Beware, Idiots At Work!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

This is a short selection of stories taken from the internet. I have no idea whether they are true or not, but they are amusing, and as we know, stranger things have happened.

Enjoy.

We had to have the garage door repaired. The Sears repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a 'large' enough motor on the opener.

I thought for a minute, and said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower.

He shook his head and said, 'Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower.'

I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4.

He said, 'NO, it's not. Four is larger than two...'

We haven't used Sears repair since.

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My daughter and I went through the McDonald's take-out window and I gave the clerk a $5 bill. Our total was $4.25, so I also handed her a quarter.

She said, 'You gave me too much money.'

I said, 'Yes I know, but this way you can just give me a dollar bill back.'

She sighed and went to get the manager who asked me to repeat my request.

I did so, and he handed me back the quarter, and said 'We're sorry but we cannot do that kind of thing.'

The clerk then proceeded to give me back $1 and 75 cents in change..

Do not confuse the clerks at McD's.

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I live in a semi rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the DEER CROSSING sign on our road.

The reason: 'Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.'

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My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco. She asked the person behind the counter for 'minimal lettuce.'

He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg lettuce.

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I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, 'Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?'

To which I replied, 'If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?'

He smiled knowingly and nodded, 'That's why we ask.'

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The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street. I was crossing with an intellectually challenged coworker of mine.

She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for.

I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red.

Appalled, she responded, 'What on earth are blind people doing driving?!'

She was a probation officer in Wichita , KS

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At a good-bye luncheon for an old and dear coworker. She was leaving the company due to 'downsizing.'

Our manager commented cheerfully, 'This is fun. We should do this more often.'

Not another word was spoken. We all just looked at each other with that deer-in-the- headlights stare.

This was a lunch at Texas Instruments.

- - - - - - - - - -

I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and for the sake of her life, couldn't understand why her system would not turn on.

A deputy with the Dallas County Sheriffs office, no less.

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When my husband and I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it.

We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver side door.

As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked.

'Hey,' I announced to the technician, 'Its open!'

His reply, 'I know. I already got that side.'

This was at the Ford dealership in Canton , MS.

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And finally!!

When I left Hawaii and was transferred to Florida I still had the Hawaiian plates on my car, as my car was shipped from Hawaii .

I was parking somewhere (I can't remember) and a guy asked me "Wow, you drove from Hawaii to here?"

I looked at him and quickly said "Yep. I took the Hawaii/San Francisco Bridge".

He nodded his head and said "Cool!"

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Today is a beautiful day

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy” 


I know an architect.

Nothing very unusual in that.

 Except for one thing, this one is blind.

 He hasn’t been blind all his life but from his late teens, when he was training to be an architect, he started to lose his sight due to an inherited disease and eventually it went altogether.

To his credit he hasn’t let it stop him leading as full a life as possible. Although there have been good and bad results.

For example, he insists on helping around the house but on one occasion he picked up a kitten along with the dirty clothes and promptly dumped all in the washing machine. Both the clothes and the kitten were clean at the end of the washing cycle, but the unfortunate kitten was also dead.

He also tells a story about doing some shopping at a time when his sight was almost gone, but not quite. He was in a local pharmacy and queued up at the counter waiting to hand over his prescription. He waited and waited, but the pharmacy assistant kept ignoring him. He could hear other people getting served, but never him. He waited and he waited and he waited some more, but nothing. The girl behind the counter just kept ignoring him.

Finally his patience just ran out. He was angry. He thought he was being deliberately ignored because of his disability and that other 'seeing' customers were being allowed to jump the queue. He spoke to the assistant who was standing right in front of him. She didn’t respond. Then he spoke louder. Still no reaction. Then he started to give forth some abuse which included a good bit of strong language. The other customers in the pharmacy all stopped what they were doing and watched what was going on.

People were a little embarrassed. Nobody intervened except for one gentleman, who walked up to my friend, put his hand on his shoulder and said quietly buy firmly, “Come over here son, and this other person will attend to your order." 

He found out later that he had been patiently queuing up in front of one of those body and head mannequins that was sitting on the counter and which the pharmacy was using to display a ladies wig, and had been hurling his abuse and angst at it and not to a real person at all.

A few incidents like that aside, he has coped quite well. He has compensated for his lack of sight by developing an extremely good memory and equally good recall. I think that proves that the more you use your brain the better it works.

What a pity so many people these hardly use theirs at all!

For a lot of years his way of designing houses was very laborious. He would plan the whole thing out in his head and then give verbal instructions to his son who would dutifully draft out a sketch of the proposed building. It was slow and tedious for the recipient of the instructions, although he reveled in the task himself - a little bit too much and too long for most people’s liking if truth be told. I know because I was the unfortunate recipient of the drafting instructions on a couple of occasions.

And then a possible solution hit me like a brick.

A Lego brick actually.

I bought a few large base sheets and he got himself some small Lego bricks and from then on he was able to draft his own floorplans, and to scale using each little brick as equivalent to one foot or whatever. It worked well for him and gave him a bit more freedom to plan and re-plan without involving anyone else in the process. I don’t know whether he still uses it or not, but I kind of hope so.

Now, what sparked this blog post in my head wasn’t him at all. It was a video that I watched recently. It’s not about architects either, but it is about someone who is blind. And it is also about the power of words which as a blogger and writer I appreciate, as I’m sure many of you do too.

It’s a nice video.

I hope you enjoy it.