[Closed] The stupid things other people say to you

"Can you have this done today?"

That's normally a stupid thing to ask me.

When I go on bike rides or do anything remotely adventurous, my Mum says 'be careful'.

Umm.. since when have I ever been any kind of adrenaline junky who takes crazy risks? Ok I know she's just showing she cares, but it still sounds a bit of a daft thing to say 🙂

"Does anything happen in this race or do they just keep riding down the same hill all the time?"

rocketman - [s]that's a pretty fair comment though. ;)[/s] EDIT - thought you were talking about drug cheats in lycra riding up them...

[b]Them[/b] [i]"How soon can you have this done[/i]"

[b]ME [/b] [i] "Erm .. should be ready by [insert date here][/i]"

[b]Them [/b][i]"Oh, can you not get it done sooner ?[/i]"

.. we'll yes actually, I just made up the first answer for a laugh

The MiL's partner came round to pick her up from my son's first birthday party.

we had Happy First Birthday stuff everywhere - up the garden path, in the house etc plus its not hard to remember that a kid hasn't been in this world too long.

Said partner upon entering the house asked 'How old is Finley today?'.

The room went very quiet...

When I go on bike rides or do anything remotely adventurous

It's as though nobody else gets of their backsides for the fun of it 😉

"how much!!!!?!?!? you could've bought a car for that!"

Along similar work lines then:

PM: How long will this take you?
Me: Well there's a huge number of variables, it could take me about a week but depending on what I find out when I start it it could take me a day or a month. I don't really want to give a definite answer.
PM: Ok. Soo.. how long will it take?
Me: I really don't know yet.
PM: Right. So, how long will it take?
Me: FFS. Ok if you have to put a number down put three weeks for contingengy
PM: That's too long
Me: So why are you even asking me then? What do you want to put down?
PM: How about.. a week?
Me: Fine, a week then 🙄

One week later:

PM: Where is it?
Me: Well I've uncovered a load of issues, so it's not done yet.
PM: But you said you'd have it done in a week.
Me: *sigh*

Burnt my arm a while ago

'Is it a bad one'

Well i've never had a good burn

Molgrips, do you work at my company?

@molgrips - reminds me of budgeting time where I use to work.

Head Office would ask the MD's to produce the budget forecasts which my MD did very diligently based on 11 years of being in the job.

Every year they would tell him it wasn't enough and would give the figure they expected the bottom line to be so he would have to fudge everything else around that.

And then, every year we were under their budget but pretty much spot on his original estimates...

Molgrips - it would be done by now if you hadn't been [s]arguing[/s] contributing on here all week!

I work for a large IT company in a technical sales role. The technical and product side of the business tends to have some pretty bright people working in it. The pure sales side is a bit more er.. mixed. Part of my role is to work as a liaison between the two parts

Some of the recent gems:
How do you work out 10% of something?
How do you spell "quarter"?
I've got a tender here for storage can you look at it?

Had a quick look and it was for warehouse shelving!

Having a mid ride stop in Langwathby, outside a nice teashop.

Some old dear asked what was down a particular road.

She was told it was the railway station from the film Brief Encounter, on the Settle-Carlisle line.

Her follow up question was 'is that was where the Settle-Carlisle Line starts?'

No, that would be either Settle or Carlisle.

When I used to work in sales my boss would tell us the definition of insanity was doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results.

I took great delight in the irony of her telling us this, using precisely the same phrase, 2 or 3 times a week.

The amount of BS that is spouted in my office is nothing short of frightening, it would be difficult to pick a winner...

Though my mother is a good source of ridiculousness

'You have been like this your whole life, why can't you just change?!' is a favourite.

Also, I knew a girl once who strongly believed that leather was made only from monkeys hands and faces. She's a teacher now.

do you dye your beard?

when talking process improvements with people I've met for 10 mins, how much can you save us - try so hard to say it depends how shit you are now

I work in the furniture department in a college. I am always getting staff and students coming in saying [b]'Have you got any offcuts of wood I can have?'[/b]

What they normally mean is not strictly wood, but mdf or plywood, and usually by an offcut, they mean about an 8'x4' sheet!.. 🙄

mikewsmith - Member

when talking process improvements with people I've met for 10 mins, how much can you save us - try so hard to say it depends how shit you are now

Hah. We did a lean processes thing back in the bank, one area after 6 months triumphantly declared that they'd saved X thousand pounds and reduced by Y FTEs, and were given gold stars. We said "Seriously? How did you have that much wastage, you must be shit. We haven't made any signficant changes because this is lean stuff is all just common sense that any competent person would be doing already" and got told off for not making massive savings.

Ah, the banking industry, how I miss its cheeky foibles.

At a school year reunion last year

"So how old are you then?"

"Erm, the same age as you as you were, like, in my class and stuff....."

I wish I had a pound for every time I've wheeled a bike out of the garage whilst wearing bikey kit and a neighbour asks:
"are you going for a ride?"

See also - swooping onto drive covered in mud:
"been for a ride?"

I was once asked by Dell customer service how to spell NHS.
The Solaris operating system includes a facility called NIS. For clarity, this (according to the documentation) is pronounced [i]enn-eye-ess[/i]
I posted this before, but in an underpowered canal boat making little headway against a strong wind, my mum asked "is it because we're going uphill?"

Me. : ooyah bugger!

Someone else : are you OK?

"Why are you riding a downhill bike?"
[img] [/img]

(not mine, but mine is the same colour)

Are the Cotswolds open on Sundays?

I posted this before, but in an underpowered canal boat making little headway against a strong wind, my mum asked "is it because we're going uphill?"

He's just being friendly 😡

Cardiff has an outdoor velodrome at a local leisure centre which also has a pool. I turn up at the kiosk dressed in full on lycra, helmet, biking shades, cycling gloves, the lot, and no bag carrying alternative kit. A bit tired of having to ask for a ticket for the velodrome this time I just hand the girl a fiver. She looks at me for a second and said 'Swim, is it?'

Whilst touring vineyards during a recent visit to a sultana supplier our buyer asked 'what have grapes got to do with sultanas?'

Whilst touring vineyards during a recent visit to a sultana supplier our buyer asked 'what have grapes got to do with sultanas?'

this

I wish I had a pound for every time I've wheeled a bike out of the garage whilst wearing bikey kit and a neighbour asks:
"are you going for a ride?"

See also - swooping onto drive covered in mud:
"been for a ride?"

made me chuckle.

As an IT technician I often have Service Managers over my shoulder as soon as an alert comes in:

"What's wrong?"
"Don't know yet, just looking into it"
"Right, can you fix it please?"
"Errm... I don't know yet because I don't know what's wrong"
"OK. When will you know what's wrong?"

At which point I have to stop answering.

American tourist stopped me in Regent's street in London once, and politely asked me which way Hamleys toy store was.

Outside the shop next door to Hamleys.

At Christmas time too, so there was the usual enormous crowd looking at the festive window display entertainment.

Once met a girl in Dubrovnik who worked as a tour guide, shepherding cruise ship tourists around. She regaled us with a selection of jaw-droppers she'd been asked about the city by her charges, including:

"What film was this set built for?"
"Do you have refrigerators here?"

And my favourite:

"Do they take the walls down at night?"

Person - "what's your job, then?
Me - "I'm a mechanical engineer"
Person - "Ah right, so you fix cars...."
Me - "erm, nope....."

The local Nissan garage, after having my Micra in for five days:

"Well, the diagnostic computers are saying that nothing's wrong. But we know something's wrong, because it won't start".

Is an issue for trans-pacific shipping, though, iirc. Or at least one of the Oceans. And yes one of our Terrain/Sea simulators for Radar Altimeters did (correctly) have gradient as one parameter for Sea.

How does that work then? Is it due to differing air pressures acting on the water causing bulges and depressions? Like a storm surge?

or tides? or centrifugal force (inertia, whatever) from the earths rotation?

No, it's because the tide is out in the Atlantic, but fully in in the Pacific, so there's a general downhill between the two. Six hours later, it's uphill because the tides have changed.

Duh!

Duh!

😆

Member of Teaching Staff: "So, we have to get approval from the exam board before we can register students with them?"

Me: Facepalm

Bit more complicated than though? uphill/downhill is a bit irrelevant compared to the tidal currents, and out in the open ocean, I'd have thoguth it wouldn't make much difference, as it's a larger scale version of bobbing up and down in the waves, with the wave moving far more than the actual water?

clicky piccy:

[url= http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/M2_tidal_constituent.jp g" target="_blank">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/M2_tidal_constituent.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

The difference between the radius of the earth at the poles and at the equator is 22km. So if you are sailing towards the equator you've got a lot of climbing to do...

Okay I retract my question, it's suddenly getting a bit too complicated for my brain to cope with.

😆

Apparently the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are thick enough to exert enough gravitational pull to affect sea level. When/if they all melt, this will stop, resulting in bigger sea level rises in some parts of the world, and smaller rises in others, than you would otherwise expect.

I work in a bike shop, nothing fancy, from £100 cheapy MTBS to just over a grand..

We get allsorts, some understandably as we dont exactly attract the high end users, some just plain stupid!

*who'd spend £200 on a bike?*
*whats the difference between a £90 bike and a £3000 bike?*
*Don't you have anything cheaper than £100? It's just to ride 10 miles to work on every day*
*Hi, do you sell outer tubes?* (that'll be a tyre, then?)
*Do you sell ball barians? My cranks all wobbly*

The list is endless, as you probably know if you've worked in a bike shop 😀

American tourist stopped me in Regent's street in London once, and politely asked me which way Hamleys toy store was.

The local Nissan garage, after having my Micra in for five days:

"Well, the diagnostic computers are saying that nothing's wrong. But we know something's wrong, because it won't start".

Nothing wrong with a Nissan Micra that won't start - in fact, there's everything right about that situation 😉

*whats the difference between a £90 bike and a £3000 bike?*

I used to always end up giving £2910 (or appropriate figure) as the answer to that one.

Molgrips -

Cardiff has an outdoor velodrome at a local leisure centre which also has a pool. I turn up at the kiosk dressed in full on lycra, helmet, biking shades, cycling gloves, the lot, and no bag carrying alternative kit. A bit tired of having to ask for a ticket for the velodrome this time I just hand the girl a fiver. She looks at me for a second and said 'Swim, is it?'

Haha - trolled.

Was once inside a glacier near Chamonix. This american guy reaches out and touches the ice "Oh wow, thats ice".

I could not contain my laughter.

Yes, someone once said to me " I need your boots, your gun and your motorcycle "

used to always end up giving £2910 (or appropriate figure) as the answer to that one.

Yeah we do that a lot, unfortunately some people who come out with these stupid questions, don't get sarcasm either 😉

Ex-wife once said "So how do they steer the train?"

My neighbour is a driving instructor. He just pointed to the new vinyl graphics on the side of his car and said proudly "My son designed that". Only problem is, it looks shit, it's a poor idea, poorly executed and includes a picture of a car that could have been drawn and coloured in by a 5 year old. His son is 18.

So it was me that had to say the stupid thing... "Nice work. You must be very pleased with it"

I feel cheap.

Renault dealership on not being able to diagnose our car not starting via the computer diagnostics, 'next time it doesn't start bring it in' how, should I just pop it in a carrier bag and walk?

"but didn't it come with a saddle"

Dunno if It's really worth mentioning as everyone will have had it, it is a classic though.

"Where did you have it last?"

Nothing wrong with a Nissan Micra that won't start - in fact, there's everything right about that situation

I loved the way it handled, I was less keen on the fact something went wrong on it every couple of months. Four starter motors in three years, wiper rack needing replacing, numerous electronic problems, EGR valve... it eventually gave up the ghost and was scrapped at the age of 5, just over 72,000 miles on the clock. :/

Renault dealership on not being able to diagnose our car not starting via the computer diagnostics, 'next time it doesn't start bring it in' how, should I just pop it in a carrier bag and walk?

I didn't realise the 2003-onwards Micras were secretly Renaults. It certainly explained a lot. -_-

Along similar work lines then:

PM: How long will this take you?
Me: Well there's a huge number of variables, it could take me about a week but depending on what I find out when I start it it could take me a day or a month. I don't really want to give a definite answer.
PM: Ok. Soo.. how long will it take?
Me: I really don't know yet.
PM: Right. So, how long will it take?
Me: FFS. Ok if you have to put a number down put three weeks for contingengy
PM: That's too long
Me: So why are you even asking me then? What do you want to put down?
PM: How about.. a week?
Me: Fine, a week then

One week later:

PM: Where is it?
Me: Well I've uncovered a load of issues, so it's not done yet.
PM: But you said you'd have it done in a week.
Me: *sigh*

Now this is a daily occurance where I work, only I'm the one doing the asking. The way I look at it, someone is paid not only to get through the job, but also have the experience to say 'this'll take normally 3 weeks, but if it's as simple as possible, 1 week, and if I have to start from scratch, 5 weeks". If you're not capable of that, bye bye....

The way I look at it, someone is paid not only to get through the job, but also have the experience to say 'this'll take normally 3 weeks, but if it's as simple as possible, 1 week, and if I have to start from scratch, 5 weeks

That's great, but that only works if you have all the information you need and full exposure of all the issues. If you're not capable of understanding that then.. well.. it'd be byebye if I were in charge. Pig headed PMs who can't be bothered to listen to their staff shouldn't resort to bullying them instead.

It's precisely because I have a large amount of experience that I can forsee many possible problems and what THEY in turn might take to solve.

There are two kinds of PM - those who work for their team and get them what they need to do their job; and those who work for their own managers whipping the team.

Guess which one works out better?

In the above scenario, the good PM's I've worked with will ask about the various different scenarios and on what they depend. So they can present a thorough report on the risks and their impacts to the management. Of course, that's extra work, as they have to learn about the issues and figure out how to phrase it and set it all out clearly for a decision. Bad ones are lazy, they just want to put a number in MS Project and will batter you until they get one.

Writing software is not like building a wall. You can't say one man can lay X bricks an hour so if we have Y men and need Z bricks it'll take z/(y*x). It's just not like that any more.

This, today.

Hi, I still have my 2006 AUDI A4 AVANT S-LINE TDI BLACK for sale at the price of £4500. The car is in excellent condition, garage kept and accident free. The mileage is real and I never had any problems with the engine. The car looks and works just perfect. This car got full service history. It has 89000 miles and it has 4 previous owners. I bought it from UK and it is still registered here.

I will travel for the next couple of days and I won't be able to check my eBay messages system. If you have any questions about the car please contact me directly at nata16585@gmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you, Isabel

Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 23:56:49 -0700 From: <Email address removed in line with eBay policy> To: <Email address removed in line with eBay policy

My house phone rings. I pick it up and say hello. My mum replies hello and asks if I am in the house??

I worked with a guy and every time you told him how to do something
He always come back with. But the point is
And the point was he was frigging useless

Isn't it getting dark early?

or

Whats your name? when I ask for a flat white.

"...to be fair,"

SHUT UP. SHUT UP NOW. You're not interested in fairness, you just finally realised how to phrase the point you thought of half way through my sentence and didn't bother to listen to the rest of what I was saying, using 'to be fair' as the universal "It's my turn to talk now but I can't retort to your actual points because that would mean being able to think and listen at the same time" phrase.

I'm on to the lot of you.

Wife,is that astroturf on the floor?
Me,yes
Wife,how often do you have to cut it?

The one that always has me doing the eye-rollie thing is what I'm at a gig at a small venue, waiting for the doors to open, so I can go in. There's almost inevitably one, sometimes several, members of the local brains trust who wander up, look at the line of twenty or thirty people queued up, walk up to the door and push at it, then look at those of us right at the front, and ask if the doors have opened yet.
"There's a bunch of us, standing here, in the cold, when we could be inside, in the warm, with a drink. What do you think?"
Seriously, how do mammals that slow possess respiratory functions? 🙄

A conversation I had with a work mate:

"Vicky, have you got the time?"
"Yes, it's five to eleven"
Whilst looking at my wATCH: "Oh, has your watch only got one hand?"
"No, it's five to eleven!!"

Wife pointing at Blackbird

"What's that black bird called?"

I call in to a garage every day to buy a newspaper. I regularly clack my way in my SPD shoes up to the counter whilst wearing a hi-viz jacket and sporting my bike helmet to be asked 'any fuel?'

Lol chico that's happened to me many times whilst buying mid-ride coke and sweets. I usually say 'yes' and point to the carb-filled purchases 🙂

Wife pointing at Blackbird

"What's that black bird called?"

Trevor, every single time...

After calling the insurance company to log details of the theft of my mobile phone:

'Okay, that is all logged on the system, I've texted the claim number to your mobile........'

My MIL's partner is the most stupid person in the world. My favorite though was when they came up for Christmas last year. on the 22nd Dec he said:

'This time last year it was Christmas eve..'

I could probably write a book containing all of the stupid things my wife has said but the favourite is:
One dusk, sitting on the bench outside the house having a bifter, I spotted a bat flitting around the garden.
Me "Ooh, a bat"
Her "Can't be a bat, must've been a bird"
Me "Why can't it have been a bat?"
Her "Because bats only live in Transylvania, durr!!"

I'm on a roll now. A couple from my many years with the Air Cadets.

Cadet: What is for tea tonight Sir?
Mr: We have made a roast, choice of Chicken, Beef or Pork
Cadet: What is the difference?

Cadet: What is for tea tonight Sir?
Me: Beef Stew
Cadet: I don't like that, is there anything else?
Me: Yes, you can have beef in gravy with carrots and potatoes
Cadet: Great, thanks
Me: Slop.