I have my own example of that phenomenon: when I was a kid, my dad used to make pancakes and bacon every Sunday. He would cook the bacon in the electric skillet, then pour off the grease into an empty rinsed-out cardboard orange juice concentrate can. Then he’d use some of the bacon grease to lube the skillet for pancakes, and we’d also use it intermittently as cooking grease for other things throughout the week.
Then at some point in my teenage years, I decided to cook some bacon myself. There must not have been an orange juice can available, or maybe I didn’t think we needed any more bacon grease that day, or maybe I just decided saving bacon grease was stupid. I don’t remember, but I do remember Dad freaking out when he saw me pouring hot bacon grease down the kitchen sink drain. “What are you doing?! You can’t pour grease down the drain! You’ll clog the pipe!” Well, gee, Dad, you never told me that’s why you poured it into those orange juice cans. I thought you were just doing that to save it for cooking with!
I dated someone once who didn’t understand some really basic kitchen stuff. She was completely baffled at the idea of keeping ziploc-style sandwich bags, snack bags, and quart freezer bags, she didn’t get that they’re different sized bags for different purposes. Even after I’d point out how freezer bags are better at freezing a typical quantity of meat, or that snack bags work great for keeping small objects together and unlost where a bigger bag would be too inconvenient, she just considered my keeping so many boxes of the same thing a weird quirk. She also didn’t get the concept of different spices, ‘why do you have half a dozen things of pepper? just pick one pepper and get rid of the rest’. The fact that fine ground black pepper, coarse ground black pepper, whole peppercorns, white pepper, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper are all different things used for different purposes (you’re not going to fill a pepper shaker with whole peppercorns) was just beyond her. Same thing with having garlic salt and garlic powder, or kosher salt and regular salt - the idea that they are different things used in different ways for different dishes was just beyond her. It was really bizarre, and to this day I’m really not sure how to answer ‘why do you have six things that have pepper in the name but look and taste every different?’ without a heavy dose of sarcasm and/or eye-rolling.
My brother was quite literally stunned when he learned that the reason my IKEA furniture does not end up with “do not look at this part” corners is that I actually examine the parts and the instructions before beginning assembly.
But then, if his own body had come with a manual he still wouldn’t have figured out how to take a dump.
I’ve run into a truly amazing number of educated Canadians who don’t know how many provinces Canada has.
The number, by the way, is ten, and has been for the entirety of most peoples’ lives. A rather round and easy number to recall. I don’t know that you could come up with a more easily remembered number than ten. If it was something weird like 87, okay. But ten?
I find this very odd. It’s not a tough civics question.
I get why you would want six kinds of pepper and four kinds of salt, and I wouldn’t roll my eyes at you, but I’m the type of person who is content with just regular black pepper and iodized salt.
People don’t know that just because someone asks you for your information (SSN, phone number, email, etc.) or it’s on a form, you don’t necessarily have to give it to them.
I get people who don’t use the varieties not having them, but that’s not what was weird. It’s not that she was content with just ordinary salt and pepper, it’s that she acted like it was strange hoarding behavior to have six of ‘the same thing’ in the cabinet and that I should just throw out the ‘extras’. I mean, red pepper doesn’t even look like black pepper, it’s red and brown round circular flakes instead of a powder! And white pepper is, well, white!
I should also add that the kitchen had an absurd amount of storage space and I did about 90% of the non-instant, non-sandwich cooking, it wasn’t like the spices were taking up highly limited space or she was typically the one assembling meals.
Oh, wait. I was talking owner’s manuals, not assembly instruction manuals. I might have my terms confused. I mean the manuals that come with the washer, dryer, fridge, even video games. Yeah, building something without reading the assembly instructions is kinda dumb, unless you’ve built it before (and even then, I’d look at the instructions.)
Some manuals are barely useful. The manual to my phone tells me basic things like how to put in the battery, put in an SD card, and how to take a picture. It doesn’t tell me how use the camera flash as a flashlight or how to use the Android OS or how to go outside of the Play Store for apps. I actually had to Google a lot of the functions on my phone.
On putting metal in microwave, I am confused. My daughter had a microwave with a metal rack for a shelf. Then I read somewhere that you mustn’t have any metal in a position to spark. Two pieces of metal close together. Now upthread I read someone’s claim that putting a metal pan (which obviously would not spark) into a microwave killed the magetron. So what is the true story. Maybe I should ask in GQ.
I’m always bemused by people who don’t know basic geography, even of their own country, state or even city. Nor do they care, since it’s all at their fingertips. If all smart phones suddenly ceased to function, I guess people would just stumble around bumping into things.
I suspect you’d greatly enjoy Very British Problems on Netflix.
My contribution: When the sign says slower traffic keep right, that means you should, ideally, be traveling slightly faster than the person in the right lane.
Probably not. All I’ve used is drills, dremels, and reciprocating saws. But I were to use something more exotic, I still don’t usually read the instructions, just let someone who knows how to use it show me how to use it.
I’m pretty certain that most people don’t and don’t need to know this one, but it might be a fun science experiment for a few people:
Try cutting a grape in half so that the last little bit of flesh is still connecting the two halves like a hinge on one side. Then microwave the grape, skin-side down on both halves.
