The fact that some employees were confused about Easter in this thread got me to thinking about stupid questions. Not stupid questions once person asked you once, but stupid questions you’ve unbelievably been asked by multiple people.
Over the years I’ve had conversations with people where the topic of being born on holidays has come up. My best friend was born on Christmas, and Dad and I were both born on Easter. Most people think that’s kind of neat. Two different people, years apart and both college educated, have asked if that means my birth date is different every year.
My response both times was to just stare at them and say of course not. If it happens again I’m going to tell them to leave me alone and go bother someone who was born on Thanksgiving or Mother’s day.
So…what’s the dumbest thing you’ve been asked at least twice?
Heh. I teach math. I can’t count the number of shockingly irrational or obviously senseless questions (I don’t call them “dumb questions” as a matter of professional principle, but I think they fit your criteria) that I get asked on the regular.
Actually, that’s a question that’s been frequently asked not of of me, but also of many of my friends whose families happened to have originated anywhere east of Prussia.
“Are you an Albino?” At least once a week someone asks me that. A bunch of medical professional have asked me. I’m pale and blond. I do not have pink eyes. One of my blue eyes looks purple sometimes.
“Are you sure?” when I tell them at the grocery store please don’t bag the milk or any other handled large liquid container like OJ or laundry detergent. Of course I’m sure, that is why I said it.
I worked in a prison that had three floors. We rotated the order that the floors went to meals.
Day 1: the order was 1, 2, 3
Day 2: the order was 2, 3, 1
Day 3: the order was 3, 1, 2
Then repeat. It was a three-day cycle that always followed that pattern. I’m sure most of you could memorize it in the time it would take you to read this sentence. It was so simple I could take a couple days off from work and come back and still know what today’s order was. It’s so simple I can remember the system and I worked there in 1982.
But at least once a week, I would have a prisoner ask me what order they would be going that day. And I worked on the afternoon shift, so there would have already been two meals served that day by the time they asked me.
I had my vocal chords removed. People always ask me if they’ll grow back or if I’ll ever be able to talk again. Yes, because I’m a fucking magical lizard that can regenerate body parts. Just like all those war vets who grew back their legs or arms. I mean, I don’t understand how people can be soooooo stupid.
Has got to be one of the stupidest questions ever. Not “why are you X?” or, “why do you think people should be X?” but just plain old “Are you X because you’re smart?” Stupid.
Hmmm, so many choices. But I’m just going to go with “Did you play basketball?”
It just occurred to me that nobody has asked me how the weather up here is for quite some time. Not sure if it’s because the joke is out of style, or people only feel empowered to ask that of a teenager.
My brother and I were born on the same day 11 years and a few minutes apart. We have both been asked, serious and straight-faced, if we are twins enough times that we have both actually started telling people ------ “we’re identical twins born 11 years apart”.
I worked for a lady that set up one of the first used videogame stores in so cal in the early 90s … but she ran it out of her home at first and then later we moved to a swap meet …
Now she was a sort of engineer before she developed rheumatoid arthritis she designed circuit boards and chips for Lockheed for 20 years So fixing a Nintendo or any other console (she was actually getting certified by sony to get the tools for fixing ps2’s when she passed on) was a piece of cake … she even designed her own tools for doing so so she took pride that everything worked and even offered a guarantee
Yet every weekend some jackass would come and ask “do they work?” and shed get pissed off and say look you found me through my ads in the papers right ? would i go through all that to sell you junk?
Well I figured out why some people asked that … see there was a “yard sale” section of the swap meet where people would empty a closet toss it on a blanket and sell their junk… and sometimes it would be their video games that didn’t work and they knew it … so yeah there was some shadiness going on
But then wed get complained at that they got ripped off … And my boss would say in the sweetest way " well dear you were paying 5 bucks for a 40 dollar game … did it occur to you something might be well off about it … "well its a swap meet things are supposed to be cheap like that "
So shed make a deal to buy the game for what they paid for it … About 30 percent it was a loss because you could tell some kid spilled something on it (one actually had dried milk in an NES cartridge …youd have to soak it to get that effect) … but sometimes it was just no one bought a cleaning kit for it and shed take 5 minutes and clean it and it would work fine …
When I was a prof in Computer Science I got some really dumb questions. People would even come up to me during tests to asks for clarification. The one that sticks out the most:
“Is zero an even number?”
(The question would be to solve a problem for all such-and-such of even length or something.)
This is for 3rd and 4th year Computer Science majors. You know, the field with binary numbers. Where the test of an integer being even is incredibly freaking simple.
Once after this happened, I asked FtGKid1 if zero was an even number. He said “Yes.” I asked “Why?” “Because one is odd.” He was four at the time and college students didn’t get this.
I told my fellow profs about this so some started putting questions like this on tests because they didn’t believe it. And got the some question.
In their defense: all positive integers are either prime or composite—except 1, which is a special case, considered neither prime nor composite. So I suppose they could have been thinking, all integers are either even or odd, except, could 0 be a special case?
I don’t know whether you think it’s obvious your birthday differs or not. (I’m guessing you think it is.)
In any case some ‘named’ days are fixed - and some aren’t.
Here’s a list of ‘named’ birthdays:
Christmas Day - Dec 25
St. George’s Day - Apr 23
New Year’s Day - Jan 1
Easter - any Sunday between March 22 and April 25
Thanksgiving - any Thursday between Nov 22 and Nov 28
Mother’s Day - any Sunday between May 8 and May 14
I think that people may be upset for you when they hear the news and are thus not thinking clearly.
They may be confused between body parts that don’t regenerate and those that do (liver, fingertips, broken bones, toenails etc.)
Having, certainly, a less nuanced understanding of math than the people taking the course, my layman’s defintion of “even number” would be one that is divisible by 2 with no remainder, so I also would be wondering of 0 was a special case.
To the OP, I don’t have any questions per se that stick out in my memory, but I have on two separate occasions had mothers decide that the best way to manage getting both their library books and their infant children from the car into the library was to bring the infant in, wordlessly place it in its carrier thingy on the desk in front of me, then attempt to leave the building to park their car and return with their books.
Note “attempt to leave.” On both occasions, I corrected their misapprehension that I was interested in being left in charge of their spawn and volunteered to come out to their car to get their books.
I’ve told this story so many times to friends that “You can’t leave that here” is an actual catch phrase in my circle.
Fifteenish years ago, Michael Jackson was still alive and my vitiligo kicked in. The backs on my hands were white.
Three different times people saw my hands and asked me if I had that disease that Michael Jackson had. Each time I answered, angrily, “Pedophilia? No, why do you ask?”
All three times the person freaked out, thinking that I was maybe going to take a swing at them.
