even answer me.”
Much as it pains me to admit it, that’s not an entirely stupid question, though it was asked in a profoundly stupid way. It is a good idea to ask if a low-end iMac can run virtual PC (x86 emulator, basically), and use that to run windows XP with decent enough performance to be worthwhile.
Ah, stupid questions. One of the banes of my existence.
Let’s see–in an “astronomy for idiots” class I took at UTA to meet my science requirement, there was a guy who asked a stupid question every day. Some of the more memorable include such gems as:
[ul]
[li]When will our sun go supernova?[/li][li]I understand how the calendars were never very accurate throughout history. So am I really an Aquarius? How can I know for sure?[/li][li]What will happen when Betelgeuse goes supernova? How will it affect me?[/li][/ul]
I used to look at him and wonder what he was good at. Surely he had another gift other than asking stupid questions.
I get stupid questions every day at work. Yesterday I sent out a grace period e-mail to all the social workers in the state whose certification was due by 8/31/04 and who did not renew it by 8/31/04. In the e-mail, I provided the information about how to get recertified, attached the form they needed to fill out, gave them both fax numbers they could use–in short, every bit of information they would need. I got an e-mail from one of them this morning: “Can you please give me the fax number to send this to?” :smack: As I said, the fax number was in the original e-mail, as well as in my signature. That’s a mild example. I get phone calls and e-mails on a daily basis with stupid questions.
Now to tell on myself: my brother once asked me how to make an Aggie go insane. When I asked how, he smiled smugly and said he’d tell me later. Much to my shame, I was still demanding to know how to drive an Aggie insane half an hour later. :o
I’ll have to admit I ask that question sometimes (and do not consider it stupid). After all phone numbers are assigned to phones not persons. Most people that I call answer the phone with their name, but otherwise I am wary of assuming that when I have X’s phone it is X who answers. When Mr. Hello or Mrs. Yes answer the phone I almost always ask who is speaking.
I don’t know how they do things in Germany, but here in the States the polite thing to do is ask, “Hello, can I speak to X please,” or at least, “Hi, is X there?” Someone who calls my house and says, “Yo, who’s this,” is going to get a response of, “Who are YOU?”
Back in the day when I did HR/Payroll for a small distribution company, the following actually happened.
ME: X, I need your time cards so I can get your staff paid.
x: But I sent them early this time. I faxed them 2 days ago.
ME: I didn’t get them, could you resend?
X: But why didn’t you call me 2 days ago?
ME: Call you for what?
X: I wrote on the fax cover sheet for you to call me if you didn’t get the fax.
Yikes!! The funny thing is, I don’t think she ever figured out why I didn’t call her to tell her I didn’t receive her fax. She kept insisting all day that I’d made some kind of error for not psychically realizing her fax didn’t come through.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I did once get the following extra credit question wrong on a test I took in the 7th grade: “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” Twenty years later and I’m still a little embarrassed.
Why not just ask for the person you were wanting to speak to? “Hello, can I speak to **tschild **please?”
Saying “Who’s this?” is so completely unnecessary, and it insults the intelligence of the person who answered. If it’s not tschild, you’re going to ask for that person anyway.
Anybody who calls my house and says “Who’s this?” or “Is this Mr. SoAndSo?” gets this standard reply: “You dialed the damned number! If you don’t know who you’re calling, you have no business using a telephone!”
Click.
