# Things you've been surprised you've had to explain at work
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 13, 2021, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959 "2021-05-13T02:42:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 10
### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/181 "2021-05-15T03:50:00Z")
I remember being four, and being furious at my parents’ bullshit. They showed me which hand was my left, and which was my right, which was fine. But then these idiots insisted that if I turned around, the hand they’d called my left hand was _still_ my left hand, _even though it was on the other side_. It made no goddamned sense and I was so angry.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/182 "2021-05-15T04:18:44Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> It made no goddamned sense and I was so angry.
And as we all know, anger leads to hate, hate leads to fear, and fear is the path to the Dork Side.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/183 "2021-05-15T04:46:04Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I explained to him that he worked in a prison and there was never any time when everyone was off and we left the prison unguarded.
Aww. It would have been such a nice present for the inmates.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/184 "2021-05-15T04:48:53Z")
When I was working I discovered that one of our engineers, who wasn’t super young and was very good, had no idea of what a command line was. This was important since my code, which he wanted to use, ran on Solaris.
That might not sound too odd, except our company owned Solaris and our processors were designed to run Solaris efficiently.
What the hell are they teaching in engineering school these days.
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### Author:  [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/185 "2021-05-15T05:05:58Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> Port and starboard are objective, based on their relationship to the pointy end of the boat
Determining that was, at times, [problematic.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_monitor_Novgorod)
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### Author:  [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/186 "2021-05-15T05:47:33Z")
It’s easy to hang a sign on the starboard side of a ship that says “starboard” and then everyone knows that’s the starboard side. You could do that to your own hands (make a permanent sign which one was left and right) by way of tattoo I suppose.
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### Author:  [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/187 "2021-05-15T10:47:51Z")
I had to answer this question from several of our administrative staff: “What country is Pakistan in?”
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/188 "2021-05-15T10:50:34Z")
What was the answer?
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### Author:  [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/189 "2021-05-15T11:26:59Z")
> [@Napier](#):
>
> I had to answer this question from several of our administrative staff: “What country is Pakistan in?”
Sounds like the answer should be: “It’s turtles, all the way down.”
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/190 "2021-05-15T11:32:34Z")
“It’s Pakistan, all the way down.”
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### Author:  [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/191 "2021-05-15T11:38:02Z")
> [@ZosterSandstorm](#):
>
> there is no way to define “starboard” other than “the side of the boat that is on the right for a person aboard the boat facing the bow” and the notion that port/starboard are somehow more objective or explainable than left/right makes no sense, at least as explained thusfar in this thread.
It’s like “stage right” and “stage left.” It’s a convention, an accepted way of defining something for the people who inhabit that universe.
I remember that port is left because they both have four letters.
I’m one of those people who can’t readily tell right from left. My mother told me that I never crawled. One day I just walked. I’ve researched this a little and apparently skipping the crawling stage can leave the telling-left-from-right dots unconnected in the brain. (I googled around on this and found some references… pretty scholarly, so not going to cite here.)
However I have no problem with NSEW and always know what direction I’m facing or going in. I pretty much never get lost-- I can see a map in my head. Just don’t yell “TURN RIGHT!” when I’m driving. Better to point.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/192 "2021-05-15T12:00:32Z")
When Someone at work found out that I donated blood, they were really concerned whether or not I told them to label it as foreigner’s blood because Japanese people can’t take foreign blood. And what was I doing donating blood no one could use?
And when I got married a lawyer at work asked me if that made me a Japanese national now.
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### Author:  [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/193 "2021-05-15T12:04:54Z")
Left-right comments:
I’ve read that, during the Civil War, drill sergeants were driven to distraction by the number of recruits who didn’t know their right foot from their left foot. But the recruits were mainly from rural backgrounds and knew the difference between straw and hay. So the sergeants would have the recruits tie a wisp of hay around one ankle and a wisp of straw around the other. Then the sergeants would call out cadence as: “Hay-foot, straw-foot. Hay-foot, straw-foot…”
Way above my understanding, but in the book “The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions”, the author Martin Gardner puts forth the problem of identifying “left” and “right” with an alien civilization that can receive radio, but whose planet is blocked by clouds from obtaining any common observation. (That is, we could not point to stars and signal “This one is on the left side”.)
According to the book: “Certain ‘weak interactions’ of particle physics were found to show a preference for one type of handedness regardless of the North pole - South pole convention.” As reported in the April 1957 Scientific America.
P.S. Clockwise? As long as you are in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the direction that the sundial’s shadow moves during the day.
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### Author:  [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/194 "2021-05-15T13:17:51Z")
When I was two I amputated the end of a finger in a train door. Turned out to provide a lifetime reference for ‘left’.
However, turn knob, nut whatever, left or right has never made sense. It’s not a rotary motion.
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### Author:  [@Topologist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Topologist)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/195 "2021-05-15T14:11:03Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> I once had to create a large poster from art work I had done in Illustrator. The guy at Kinko’s told me an enlargement that size would look like shit, because it would be all pixelated. I explained to him that this was done in vectors, and it could be enlarged to the size of the Crab Nebula without being pixelated. He didn’t believe me, but printed it anyway. He was amazed at the results.
Not work related, but this story reminded me of one from some years ago: My wife once wanted to enlarge a (printed) picture by 200%, so took it to a nearby copier place. The copier there went up to only 145% but the fellow operating it said, “No problem, we’ll just do a 100% copy twice!” She knew it wouldn’t work, but he persisted in thinking it would even after having done the first copy…
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/196 "2021-05-15T14:31:31Z")
> [@Isamu](#):
>
> when I got married a lawyer at work asked me if that made me a Japanese national now.
Are you female, and married a male? In some countries a woman’s citizenship used to be considered to be her husband’s (true in the USA until [1906](https://libguides.mnhs.org/naturalization/s4) or [1922](https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/citizenship.pdf) depending on the circumstances); though I don’t know if any countries still do it that way.
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/197 "2021-05-15T14:44:54Z")
> [@Isamu](#):
>
> When Someone at work found out that I donated blood, they were really concerned whether or not I told them to label it as foreigner’s blood because Japanese people can’t take foreign blood. And what was I doing donating blood no one could use?
>
> And when I got married a lawyer at work asked me if that made me a Japanese national now
Maybe it’s because I haven’t had my coffee yet, but this is meaningless to me unless I know 1.) If you’re Japanese, 2.) What country you live in, and 3.) Is your spouse Japanese / Japanese national.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/198 "2021-05-15T14:45:27Z")
No I’m a male. I can’t marry another male in Japan. My wife was Korean at the time but has since become Japanese.
Yes Japan was the same up until about 1978? or something like that where the wife would take on the nationality of the husband.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/199 "2021-05-15T14:46:37Z")
I’m not Japanese. I’m a western white guy who would be immediately identified as such by looks and language. I live in Japan. My spouse was not a Japanese national at the time.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2021, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/200 "2021-05-15T14:52:40Z")
Maybe the person who asked you that thought it worked both ways around – that anyone who married a Japanese citizen became a Japanese citizen.
In the USA now that doesn’t do it automatically, but it does make the non-citizen eligible for citizenship – though they may have to jump through hoops to convince the immigration authorities that the marriage wasn’t just for that purpose. I have a friend who some years ago had to travel to her husband’s country to convince American authorities; and she thought that what did the trick was her obviously pregnant belly.
> [@Isamu](#):
>
> I’m not Japanese. I’m a western white guy who would be immediately identified as such by looks and language. I live in Japan. My spouse was not a Japanese national at the time.
Ah. Did the person who asked you know that your wife wasn’t then Japanese?
If so, that does become quite a strange question.
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