When people just don't get it

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

Sounds like your teacher would get along well with my last boss. (I only lasted there about three months, shock of shocks.) He was the head of the proofing team, and a walking dictionary (in the sense of knowing how to spell things), but his grammar was… shaky. He just didn’t understand a lot of how sentences actually worked, structurally, and I did, and it showed. (Imagine such meetings as me trying to explain why you would hyphenate “**all-day **sale” but not “it was on sale all day.”)

Still, there are smarter games to play, if you’re going to gamble. If you’re going with games that are purely RNG, you want to be playing craps, betting on the pass line with an odds bet on that.* Out of all the RNG games, that will get you closest to even odds with the house, since your odds bet pays out on the actual odds of the roll itself. It’s just the original pass line bet that favors the house, so you just stack the biggest possible proportion of your bet on the odds part of it.

*It’s been a while, so my terms may be wrong.

142

Then let’s be fair… Zsofia (or anyone else), would you move to a different state for the exact same pay because it’s like getting a raise since you don’t pay state income taxes?

143

What’s your point. It’s naive to believe that they’re not getting their money from somewhere.

144

Yes, they get it in property tax. Which is why so many people live on the state line . . .

145

I was at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and had one of these experiences. A woman walked by me in the meat section, held up a package of lamb and asked me if it was veal. I explained that lamb and veal are different and she looked sort of confused. She said that the butcher had told her lamb is the same as veal. I explained that veal was not lamb but in fact baby cow that had been penned up and not allowed to move and that is why it is a somewhat controversial choice of meat in hopes that knowing what veal is exactly would help her understand why the two are different. She went back over to the butcher and he walked her over and put a package of lamb in her hands. She pointed at me and told him what I said and he kept insisting that the two were the same. I don’t know if she ended up believing me or him though.

146

Mine was also a grocery store encounter. An older lady and I both walk up to the seafood counter at the same time, I defer and let her go first. She’s pointing to the alaskan king crab legs on sale and asks the guy at the counter, “So those are $7.99 a pound, does that weight include the shell?”

I sort of did a double take, wondering why anyone would ask something so fucking stupid and hoping it was a joke. But the guy just said “Yes ma’am, it’s the whole crab leg.”
And she keeps going. “Well that doesn’t make any sense, I don’t eat the shell, why should I have to pay for it?”
“Well it’s how we purchase it from our distributor, and they sell it to us with the shell included in the weight, so we have to sell it that way.”
“Foolish! Why should I pay for the shells? That’s not edible!”

She ended up not buying it. But I wanted to follow her around the store to see if she also shucked the corn on the cob, pulled the stems off the portobello mushrooms, and took all the vegetables out of the plastic bags when they weighed them at the register. Because, well, she doesn’t eat that, why should she have to pay for it.

Idiot.

147

Some of the same folks I mentioned in post #18 don’t seem to get the connection between diet and health.

I mention on occasion that I like to eat wheat pita pockets stuffed with veggies, feta, black beans, and hummus.
Their reaction: “It sounds gross! I wouldn’t like it. You probably eat rice cakes too.”
Me: "No, I never eat rice cakes. I do make a pretty good veggie soup with chicken broth. Or a yogurt smoothie with blueberries. "
Them: “It sounds too healthy. It won’t taste good!”

They’re frequently tired, have colds, or some other issue. They eat mostly frozen stuff, things that are breaded and deep fried, fast food, fish and chips, terikayi bowls, desserts, etc. They stuffed themselves silly on Superbowl Sunday–chile relleno casserole, 7 layer dip, spinach dip, and more. The next day, they felt horrible and one really needed a laxative.

But will they change those eating habits? I doubt it.

148

That don’t make no damned sense - the butcher didn’t know the difference between lamb and veal? Or he just didn’t think she needed to know the difference? Either way, he sounds like a lousy butcher.

149

I don’t know if he really didn’t know the difference between the two or if he just didn’t have any veal on hand and wanted to make a sale. Either way I decided that day that I would never go to that particular butcher for anything because he is either stupid or a liar.

150

I have a couple of those at work. I always bring my lunch & snacks, I never buy food in the cafeteria, which means people see me eating my food and always comment on how good it smells, ask what I’m eating, etc.

Last time, I was eating a salad with some chicken & fruit on it - and one person asked, “how do you stay so thin, eating all this good homemade food all the time?”

Really? You’re asking me how eating a salad I made at home is helping me stay thin? How can you not see a connection here?

151

Here is mine for the day.

I am the Member Relations Coordinator for the city Search and Rescue Association and am in charge of the annual recruitment drive that is going on right now. On our website, we have a page on recruitment that states they MUST be able to attend ALL training sessions, no exceptions. Yesterday, I sent an email to the email list of potential recruits reiterating this yet again. I underlined and bolded!

I can’t believe that I am still getting emails from people (in response to the email I sent yesterday all underlined and bolded even!) saying they will be out of town/country or have another commitment, can we make an exception pleeeeaaase? No. NO! It says it right there! And no, I don’t care if you are a police officer or fire fighter or have some experience in SAR already, you MUST attend ALL training sessions, NO EXCEPTIONS!

And also, I just want to thank the guy who emailed me yesterday asking if WE would pay for HIM to take his First Aid / CPR, which is a requirement for being accepted. When I said no, he replies ‘Geez, well, I guess I won’t join then’. GOOD!

152

^^ This reminds me of the restaurant I used to run. Every year we took part in a three-day festival for the Fourth of July. We would easily pull in five to ten times the amount of our normal sales from our booths at this festival - and on the 4th, it was so crazy the restaurant itself would be closed so we could concentrate on supplying the booths.

So, my policy was that everyone - EVERYONE - was required to work over that holiday. NO EXCEPTIONS. I made this clear to people when I hired them. I would put up a notice in May reminding my staff of this fact. And, in exchange, I would bend over backwards to try to accommodate every silly little time-off request they had during the rest of the year.

Quiz time! As the Fourth approached each year, do you think my employees:

a) Accepted the circumstances with good grace

b) Were shocked that they would have to work, and bitch and moan about it for weeks on end

153

My grandma is always asking my mom and aunts how she can save money. My mom told her that she could change her insurance plan. Right now she pays something like $200 a month and has no co-pay. My mom found her a plan that would change it to a $100 a month payment and a $15 co-pay. My grandma refused, saying that she has never paid a co-pay and never will. Last year she would have paid $60 in addition to $1200. Instead, she paid $2400, but she sure did save that $60!

154

The best one I can come up with right now happened on Christmas Eve at our shop’s White Elephant exchange this year. We had specified that a gift could only be stolen three times, so that whoever stole it the third time got to keep it. It’s a fairly common rule in this type of exchange because it keeps the game going faster by preventing everyone from starting their turn by stealing the most desirable gift. My team chief, however, was just not getting it.

TC: So the iPod can be stolen three times, and then the next person that steals it gets to keep it?
Me: No, it can only be stolen a *total *of three times, and the third person gets to keep it.
TC: That’s what I said. Number 5 just opened the iPod. So whoever has 6, 7, and 8 can all steal it, and then 9 gets to steal it and not worry about it being stolen from him.
Me: No, 8 would get to keep it if 6 and 7 both steal it. 8 would be the third “theft.”
TC: That’s what I said… but that means that 9 should get it in the end.

Repeat that a couple times, until our other team member jumps in and tries explaining it to TC. He’s not really saying anything that I didn’t say, but TC is still going in the same circles. So I’m starting to get the feeling that he’s fucking with us, and I say so. Ooh, boy, that was the WRONG thing to say.

TC: You don’t need to talk to me like I’m a three-year-old.
**Me **and TM: What? We thought you were fucking with us.
TC: We need to have a talk!

TC proceeds to spend the rest of the gift exchange sulking and glaring my way every once in a while. He was nice enough, too, to hold off on our “talk” until after Christmas, but not tell me about that part. So I spent the holidays waiting for that axe to fall :mad: And then the talk finally comes and he starts off by joking about it! I try explaining:

Me: It might have sounded right in your head, but trust me, you were saying it wrong over and over, and I legitimately thought you were jerking our chain.
TC: No, I was saying it right. You were way out of line.
Me: You’re right. :rolleyes:

155

Me too, Maiira. I loathe when people do that, sniggering up their sleeves as they ‘wind you up’ on something that you actually care about, and I think it’s the height of bad manners. I don’t mind a friend doing it once or twice, but it’s a dealbreaker in a relationship.

156

These are hilarious!

Customer comes in with overdrawn account
Customer: why can’t I take money out of my ATM card?
Me: because your account is overdrawn right now.
Customer: But I still have money in it, right?
Me: No. When the account is overdrawn, that means it is negative. That your balance is below $0.
Customer: But I need money!
Me: Well, sir, there is no money in your account for me to give you.
Customer: Can’t you just loan it to me?
Me: I can have you speak to a banker, but we usually don’t do small, pay-day loans.
Customer: Can I just write a check?
Me: I can’t cash the check if there is no money in the account.
Customer: Could you give me the cash now and cash the check on Friday when I get paid?
Me: No, sir. We do not do pay-day loans like that.
Customer: But I need money!

Usually at this point, I get one of the personal bankers to swoop in. Inevitably, there’s a line forming now because this person doesn’t get it.

157

I don’t get when posters don’t get when other posters are joking.

But maybe it’s just me.

Or maybe it’s some moderators. Yeah, that’s it. Some of them are still ignorant.

158

I’m imagining him at another doctor’s office, insisting that since he has the Mike gene (“the doctor told me so”) he doesn’t need to give up smoking/lose weight/etc.

159

How can you make a veggie soup with chicken broth?

160

[mod note]
Personal insults are not allowed in MPSIMS (and insulting a group of Straight Dope members counts). If you have a specific complaint about moderating actions, it belongs in ATMB. If you have a personal problem with a moderator, take it to the Pit. But keep it out of here.
[/mod note]