Well, that’s not fair. At least for the second one (the first one, yes.) What’s wrong with asking if this is Mr. So-and-so when an unfamiliar voice answers?
I had a friend named Roger who usually answered the phone with, “Hello, is Roger there?” He liked to put folks off balance right away.
I’m not always so brusque; I would more often ask, “are you not sure?” but since the No-Call Registry came into effect, I never have to say it anymore. The thing is, our number is unlisted, and thanks to the NCR, our phone hardly ever rings. 99% of the calls we get are from people we know. They would recognize our voices right away. I don’t particularly want to talk to anybody who isn’t sure who it is on the other end of the phone, it suggests to me that they are fishing for a sale. I’m not buying. Most of the time, we let the answering machine get it, and if it’s somebody important (one call in a thousand), one of us will pick it up.
Because it’s rude to call someone up and start demanding their identity. YOU called THEM. It’s your job as the caller to (1) identify yourself and (2) ask for the person to whom you wish to speak. As in, “Hello, this is Scarlett. May I speak to Matt, please?” Easy and polite.
You think that’s confusing? My roommate at college was Mike. He was a social butterfly, too, always out of the room, so I took to answering the phone:
“Mike and Mike’s room. Mike speaking. I’m sorry, Mike’s not here right now. May I take a message?”
A little background: My daughter gets wacky on sugar so we don’t let her eat much of it. When she does eat it her brain seems to disconnect from her mouth and she ends up saying some pretty silly stuff. I now have a habit of answering her weird questions with off subject answers.
So last night after brownies and ice cream she asks
“If I was a boy why didn’t you name me [insert whatever name]?”
I answered “because there are far too many trees already”
Are YOU intellectually challenged?
So, do you have a penis or a vagina?
(Said to anyone, it’s shocking and grossly rude. Said to a transgendered person, it’s shocking, grossly rude, and unoriginal into the bargain.)
What are you implying, exactly? :dubious:
However, that IS a stupid question, so it’s on-topic. The answer is no.
Talk about confusing/being confused, here is not a stupid question, but a mind-boggling comment made after a phone call.
Situation: At a party thrown by a colleague in a training program. Also present, one young woman, “Michele” whom is a constant companion of the hostess, being the sister of her boyfriend.
Another “Michele” calls to say that she and her friend are not coming, contrary to her earlier RSVP, and M#1 takes the call.
The first party of that name remarks about how confusing the call had been. “She said she was ‘Michele’ and I’M ‘Michele’!”
She sounded still confused by the exchange. And it wasn’t even an uncommon name they shared! Had the caller been named the same as the hostess, a fairly uncommon name BTW, I suppose I could understand.
As I said, it wasn’t a qustion she asked. But, as Orson Bean, celebrity game show panelist of years ago often said. Just turn that into a question…
True Blue Jack
[Cartman]Dammit![/Cartman]
“Is that you?”
“Which of these is the right answer?” (asked by numerous students taking a national multiple-choice test).
I used to work at a glass blowing studio. When I wasn’t blowing glass, I would sometimes go explain what we were doing to the watching customers.
“That’s the furnace where we keep the molten glass,” I said. “It’s about 2000 degrees farenheit in there, which keeps the glass liquid, sort of like honey. The furnace is powered by electricity.” (Many people are interested to know if we use electricity, propane, wood, etc. to reach these high temperatures.)
Later on in the process, I explained, “When the glass cools, the glass blower will take it over to the glory hole here to heat it up. That’s about 2000 degrees as well. It’s fired by natural gas.”
Customer: “If the glass is liquid in the furnace at 2000 degrees, how come the glass is a gas at 2000 degrees in the glory hole?”
Me: " … No, the glass isn’t a gas. It’s a liquid."
Customer: “You said that that glass was a natural gas.”
I ended up apologizing for not making myself clear, and explaining to him that natural gas is a type of fuel. I swear he’d never heard of it before. I did not do this :rolleyes: but some of the other customers did.
I also had a man demanding to know if we used uranium in our glass, and if so, could he buy some? But I think that was a mentally ill question, not a stupid question.
Just as I thought. You are unable to figure out the implication, else you would have not replied!
Uh, aren’t you asking MORE THAN ONE QUESTION here?
True Blue Jack
I’d really like to take part in this thread, it looks fun! But I need some help first:
What’s a question?
I’d say a bit of both. Has Uranium Glass been made at all in the past fifty years?
Uh, did I screw up and put the quoted phrase in twice in #130?
True Blue Jack