When people just don't get it

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m sure we’ve all dealt with these people. I just hope I’ve never been one of them.

Example 1: eBay buyer purchases a boxed set of new, art museum placemats which happen to be rather heavy and in a large box. We then get into the following email runaround:
Her: I don’t see why the shipping charges should be so high.
Me: The parcel is heavy. You could do parcel post.
Her: I wanted to get them by priority mail. Can’t you put them in one of the flat rate boxes?
Me: No, they don’t fit.
Her: Well, the other priority charges are too high.
Me: Parcel post would be better.
Her: Well, that costs a lot too.
And so on. I can’t remember what we ended up doing, but she just couldn’t understand that things which are big and heavy cost more to ship and that I don’t control the shipping charges.

Example 2: A woman came into the clock shop where I was getting watch batteries. She asked the repair guys to fix her clock (a cuckoo clock or something) because the sound it made was “too strong.” They tried telling her that it was made that way and did not have a volume adjustment, nor could they really find a way to make it softer. She kept saying it was too strong.

There are times when people just do not get what you’re telling them, no matter what you say. Ever had such times?

2

My FIL is a very intelligent man. Mostly. Here’s a conversation I had with him once.
Him: I can’t believe milk costs $3.00 a gallon now! When I was a boy, it was a nickle a quart!
Me: Well, yeah, but how much money did your father make?
Him: He brought home $6.00 most weeks!
Me: OK, so, on a decent day, he made enough money to buy about five gallons of milk?
Him: Yeah, I guess.
Me: Well, on most days, your son makes enough money to buy about 20 gallons of milk. So, from that perspective, milk is more affordable now, therefore cheaper. Even people who are working for minimum wage, full time, make enough to buy about 15 gallons of milk a day.
Him: Yeah, but it was only a nickle a quart! Now it’s $3.00 a gallon!
Me: Yes, but adjusted for inflation, it’s cheaper now.
Him: No! It was a nickle a quart! Now it’s almost a dollar a quart! That’s more!

ad nauseum, until I gave up in disgust. No matter what I said, I was not getting through to him that, for all intents and purposes, milk is cheaper now than it was when he was young!

3

My dad’s exactly the same, norinew. He’ll quote some ridiculous (in his view) price that he just had to pay for something, and say “In my day it cost three and sixpence - now it’s over a pound,” or whatever.

“Yes, but how much did you earn in 1970, dad? About £2,500? Well people nowadays earn 10 times that much. And 10 times three and sixpence is £1.75, so it’s actually cheaper in relative… oh never mind…”

4

Someone else posted this the other day, but it fits here.

.0002 dollars = .0002 cents.

5

So many people seem to write, e.g. 0.90c instead of either 90c or $0.90. It’s like they don’t even think about what the numbers mean.

6

It’s not the numbers, it’s the decimal points or the units.

Don’t you get it? :stuck_out_tongue:

7

It’s just a matter of opinion, obviously.

Didn’t you know that math is a totally subjective topic? :smiley:

Unfortunately, there are just as many stupid cell phone customers as there are stupid cell phone customer care reps.

Here’s one of my favourite re-occurring Idiot Customer Calls from my call centre days:
Customer: My bills are too expensive. I need you to fix that.
Me: Well, it looks like the problem is that you’re going over your minutes, and that’s costing you $100 in airtime fees each month. We could switch you to a $60 plan that would cover all that usage and then some.
Customer: But my plan right now is $25.
Me: Yes.
Customer: The $60 plan is more expensive.
Me: Yes. But you’re actually paying $125 each month between the plan and the airtime, so a $60 plan would cut your bill in half.
Customer: But I don’t want to spend $60. I want to spend $25. Can’t you do something else?
Me: I can recommend that you stop talking so much on your cellphone.

head desky

8

Customer: Why isn’t my insurance active yet?
Me: Well it appears you neither signed your form nor put the date you would like your coverage to start here. They cannot set up your policy without that information. I can fax this form back to you and you can fill in that information and we can have a policy for you in about a week.
Customer: But I need the coverage now! Can’t you just push a button and make it happen?
Me: No sir, there is no magic insurance button. When you fill out the form it must be reviewed by our underwriting team and there are about 1,000 forms coming into our office every day so it will take a day or two to get to your form.
Customer: But I sent you my form! Give me my ID number!
Me: No sir, you sent an incomplete form. This doesn’t entitle you to coverage at this time.
Customer: But you have my form right there! Can’t you just sign it for me and then push the button to make me a policy?
Me: Again, sir, there is no such button.
Customer: Just push it!
Me: :smack:

9

Visitor: Can I touch [priceless artifact made of steel that came from the bottom of the ocean]?
Me: No.
Visitor: Awwww, why not?
Me: Because it’s [large number] years old and very, very fragile. Touching it could cause more damage.
Visitor: What? But it’s metal!
Me: Yes, but you have oils in your fingers that can get etched into the metal and wear it away over time.
Visitor: Aw, come ooonnnn, just this once? That can’t hurt it, can it?
Me: Yes, actually, it can. If I let you touch it, I’d have to let everyone touch it, and the damage would add up.
Visitor: …But it’s metal!
Me: Doesn’t mean it can’t get damaged. Remember, it’s been under the ocean for quite a few years.
Visitor: …But it’s metal!

Twitch

10

Paraphrased from an actual incident early this month:

My mother: You should take a trip to (country).
Me: (Organization) is putting together just such a trip, and I’ve told (org head) that I’m interested. It’s planned for June.
Mother: You should go in March!
Me: I’m not part of the trip planning. They’re planning for a week in June.
Mother: You should go in March! And a week isn’t enough time!
Me: I’m not part of planning the trip.
Mother: You should go for two weeks! And you should visit (city)!
Me: I have nothing to do with the planning.

(Repeat, escalate her lines, I wanted to do a facepalm so hard.)

11

:smiley:
I work at a lab that does parentage testing, and on our reports, it says something like, “Of the 9 genetic systems tested, six show that…”, and then there’s a list of each person’s genes showing where they match up and where they don’t. We had a guy call the other day who wanted to know what were the names of the genes.
“Well, sir, they’re listed on your report. The first one is D3S1358.”
“Yes, well, I want to know which genes were tested.”
“D3S1358 is the name of the gene. Do you think there may be a problem with your result?”
“No, I just want to know what the genes are.”

Etc., etc. Eventually, I asked a lab technician to speak with him, but she couldn’t make any headway either. Then the doctor had a try. Finally:
“Just tell me what the gene is called!”
Doctor: “Its name is Mike.”

12

My brother used to work in Directory Assistance. Some callers could not understand the fact that if a number is not listed, he can’t get it for them.
“I’m sorry, it’s not listed,” he would say.
“But it gots to be!” they would reply–in those exact words.

They’d argue about it until he finally had to give them to his supervisor, who was the only one allowed to hang up on callers.

13

The really sad thing about this is that the caller was probably thinking “Well, great! Why didn’t they just tell me it was Mike in the first place??”:smack:

14

And “So that’s why they call it a Mike-roscope!”

15

My favorite was when I was coordinating client events for a law firm. One of the partners wanted me to guarantee him that the Cards would be in the playoffs because he had a client coming in from another country and wanted to make sure this guy got to see a game while he was in town. So, the conversation went:

Partner: Okay, overly, now if I take these tickets, the Cards will be in the playoffs, right? On the same day the tickets list?

Me: Well, Larry, I can’t guarantee that the Cards will be in the playoffs. They will be if they win next week’s game.

Partner: That’s just not good enough, overly. I need a guarantee that this game will happen.

Me: I can’t do that, Larry. Not only might the Cards lose next week, the game could get rained out or rescheduled for some other reason. It’ll probably happen, but NOT if they lose next week’s game.

Partner: I don’t know why this is so difficult for you to understand. This game has to happen or we’ll look like idiots.

Me: Larry, even your client will understand that we can’t control whether a baseball team wins or loses a game.

Partner: They’re from out of the country! They don’t know shit about it.

Me: They’ve got sports in Sweden, too. With playoffs.

Partner: Not like this! Now you guarantee me this game will happen.

Me: Okay, Larry. The game will happen.

Luckily it did happen, but I kinda hoped it wouldn’t, even if I caught flack for it.

16

This has been going on for…at least a century, as Mark Twain had written a similar scene in ‘A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’, where 2 groups of tradesmen from different towns are comparing their wages, and one group is proud that they have higher wages, even after the hero (Ben?) points out that their costs are higher so that the tradesmen from the other have relatively more purchasing power even with lower wages, as their supplies as a percent of salary are even cheaper. The first group of Tradesmen just doesn’t get it no matter how many different ways Ben tries to explain - their salaries are higher, and that’s that.

17

Oh, I know this is not a new argument! (LOVE Connecticut Yankee, btw). But my FIL is an intelligent man. An electrical engineer (well, retired), therefore you would expect and hope he would be able to follow reason. Alas, no.

My husband is convinced that his father is sometimes deliberately obtuse for the sake of the argument. :smack:

18

Both my mom and I have attempted to explain the lowered power costs available from So Cal Edison if people would go on their pay level/summer discount plan, which gives quite a nice credit every year if you agree to have the gray box/disconnect put on your a/c. In the rare event of a rolling blackout, you’d lose your a/c for a short time and then they turn it back on and roll it to another customer. In return, you get lower rates and Do Not Pay on a couple bills per year. In the meantime, the neighbors without the plan are paying more than $300 per month.

Them: I’m paying through the nose for power and I don’t even run my a/c!
Us: You can save a lot of money on this plan.
Them: I don’t want to get cut off!
Us: Why would you be the first one cut off?
Them: Just our luck.
Us: It would only be for a short time.
Them: I don’t want to risk it.
us: But you don’t even run your a/c most of the time.
Them: I don’t want to do it OR I’d rather just pay what I owe.
us: You’d still pay what you owe. It just wouldn’t be as much.
Them: No, I don’t want to do it.

Sigh. Whatever.

19

But this goes to eleven!

20

“I don’t think that that is dependent on the outcome of the game.”