I believed that a .co.nz web address meant I was dealing with a New Zealand company. So I sent through my $92.50 with my order and waited and waited… and waited for six weeks. Now I have a cheap shit battery that isn’t even for my model laptop and they won’t do anything until I return it … to China ($70 postage).
I swear I know better than that, I just really needed the replacement battery, and that overrode my critical thinking at the time I ordered.
We went on our honeymoon to the UK a few months after our wedding. At the time, my wife was having problems with her contact lenses. They were building up this weird film fairly often, meaning she had to take them out and clean them every few hours. So she wanted to bring her glasses along as well, so she had a backup. To make extra sure we didn’t forget them, I put them on top of the alarm clock so they’d be impossible to miss as we left.
We got to the airport, and she double checked that I’d remembered to put them in the bag. Of course, I had somehow managed to forget them. Two and a half weeks of sightseeing, split between her peering through a nasty haze at the amazing sights and us wandering all over the place trying to find somewhere to buy more contact lens solution.
I called Mensa (in pre-Internet days) to ask about renewing my membership. I wanted to know if I needed to provide my proof of eligibility again, or did they still have my info on file. I gave my (ridiculously common first and last) name and asked them to call me back.
However, I did not leave my number.
I win the thread.
I went through an entire car wash with my transmission in Drive. It was a bumpy, bouncy, jarring trip and I silently cursed at the crappy equipment as I bounced along. At the end, the attendant glared at me and shouted, “your first time in a car wash?!?”
I responded, “nope, second” and sped away.
mmm
We had an ice storm one day when I was in high school, and the parking lot had gotten really slippery during the day. I was taking my friend and my sister home, and we all got in the car, I started the car, hit the gas, and the car wouldn’t go.
Hit the gas harder, engine revs, wheels spin, still no go.
I say, “Geez this parking lot is really slippery! Someone’s gonna have to get out and push.”
Friend in the passenger seat looks down at the gear shift on the floor and says, “You’re still in park…”
D’oh…
I didn’t know about the safety button to prevent people from rolling down the window. I went almost a year without rolling down the passenger window. I laughed so hard when I discovered it. The best part about it was that I got out of airport duty and such as no one wanted to ride in the truck.
Oh, man, have I got stories for you. I have a truckload of these from when I was a kid, but by far my most memorable one was from a few years ago while I was in my 20s.
Mom and I stopped by the house late at night so I could pick something up and head right back out. When I got back into the car, I turned around…
…and there was this Asian gentleman looking me with horrified eyes, probably wondering if I was about to pull a gun on him.
I’d gotten into the wrong car.
Profusely apologizing of course, I quickly exited the vehicle, and we talked for the next few minutes with me standing outside, laughing about it and easing the tension.
Well, there was the time in high school geometry class where I carefully described how to calculate the area of a circle circumcised around a square…
I “washed dishes” at an optical physics laser laboratory one summer during my undergrad, watching some interesting work being done, and occasionally even doing some work - until I accidentally picked up a mirror. Worth $4000. Between my fingers. Turns out it was a front-silvered mirror and any touching totally destroyed the precise coating that it had, and it was a total write-off. I didn’t *do *much work after that, but still got to hang around.
format c: :rolleyes:
Once, when I was a snot-nosed cashier at the supermarket, I couldn’t get the cash drawer open. Called over the supervisor, who couldn’t tell why it was stuck, and we stood around for a while until I hit the “Cash” button and the thing popped open.
Just a couple of years ago, I called a plumber to help me get my old (very very old) boiler started up for the winter. The pilot light worked, the flame came on when I manually activated it, but the thermostat wouldn’t make it go on. He pokes around for a while, then flips a little black switch next to the burner unit, FOOOM! we’re on. The real silliness here is not the $75 bill for not knowing what switch to throw, it’s for paying the gas company $5 a month for “worry free service” and calling a plumber when my heating system doesn’t work.
This story illustrates my adorable belief that everyone is trustworthy.
I sold a laptop to this guy on e-bay who didn’t speak English well. His address was based in Oklahoma. He told me the purchase was for one of his clients, and would be run through his cousin’s account - and gave me an account number from Australia. He told me he needed me to ship it to Indonesia RIGHT AWAY. I was on the way back from the post office when PayPal called. Fortunately I was able to retrieve the package from the post office before it was mailed.
But the kicker is, I then started a thread on the Straight Dope titled something like, ''Is this a scam?" I always want to assume the best, ya’ll.
If kid stories count, here’s a fun one from when I was seven. I used to stay with the neighbor while I waited for the school bus in the morning. One very blustery winter day, I missed the bus and for some reason I couldn’t find my neighbor. Her husband was there, but he was asleep and I was afraid to wake him.
So I was like, ‘‘Whatevs, I’ll just bike to school.’’ I lived immediately off of a major highway at the time and I had no idea how to get to school (which was something like 10 miles away IIRC.) But I figured I’d recognize where to go when the time came.
So I loaded up my backpack and took off down the highway on my bicycle, in the wee dark hours of morning, in the middle of a good heavy snowfall. And while I miraculously did not get hit, I got very lost and very cold. So finally, I knocked on some random dude’s door and asked to use the phone. He brought me into his house. When I couldn’t get a hold of my Mom, he proceeded to throw my bicycle in the trunk of his car and offered to drive me to school.
(I can just imagine every parent cringing as they read this. I was so totally clueless.)
For some reason my school didn’t call my Mom when I arrived sometime around noon. At the end of the day when she heard this story she about had a nervous breakdown. I told her I had been very careful - I had checked the air in my tires before leaving.
Oh yeah, one more- when I was around 20, and desperately looking for a job in an area with appalling unemployment, I managed to send off an application to a local shop with no contact details on it.
I did helpfully include my (uncommon) name, however, so they’d know what muppet did it if I send in another copy.
Oooh, DOS catastrophies! Mine was when I first learned (not enough) about wildcards and typed “Del C:\o*.*” . On a bank PC. The one that held all historical files on overdrawn accounts. With the naming convention “odyyyy.123”. That was when I got introduced to some awesome new software called Norton Utilities. Thankfully, we were able to restore most of the files. Pretty much the only reason my boss didn’t fire me was because he didn’t back up the files.
Less confrontational, but equally embarrassing (probably more so, as I was about 14 at the time)…
We went on a school trip to France, by coach, which involved getting on the car ferry at Dover. As is always the way, we’d left ridiculously early so had to hang around for a couple of hours at the ferry terminal. We got off our coach, went inside to waste money on sweets and arcade machines etc, then went back out to the coach. I was about halfway down the aisle when I realised I couldn’t see any of my friends… or any familiar-looking teachers… or anyone I knew at all. Cue a very awkward backwards shuffle down the aisle with lots of kids from some other school pointing and laughing :smack:
Just today, my wireless keyboard and mouse stopped working. Unplugged and replugged the receiver from the USB hub. Nothing. Replaced the batteries in the keyboard, using rechargeable batteries. Nothing. Took the batteries out of the mouse, which, even though it wasn’t working, its light emitter was, and put them in the keyboard. Nothing. I finally gave up and went down to the bookstore to buy a four-pack of AAs, intending to replace the batteries in both the keyboard and the mouse. Opened the package, put the batteries in the keyboard…and noticed that the USB cable to my hub wasn’t plugged into my computer.
And one about my dad (who was an engineer and should have known better). He was working on some project for which he needed household cement – the clear stuff that comes in a tube. The tube he had on hand was old, so in order to loosen up the cement and get it flowing better, he put it in the oven to heat it. I don’t know if he forgot about it or what, but the tube exploded and splattered its contents all over the oven walls. He turned to my mother and said, “Don’t. Say. A word,” then drove straight to the appliance store to buy a new oven.
Ah, yes. About 8 months ago, I applied to a job using a different company name than the one I was applying to. I didn’t even know it until the hiring manager e-mailed me to let me know.
And yet I still got the job.
One day I was home from work and my supply teacher wife asked me to stay home with our three year old son.Everything was great until lunch. I took last nights roast from the fridge and put it on the stove ( pre microwave ) to reheat, of course it caught fire. Put that out and had to open lots of windows to get the smoke out, success ! Never before used the dishwasher and so didn’t realize there was a drain hose that was supposed to go into the sink, flood. Just as I was getting it mopped up, a little voice behind me said "
Daddy, why don’t we play outside until Mommy gets home "
Not quite on the same scale, but I managed to open the last box of photo paper for the lab I assisted (accounting, not the photo work), you know, just to check if it was full. :smack: How do all the pieces get ruined even when light doesn’t hit them??
I had been parked in a small lot alongside a store, and was ready to drive home. I noticed that there was another parking lot ahead of me, in an adjacent store, which was empty. So I figured I’d save time just to pull ahead into the other lot, then into the street. What I didn’t see was a low concrete barrier separating the two lots. Next thing I remember is my car straddling that barrier, with the front tires off the ground. I had to call AAA. The guy tried several ways to lift the car off the barrier, but finally had to just attach ropes to my rear bumper and PULL the car back, scraping the underside against the barrier. He towed the car to my mechanic, who took 3 days to fix it. That stupid mistake caused me over $2500. in repairs.