I just received this and thought I'd pass it along. I *think* there's some "metalworking" in the last illustration. :-)
Al
OUR JOBS ARE SAFE AS LONG AS THESE PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE......
ONE. Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. 'We don't have half dozen nuggets,' said the teenager at the counter. 'You don't?' I replied. 'We only have six, nine, or twelve,' was the reply. 'So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?' 'That's right.' So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.
------------------------------------------------------------------ TWO. I was checking out at the local Target with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those 'dividers' that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the'divider,' looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?' I said to her 'I've changed my mind, I don't think I'll buy that today.' She said, 'OK,' and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- THREE. A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM 'thingy.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------- FOUR. I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car 'Do you need some help?' I asked. She replied, 'I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?' 'Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?' I asked. 'No, just this remote thingy,' she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, 'Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk .'
-------------------------------------------------------------------- FIVE. Several years ago, we had a junior typist who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said,'I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?' 'Just use copier machine paper,' the secretary told her. With that, the junior took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five 'blank' copies. ------------------------------------------------------------------- SIX . My neighbour works in the I.T. department in the central office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branches who had this question: 'I've got smoke coming from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?' -------------------------------------------------------------------- SEVEN . Police in Dubbo NSW interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopier machine. The message 'He's lying' was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the 'lie detector' was working, the suspect confessed .
Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid !
The horrible thing is that stupid things like this actually happen.
Bob Engelhardt wrote: > Al Patrick wrote: >> ... >> The horrible thing is that stupid things like this actually happen.
> True enough, but I don't think that *these* things happened. Don't > smell right to me. I think that you need to turn down your gullibility > a tad <G>.
On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:35:09 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, Bob Engelhardt <bobengelha...@comcast.net> quickly quoth:
>Al Patrick wrote: >>... >> The horrible thing is that stupid things like this actually happen.
>True enough, but I don't think that *these* things happened. Don't >smell right to me. I think that you need to turn down your gullibility >a tad <G>.
You ought to get out more, Bob. I've seen plenty of people do this type of really stupid stuff before. Why do you suppose the Darwin Awards continue annually?
-- Jewish Zen: Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated, already? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ www.diversify.com - Uncomplicated Website Design, here and now.
I have no reason to doubt these are real. I was collecting similar stories with an idea of publishing them in a book. My favorite was when a client called our office asking: " I have an appointment at 10AM today and 12PM today. Which one should I attend first?"
> Bob Engelhardt wrote: >> Al Patrick wrote: >>> ... >>> The horrible thing is that stupid things like this actually happen.
>> True enough, but I don't think that *these* things happened. Don't smell >> right to me. I think that you need to turn down your gullibility a tad >> <G>.
On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:45:18 -0700, Michael Koblic wrote: > I have no reason to doubt these are real. > I was collecting similar stories with an idea of publishing them in a book. > My favorite was when a client called our office asking: " I have an > appointment at 10AM today and 12PM today. Which one should I attend first?"
How is this interesting? In an effort to look clever you have passed on what are most likely urban legends (nice of way of saying lies). You may be familiar with the term "confirmation bias", this when a belief is held and then evidence is sought to confirm the belief while ignoring contradicting evidence. This doesn't even rise to the level of confirmation bias as the evidence that might confirm the belief that people are idiots in all probability did not occur or is exaggerated for effect. I believe that people are idiots but this is poor evidence of it. Passing chain emails is a better indication of the lack of critical thinking skills prevalent in society today, I know this is mean but maybe now you won't do it anymore...then again.
On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:28:44 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, Al Patrick <a...@vance.net> quickly quoth:
>Bob Engelhardt wrote: >> Al Patrick wrote: >>> ... >>> The horrible thing is that stupid things like this actually happen.
>> True enough, but I don't think that *these* things happened. Don't >> smell right to me. I think that you need to turn down your gullibility >> a tad <G>.
>I've SEEN about that bad a couple of times. :-)
When I worked for a body shop, people would call in and ask how much it would cost to fix their car. No brand/model/year info, not even so much as a ding/crumple/total, was mentioned on the phone before they asked for a repair price.
I've seen people string a dozen pieces of plumbing together and watch the drone at Homey's Despot ring it up as one piece. (I've done the same thing but reminded the clerk that it was easier to carry all those pieces as one, then had her ring them up separately.)
People are constantly amazed on the phone that my company, Home and Garden Handyman, doesn't handle lawn mowing.
I've read stories in advertising: People would buy 3 and pay a buck when tomatoes were 25 cents each or 3 for $1.
In Cialdini's book, _Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion_, he talks about the entire apartment block of people who watched a girl getting raped and murdered. Everyone thought everyone else would have called the cops, but nobody did. Everyone though someone else would help, but nobody did.
These are the folks who need their gullibility factor geared back and tuned-up just a wee bit.
-- Jewish Zen: Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated, already? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ www.diversify.com - Uncomplicated Website Design, here and now.
I might have inspired a big one. Back in the '50's and '60's I lived in Exeter, a few miles upwind of Betty and Barney Hill. One of my many home-made flying gizmos was parachutes made from extremely light weight polyethylene dry-cleaners bags. The 16 pinched shroud ties curved them along the edges so they had a nice manufactured-looking shape, a smoothly flattened dome. From underneath they looked like jellyfish. If I used only enough ballast to barely keep them open they would slowly rise on the thermals like milkweed seeds on sunny days and several drifted out of sight over the tree line. At a low viewing angle the plastic reflected bright clouds and the sun and looked metallic, with flashes from the shroud tie ripples.
I've seen several strange things fly over that careful observation showed to be pranks by other kids and college students, such as large, distant and fast night-time flying lights that binoculars and Boy Scout triangulation revealed to be birthday candles only about 200 feet up.
