# 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:** 2
### Author:  [@Enjoy\_Slurm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enjoy_Slurm)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/21 "2021-05-13T05:28:30Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> I had to help a employee find Google.
Did you show them where it was on Google Maps?
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/22 "2021-05-13T05:42:54Z")
I once worked with a pharmacist who didn’t know that lesbians menstruate.
Really.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/23 "2021-05-13T05:47:15Z")
Possibly. My mother encountered the same issue as a child and although she came out of it being able to write with either hand, she often had to think about left and right when giving or receiving directions.
As the Psychology Today article mentions, left and right are purely arbitrary conventions.
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### Author:  [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/24 "2021-05-13T06:19:15Z")
If the back computer freezes up, reboot it. They were 21 or so and should know computers better than that.
That our Hotel Manager is not here working 24/7. Cue shrill “why **not**??? It’s his **job**!!!”
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/25 "2021-05-13T11:47:14Z")
I had an employee who did not understand the thermostat. If she thought it was too warm or too cold, she’d ask me to address the problem. One day I told her she could adjust the thermostat herself, and she explained that she _did not understand the thermostat_ .
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### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/26 "2021-05-13T12:04:57Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#):
>
> I once had a coworker say that “Excel is down.” 🙄
Hey, theoretically possible nowadays if Microsoft Office is hosted in the cloud…
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/27 "2021-05-13T12:05:19Z")
> [@Sine\_Nomine](#):
>
> Example 2: I get that not everyone is great at math, but I seriously underestimated how many don’t even understand the underlying concepts. There is one particular employee who calls me every time his union settles an upcoming rate increase. If he knows his current hourly rate, and what percent the increase is going to be, that should be enough information for him to figure out what his new hourly rate is going to be, right? Nope. He has no idea what to type into the calculator. (He also can never remember how to look up the salary schedules on our intranet site that would flat out tell him the new rate, but that’s a different topic!)
>
> This same guy also simply cannot comprehend an hourly rate with more than two places after the decimal (his particular salary group typically has three, but some employees have as many as six). The first time he called, the new rate was something like $32.008/hr, and his brain exploded. When I explained that it’s “just a liiiiittle under thirty-two dollars and one cent,” he responded confidently with, “Oh, so it’s thirty-one dollars.” I always feel so bad, as though I’m talking down to him, when I end up saying things like, “It’s more than 32 dollars and no cents, but less than 32 dollars and 1 cent,” but he’s so utterly baffled otherwise!
Innumeracy is a thing, and I expect it plays a huge role in the frequency with which people have trouble managing debt and saving/investing for retirement.
> **[Numeracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeracy)**
>
> Numeracy is the ability to understand, reason with, and to apply simple numerical concepts. The charity National Numeracy states: "Numeracy means understanding how mathematics is used in the real world and being able to apply it to make the best possible decisions...It's as much about thinking and reasoning as about 'doing sums'". Basic numeracy skills consist of comprehending fundamental arithmetical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For example, if one can By...
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/28 "2021-05-13T12:11:26Z")
I didn’t actually attempt to explain this but I witnessed an older coworker adding up adjacent columns of numbers in Excel\*
Manually.
On a desktop calculator.
Then typing in the result into the third column.
I just had the necessary conversation and backed away slowly.
\*(or perhaps Lotus, it was quite a while ago).
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### Author:  [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/29 "2021-05-13T12:14:49Z")
I’m a mechanical engineer that works with a lot of other engineers, most of which have over 10-15 years experience. First week on a new job I attended a meeting where they were trying to figure out what was the problem with a large bolt type clamp and they were showing cross sections of the bolt. I looked at it an instantly saw that bolt was clamping down on a small area of contact, not the large flange area of contact that it was designed to clamp down on. I told them that the force was the same but that it wasn’t being spread over the large area it was supposed and the effort to remove it would be about 5 times greater than designed.
They asked why, it’s the same force clamping down? I then had to explain to these “experienced” engineers that the pressure between the two scenarios was less when using the larger flange and they responded “what does that matter?”. The answer, the force required to overcome static friction. It’s basically chapter 1 of every physics book on the planet.
They went running off to their supervisors saying they were not convinced they had an answer. I talked to a group of supervisors and a couple recognized that I was correct and were upset that their best guys couldn’t “get it” but explained that most engineers don’t do actual engineering in their jobs most of the time.
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/30 "2021-05-13T12:22:10Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#):
>
> The answer, the force required to overcome static friction.
HIJACK ALERT!
But isn’t that also directly proportional to the surface area? I you reduce the surface area by, let’s say a factor of 5, you increase the force on that area by a factor of 5, leaving the total static friction theoretically unchanged.
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### Author:  [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/31 "2021-05-13T12:23:23Z")
Not if you torque them both down to the same spec which is what they were doing. Then the applied force remains the same. The whole point of a flanged bolt is to spread the force over a greater area. They could easily torque it down, but trying to remove the bolt was impossible with the smaller area of contact.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/32 "2021-05-13T12:25:14Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#):
>
> I once worked with a pharmacist who didn’t know that lesbians menstruate.
Wow. “Any other superpowers I could get if I switched teams?” 🤪
We have a doctor here who’s an incredibly smart guy, but he doesn’t know how to print things out so they fit on the paper. He just sends them to me for that.
I’ve also had to send out a department-wide email asking people not to flush paper towels down the toilet.
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/33 "2021-05-13T12:49:58Z")
I could tell plenty of these stories.
At one place I was promoted to IT manager/sysadmin for the whole company because I knew how to run a Mac network in the graphics department. I had never worked with PCs or PC-based networks before, so I had to learn fast.
Not long after I started my new position, a department manager (who had experience using PCs long before I did) came to me in a panic saying a key Excel file he uses every day is missing. “It just disappeared!”
I said, “don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. Did you make a backup?” “Nooo…”
“We’ll probably find it in the trash bin if you accidentally deleted it. Or we can maybe run a file recovery program. Show me where on your computer you stored the file-- the Documents folder?”
He showed me how he would open Excel and go into the “recent files” menu choice to access the file. It was the only way he knew how to get to it, and more recent files had pushed it out of the short list of the 5 or so most recent files, so to him it ‘disappeared’. It was safely where it had always been in the Documents folder.
I had to restrain myself from doing a forehead palm slap in front of him, and patiently explain how files are stored on a computer, and how to find them.
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### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/34 "2021-05-13T14:14:15Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> As the Psychology Today article mentions, left and right are purely arbitrary conventions.
So are up and down but most people have no trouble with them.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/35 "2021-05-13T14:15:17Z")
As the article explains, up and down are not arbitrary. They are based on gravity. There is not the same sort of confusion with up and down as has been observed with right and left.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/36 "2021-05-13T14:22:03Z")
Like.
And to be clear, it took a chain of people dropping the ball to allow it to get far enough to cause a problem. So I’m not just blaming the new guys on the job.
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### Author:  [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/37 "2021-05-13T14:27:56Z")
Quite a few of these apply to me, and I feel compelled to – I don’t know, trumpet my lack of knowledge so you can all point and laugh at me?
1. The changing marital status from married to single is something that surprised me on my taxes. When I let my company know that my marital status had changed, I didn’t re-fill out my tax forms, so it just wasn’t anything I was thinking about (when you divorce, you have plenty of other shit to occupy your mind). I guess my company just went ahead and changed it on my tax forms for me. But the first year after my divorce I had a very unpleasant surprise with how much I owed in taxes (the divorce wasn’t finalized until the end of the year, so my withholdings in my paycheck didn’t change until the next year). And then the following year, I had a very pleasant surprise when I was expecting to owe a bunch of money and then didn’t.
2. The left-to-right thing: this confuses the hell out of me. I know the difference between left and right, that never confuses me. But saying to turn something to the right does. If you are turning a knob to the right, then the top of the knob goes from left to right, but the bottom of the knob is actually going from right to left. If you place your hand on something and turn it to the right, your fingers are going left to right, but your palm is going right to left. So that righty-tighty, left-loosy thing has never helped me much. Clockwise and counter-clockwise is a much easier point of reference for me.
3. Manually adding up numbers in an Excel spreadsheet: I never learned how to use formulas in Excel. When it comes time to add up numbers, I can either (a) Use a calculator, or (b) Learn how to use formulas in Excel. In the heat of the moment, it always seems like more effort to learn something new than it does to just whip out my calculator.
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### Author:  [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/38 "2021-05-13T14:30:43Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> There’s also some evidence that it’s related to left-handedness, and to cross-dominance.
Interesting, I’ve never heard this before. Do you have any more information on this? I’m cross-dominant (left-footed and right-handed).
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### Author:  [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/39 "2021-05-13T14:31:22Z")
> [@RollOutTheBarrel](#):
>
> he first time I told him to turn a knob to the left
I understand that this particular person didn’t know left from right, but asking someone to turn something to the left can cause confusion. I think clockwise and counter-clockwise are better descriptors. Right-tighty is open to interpretation at times.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youve-been-surprised-youve-had-to-explain-at-work/941959/40 "2021-05-13T14:32:05Z")
I work in college IT support, so I’m never surprised at what I need to explain. But there are some unusual ones.
Just the other day, an incoming student was having problems logging in to their email. I asked them what their username was. They told me “username.”
Years ago, I had a friar asking how much he needed to reimburse us for an email he sent to Rome. I had to explain why email was not a long distance call.
We require people change their password every year. Students try to use the same password they used before, unclear on the meaning of “change.”
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