What is the most clueless thing you've been asked?

"What does it mean when it says 'replaced'?"

And she was accepted to the school by the same standards as I was, theoretically.

literally millions of times

"Does your tan ever fade?" This bright boy was expecting this line to sweep me into his arms, apparently.

OUTSIDE OF AUSCHWITZ!

(on Valentine's Day) "I heard of Leady Godiva, but I didn't know she made chocolate!"

"Ron left the house in an uprage!"
Me: Is that anything like an outroar?
"Yes. EXACTLY."

Maybe these people are lonely?

As we shuffled about in the dark, dank stone bowel, staring at the grafitti carved into the walls (days being counted off, names and things, a real sense of history and eerie trapped feeling pervaded), this American tourist piped up loudly with "where are the emergency exits?".

Watch for the warning signs:

a) your office hires an annoying, precocious, wise-cracking child
b) members of your office start marrying off, especially if any two of them used to bicker all the time and are now marrying each other (bonus warning points for mishaps, hilarity, and/or shenanigans)
c) Fonzie jumps his motorcycle over a shark in the conference room
d) Tom and Jerry start talking
e) Norm's wife shows up
f) people like Julia Roberts, Gina Gershon, Bruce Willis, or Brad Pitt start showing up in February or May

The stupidest thing certainly was the other day I was walking out of the gym. This dude tells me he has to walk back to Portland. (Keep in mind, I'm in Seattle... Portland is around 140 miles away). He asks me how he can get back to Portland without a car (because his "bros" deserted him and one of them took his wallet). I point to him the bus station which is a few blocks away, and told him how to get there in detail. he says "I ain't paying no fucking $28 for a lousy bus ticket! I'm gonna have to walk back to Portland, man!"... I kinda shrugged and walked away. He started chasing me and saying "HEY WAIT UP! I NEED TO ASK YOU FOR SOME HELP!". I grrrrrr-ed, turned around, and said "Sorry, guy, I don't have any money.". And he said "I'm NOT ASKIN' FOR YOUR MONEY, MAN. I just need to know where Interstate 5 is. TELL ME WHERE INTERSTATE 5 IS! PLEEEEEEAASE!".

Interstate 5 was just a block behind him towering over the entire area making a huge din of whizzing cars, being the only major freeway in the city proper.

I couldn't bear to point it out to him.

Thats hilarious ... you should submit that to rinkworks.com Luna :)

You suck. ;-)

Context: the status of a book. Sometimes it says 'not checked out' = self-explanatory. Sometimes it says 'due [date]' = self-explanatory. Every so often it might say 'replaced'...

"Are you drunk?" asks the cocktail waitress.

This one got relayed to me the next day.

This goes without saying. But you forgot good cheese and Mac computers.

1. Is that your real name? (about my real name, obv.)
2. Are you related to Ringo Starr?
3. Are you related to Ken Starr?

4. What *grade* do you teach? (University, in the sociology dept.; but of course all females must teach grammar school, hence the question)

5. So is that social work? / So is that psychology? (NO, sociology is neither of those things, it a common mistake but gets annoying-- like when I was an undergraduate majoring in Social Anthropology at UCLA and everyone kept asking me about Egyptian mummies. This is much like annoying an astronomer by asking if they are an astrologer)

6. Do you play bass/drums/guitar? (No, I'm just lugging it onto the stage for fun)

Friend goes to bar: "I'll have a gin and tonic please"
Barwench: "umm... whats in one of those? I don't know how to make one"

Orbit I think if you say you're a "teacher" instead of a "professor" that would elicit that question. Perhaps if you're not a phd then maybe "lecturer"?

I fear my standard of cluelessness makes me an alien. :-( *hides*

Customer: (Hands me recept from The Other Big Hardware American Hardware Chain)

Me: You're not in (that other etc.)

Customer: Are you sure?

This is so utterly and completely tragic. I've never been in a bar and even *I* know how what's in a gin & tonic -- the name relays all the ingredients!

And Orbit, I LOVED sociology! I am SO glad they had that as a core curriculum requirement at the school I went to (for my first degree). There's this upper-level CS class one can select as an advanced CS credit course and it's totally all about a mixture of CS and sociology. I am SO taking that next year.

This is probably at least a good chunk of it, but is it usually people who've been to college who ask? I have old-school aunts and whatnot who still ask me "what grade are you in now?", when I'm on my second graduate degree and haven't been in a numeric grade in 13 years.

"because the German train system was so efficient."

See, now that's stupid as well. This has to be one of the biggest myths that got shattered over the 6 weeks out of the last 9 months I've spent in Germany whilst visiting Madeline. At one point I waited for a train for over an hour while the board said it would be 30 minutes late causing me to miss my flight back home.

At least in the UK you seem to get an apology for your train being late, and possibly later some kind of compensation. I spent two months trying to get a refund from Deutsche Bahn, but they didn't even apologise at the time, or later. I think at least 50% of the trains I caught were 5-10 minutes late.

However, the long distance trains are fantastic compared to the rubbish we have to put up with in the south-east, but I believe they get a huge wadge of government funding compared to over here so they have every reason to be.

Nick: "Hello, main library issue desk."
Punter: "Er... is that the library?"
Nick: "..."

"do you sell stethoscopes?"

Customer: I have some books to sell.

Me: What kind of books?

Customer: How do you mean?

Me: Well OK, are they fiction or non-fiction?

Cuxstomer: What's the difference?

I've been to concerts where the merchandise tables accept credit cards, but then again those were "larger act" tours with already established artists, not up-and-comers who are assumedly playing smaller venues. Still, maybe you should put up a sign that says you don't accept credit cards, just for future purposes.

If you still get those same questions, though, please post about that here. Now THAT would be hilarious cluelessness.

I see what you mean, but tis possible they weren't looking at the sky (ie. were drunk and peering at his shoes).

Also, have I noticed your email before? I work for UCL!

Stence: my friends, the Spankers, who tour the world 9 mths out of every 12 have credit card facilities.

Ned: I wouldn't care one way or another whether a book was "replaced" or "reborn" or whatever, as long as it was there so I would have quesitioned you as well.

teaching et al: I don't think Orbit was implying this at all but as a K12 teacher it bothers me that somehow the assumption you teach primary grades vs college is a value judegement. The two are completely different animals. Teaching K12 is all about pedagogy and university level is content. While I might be able to give a go at a survey course in my academic field of specializtion (vis a vis the time I spent deeply entrenched in the content) I don't think a Victorian Lit scholar could handle one day teaching my 7th and 8th graders without enough proper training and experience. It's not the same kind of job by any stretch.

When I worked at Nando's, a girl asked me for a registered (i.e. as oppose to regular) chips.

And the manager asked me if I had a 'sad life' ..possible because I was the most abusive cashier in the world.

"Can you tell me who owns the Internet please? I need to know who to launch proceedings against. I'm a lawyer you know".

"I just moved house and I want to tell you my new phone number" "Um, we dont need to know it unless its just for the billing records... just use the same dial up number as always!" "... but how will my email know where to go now that I've moved?"

- At least once every two hours we get people coming in and asking "Do you sell cigarettes?".

- We regularly get skinheads (always skinheads for some reason) telling us that our fridge is knackered because the beer is warm. Maybe so because we only have ONE fridge and people keep taking beer OUT of it and so we need to put beer back INTO it. Fucks sake! MAybe all skinheads have magic fridges that cool beer down within three seconds of it being in there or something.

- An older gentleman comes in and asks "How much is a small bottle of white wine?", I reply "We have lots of wine they range from about £4 to £35", "Oh no, I don't want to spend that much", "Well how much did you want to spend?" I ask, "About a pound-fifty". He leaves with a can of Fosters.

There are more.

A friend was telling me about his Film Studies class in which they were watching some Nazi war propaganda film or something like that. After this the classroom conversation turned to the subject of the holocaust and the thousands who were killed at that time when one bright spark pipes up, "but didn't anyone think to try and stop them?!"

I've noticed that people who answer the phone with a stock phrase eventually end up saying it very fast and run together. It may have sounded to the caller like "Hello, maylibrarishudes" to which I would have replied, "Er... is that the library?"

I had to walk out of the shop for fear of bursting my head.

Along similar lines, someone recently found a suitcase floating in a local river, with a decomposing body inside. One news report about it ended with the phrase "Police are treating the death as suspicious".

no Martin, books etc on piccadilly, tho i know the one you mean. my shop is a magnet for tourists and thus incompetence on a grand scale.

Every night on the tour, someone comes up to the merch table and asks me whether we "accept credit cards."

man if this were possible (is it?!) we'd be twice as rich (i.e. still not very rich)

dumb blond, re: my deaf friend in high school:

"so like, can he read and write?"

some college kid, upon hearing I briefly went to school for art:

"whoa, do you know gay people?"

cook at Old Country Buffet, upon hearing I was in a band:

"do you know black people?"

http://www.oxygen.com/Press/Programming/TalkSex/images/SJ_Shoulder_Shrug.jpg

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was a bit confused by Ned's 'replaced' story.

Not quite on topic, but I was reminded of this and can't keep it in: one time, in Poundland (everything's a pound!), I heard someone ask a staff member if they had mouse mats. The staff member says "hm I'm not sure, if we do it'll be in the pets section..."

I didn't even have the opportunity to be amused, since my first thought was that no one would believe me if I told them.

Outside a restaurant, walking past it along the street, by a couple standing down the steps from the front door in to the restaurant, with the menu up on the wall next to the door: "Where's the way in to this restaurant?"

Not a question, but I have to share. A friend of mine went to the movies to see Titanic. Two girls sitting in the row behind him. He heard one say to the other: 'a pity of seeing this movie for the second time is that you already know that the boat will sink'.

"What's a tsunami?" And she pronounced the t.

Haha just remembered this one. I was living with my uncle in Phoenix and he was pumped about this vest he got for biking (shrug) and telling his friend about it. The friend asks, "why doesn't it have any sleeves?"
Kinda perplexed he tries to explain clumsily, "well, see it's cold in the mornings when I go biking, but with my jacket my ARMS always get hot, and see, this way I still keep..." etc.
The friend still perplexed, "but why doesn't it have sleeves?"
More brickwalled and frustrated he starts explaining again, "Ok, see, but with my OLD JACKET, my ARMS..." and so on...
I pipe in, "Dude! It's a VEST."
"YEEES! THANK YOU!"
Blink blink. "Oh."

Oh and that one reminds me. Stocking juice boxes at the grocery store. Teenage metal head looking at one variety of punch: "LOLOL, 'tore-ee-ent-al', is that even a word???"
"It's "torrential", like torrential downpour, really heavy rain. Evidently the fruit punch is like...torrential."
Angry, "What the hell, in Kansas we didn't make up stupid words, we just say really heavy rain..!!" (and so on)

he's otm

What's a cue ball? (after watching two hours of pool)

Who's John McEnroe?

What's Tel Aviv?
Is it a place?
ME: Yes.
Is it in Wales?
ME: No.

All the same person, incredibly.

She wasn't the one who didn't realise the moon didn't shine by itself though.

Are you sure she wasn't an escaped robot experiment?

how is jay-z managing to get so much attention from the mainstream? esp when his peak was several years ago? fucking bizarre. he must have some phenomenal PR muscle behind him.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Sunday, October 26, 2008 9:22 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Are you sure she wasn't an escaped robot experiment?

No, not sure at all. There had to be some sort of explanation. Nobody could understand how someone could avoid so much information about the world around her. Complete solipsism was the explanation most of us resorted to - it would have been Beckettian were it not perhaps for the fact that she seemed to achieve her metnal isolation being being continually on the blower, or reading Heat.

girl,Are you in a band?
me, yes, i play bass.
girl, what's bass?
me, WHAT!

lol hurting

wow that Jay-Z must have some high-powered publicist or something.

how long does it take to get from london, england to canada...on a bus

what does "edible" mean? then why don't people just say eatable that's stupid...

"What was the date of 9/11?"

^^ this is real.
A) badly phrased B) she really couldn't remember the year.

Ha, I was asked the same thing last month - "when was September 11th?" "uh, yesterday?"

Friend of a flatmate looks at calendar with (I think) this quote on it: "Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate"

Friend: What's an anvil?
Flatmate: It's a thing, y'know, for dropping on people's heads.

In a youth hostel in Melbourne.

Girls from Tasmania: where are you from?
Us: Perth
GFT: where's that?
Us: really?

I had a job at the call centre of a travel agency and someone once waited in a 10-minute call queue to ask:

"is 12 PM the one at noon or the one at midnight?"

'Is SA the internet country code for South America?

"how can something natural be bad for you?"

one of my students last week

when i worked at an italian restaurant, we had a steak dish on the specials - grilled ribeye, served with grilled mushrooms and drizzled with olive oil. i would get customers smugly giggling and asking me "i'm pretty sure they don't eat STEAK in italy, do they?!"

no, you fools, they eat spaghetti and meatballs and walk around saying 'mama mia!'.

When my brother or I tell someone that we're brothers, we inevitably (probably 10-20 times this year alone) get asked, "You're really brothers?" Apparently, for some reason, everyone in the world thinks that I'm trying to put them on. Generally I clear up the confusion by saying, "Yes. Like many siblings, we don't have the exact same physical features. It can be surprising, but you'll get used to it."

"Is that your real name?" followed by "Do you have a sister?"

literally millions of times

― s1utsky (slutsky), Monday, 4 August 2003 21:40 (5 years ago)

These are exactly the same questions I'd ask I must admit.

In 1999:

Friend: What time is the total eclipse?
Me: 11
Friend: a.m. or p.m.?

Hm well you can have eclipses during the day (and see the moon during the day sometimes) but still, heh.

what

1999 was the total solar eclipse

hence lol at night no sun lol

(we took Le Shuttle to near Amiens for that one, wasn't cloudy, unlike lol Cornwall)

yeah, 1999 was a very famous (in the UK) total solar eclipse, hence it being clueless (although to be fair I think a lot of people don't really get what an eclipse is. I found it funny, but I'm an asshole.)

Next one isn't for like 80 years ;_;

Did you see that one OOI, caek? And does (did) it lie within your field of interest, or is the Solar System a little localised?

Got way too drunk the night before and overslept! Hated myself for like two days.

It wasn't my field of interest then because I was 18 and my main interests were sleeping and watching TV and playing video games and drinking Tetley's, but who doesn't want to see a total solar eclipse?

And yeah, I'm nominally an astronomer now, but I know little more than the average New Scientist reader about the solar system.

"Do Jews believe in God?"

I've heard thats actually a startlingly common question! Which is so weird.

'Did you reject our visas because two members of our band are practising satanists???'*

*N.B. I do not even work in an immigraation-related job.

Also, my girlfriend, who works as a candlemaker, was recently asked by a customer, 'What does this vanilla candle smell of?', to which she replied, 'vanilla', and handed it back.

"Do Jews believe in God?"

the real question is "Does God believe in Gentiles?"

and the answer is no, because we're the chosen people and you're not.

boss: "how do you find out when television shows are on?"
me: "are you fucking retarded?"

we're pals so he didn't take it bad, but i wondered for a minute.

hahaha

During a convo about 4chan and internet pranks, my workmate asked "whats a troll?" the other week. Which might be understandable if you're a non-internet person but she's our helpdesk team leader :(

Every night on the tour, someone comes up to the merch table and asks me whether we "accept credit cards."

― hstencil, Tuesday, August 5, 2003 1:54 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
that doesn't seem *that* clueless, although it probably is after you've been asked fifty times.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, August 5, 2003 2:04 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
have you ever met a touring band with a dial-in credit card machine? I've been going to shows since I was 12 and have yet to ever see such a thing.

― hstencil, Tuesday, August 5, 2003 2:17 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I just want to chime in and say for the record that I have bought stuff with credit cards at shows by small touring bands, thanks to the miracle of carbon paper and those old knuckle-cruncher card press things.

I'm a computer sysop by trade, and after being in the business for 12 years, I've heard a whole lotta cluelessness. After awhile, tho, all the irritation kinda ebbs and y'just gotta take some pity on folks who don't spend all day every day figuring out how to make a computer do this or that. I mean, most folks have something better to do than untangle computer gordian knots all day, so why get po'd at them for that?

So, given that disclaimer....

I gave my mum a MacBook Pro a month ago, and I've been giving her lessons on how to use it over the phone. The first two weeks covered things like "clicking", "dragging", "opening apps", and so on. That's fine and all and I don't expect my 68-year-old mum to know any better, and I'm patient with her, I think.

Today, I'm explaining the fundamentals of wifi to her: How to get on wifi and that you can't send an email until you are connected to the Internet. I'm talking to her at home, where she has no Internet and no wifi networks she can get on, but that's fine, 'cause I can explain everything anyways for when she has Internet access. So that I have some idea of what she's seeing, I have my own lappy out following along with what I'm telling her to do. Evidently, I had too good of an idea, because near the end of the lesson, she says,

"Can you see everything I'm doing?"

My internal WTF-barrier silently strains and then snaps. 15 seconds of silence ensue.

"No, mom. I can't see anything at all that y'r doing."

"Won't Barack Obama turn the United States into a socialist country like Sweden?"

...well it's the most clueless question I've heard recently anyway.

After I moved to Minneapolis, I had to put my car in the shop for awhile. My younger sister asked me how I was getting around, and I told her by bus.

"Well, how far is the stop?"
"About a block away, in front of the methadone clinic."
"How often does it come by?"
"I don't know. Every five or ten minutes."
"How far does it go?"
"How far does it -- I guess from Mall of America to Fridley or some place."
"How far is that?"
"30 miles? Why are you asking me that?"
"Because that sounds like one really fast bus!"

Placing an order over the phone:

"What's the expiration date on your card?"

"4/09."

"Er, which month is 'four'?"

This conversation took place a few years ago:

Her: "Sometimes you can have ridiculous beliefs even as an adult."

Me: "Yeah, you can."

Her: "Like, I only found out a couple of years ago that ponies aren't baby horses."

Me: "They aren't?!"

Okay, I guess I was the clueless one here, but I'd never really given that much thought to ponies.

my gf asked me not so long ago whether unicorns were a real, now-extinct animal

In the grand scale of wrong, she could be a lot wronger. There are, after all, mammals with all kinds of shit coming out of their heads. Just look at a cat.

The day after our 'band' had played a Pontin's talent competition heat.

Organist: "Do you think we're the best group that's ever played here?"

You have no idea how clueless that actually is. If Mark E smith had ever turned up with your granny on bongos, it'd still be better than our band.

What is "the rec" Myonga? The record?

― It's hrd bein a man, livn' in a garbage pai (Bimble Is Still More Goth Than You), Monday, 27 October 2008 07:37 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Soz Bimb: (off the "Liege and Lief" Fairports thread on ILM)

lol

If Mark E smith had ever turned up with your granny on bongos, it'd still be better than our band.

there is a school of thought which claims that this would be better than most or even any other bands

"ilm"

"what's the plural for 'confused'?"

HELLAconfused duh

"Is your mom Japanese?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
Imaginary reply:"I'm fucking blonde and have blue eyes!"

Coworker, literally seconds ago, related to me a story of her technophobe friend phoning her up and asking "where is the internet kept?"

I know someone with a japanese grandfather who has blonde hair and blue eyes

I had a job at the call centre of a travel agency and someone once waited in a 10-minute call queue to ask:

"is 12 PM the one at noon or the one at midnight?"

― I love a man in chloroform (salsa shark), Sunday, 26 October 2008 23:07 (Yesterday)

Er. Neither. It is 12 noon or 12 midnight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock

Yes, that is not a clueless question at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight

Due to the 24-hour convention, the most often-used American variant is 12:00 AM = midnight, 12:00 PM = noon. It's not strictly correct but that is the colloquialism.

^^ thank you

I think the 'clueless' element was regarding waiting in a queue for 10 mins to ask that.

Rly tho the meridian shd be at 1, not 12. It's silly having all this overhanging 12-ness in the next hemisphere of the day. All this goes to prove is that the 24-hour clock WINS. Hardcore. I propose that the 12-hour clock be forced to put itself back an hour, thus 14:00 = 3 pm and 07:00 = 8 am. Good times for everyone.

I think the 'clueless' element was regarding waiting in a queue for 10 mins to ask that.

this also

I am an astronomer so I convert between time systems and time zones and US vs. ISO times all the time, and I would have to check what was meant if a travel agent gave me a time of 12am.

My guess would certainly be 12am = midnight, which turns out to be correct, but my concern would be whether the travel agent's guess was the same, not which of us is right. So I would check not by looking it up on Wikipedia but actually speaking to the person who knew what time my flight was.

(and if I had to wait ten minutes to do this then I would.)

Basically, what is clueless here is travel agents using 12 hour clocks.

http://lolbamas.com/blog/agro-defens-cats.jpg

5 or 6 people in a room, including my (white) friend wearing a RocaWear hoodie with a really fabulous colorful print, and my shockingly and cluelessly naive and unintentionally racist friend:

"Um... isn't that brand for a certain kind of people?"

"There are stores in Ethiopia?"

"Do you think in english or in spanish?"

Wait, I need more context to know why that one's clueless. I remember asking my parents that basic question as a kid, and they had slightly different answers!

See also there is food in Ethiopia?

I think we could have a whole separate thread devoted to questions about the continent of Africa.

wait, Africa isn't a country?

wait, there are cities in Africa?

there's a "c" in Africa?

where's the "t"?

When I worked at the radio station, I answered our call-in line during the middle of the afternoon when there were no local shows on. The man on the other end seemed in his later years and sounded a bit agitated:

MAN: "I'm very sorry to bother you, but can you answer me this one question please?"
ME: "I'll try. What's up?"
MAN: [pause] "Can you tell me who the vice-president is"
ME: "Who the vice-president is?"
MAN: "..."
ME: "It's Dick Cheney."
MAN: "Uh-huh." (Another voice in the room. Phone hangs up.)

Spooked me a bit since I figure I'll be making the same phone call here in about 40 years.

It was probably just Scott Bakula checking where he'd turned up.

P.S.: I've always been really fascinated by that question about thinking, because it's one of those tricky philosophical language/cognition/consciousness questions that's actually experienced by people all the time -- surely loads of long-term immigrants go through some point where their thinking and internal monologue starts to convert across languages, but I've never talked to anyone who can really describe the process. I can mostly imagine how it works, and it's probably very simple and straightforward as it happens, but it's an odd and interesting thing.

Yeah, the English / Spanish question is very far from clueless.

Well, it could be if you were talking to, say, a Latino who'd grown up in the U.S. and didn't even speak much Spanish, or something, which is why I feel like there's some missing context here

The question was directed towards someone from Laos.

Yup, that'd do it, too

Maybe the person who asked the Laotian that question was dyslexic.

The public phone rings at work. I answer it, and an older man asks me who the vice-president is. I pause for a full thirty seconds before telling him "Dick Cheney, I guess." He thanks me and hangs up.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 20:22 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Spooked me a bit too... Making the same post 5 years later?

It haunts me to this day.

What's the thing you've been asked that you thought was the most clueless thing to be asked but it turned out not to be clueless and showed you up as the most clueless you have ever been shown up as?

What's the thing you've been asked that you thought was the most clueless thing to be asked but it turned out not to be clueless and showed you up as the most clueless you have ever been shown up as?

If I asked you to explain this, would that be it?

Basically, what is clueless here is travel agents using 12 hour clocks.
ummm what this lady asked me was completely unrelated to ANYTHING. all she wanted to know was the answer to her clock conundrum. she didn't have any travel plans with the company and hung up once she was satisfied with 12 PM being 12 noon. I hadn't given her a time of '12 PM' at any earlier point and as far as I know, nobody else in the office did either... because for the record, the agency did use 24-hour clocks for flights etc etc.

that is all.

ok, that is retarded.

"do you do abortions on cats"

a call to a women's clinic

Did you say yes?

Obviously a niche in the market there.

i said "are you nuts"

"we use a table"

haha

hahaha

Jeez why couldn't she just drown them in a sack like any other normal crazy cat lady.

Why vote?

Your ILX looks all weird, kenan.

my stylesheet? Yeah, I keep meaning to fix it up and send it to Keith, but... I haven't.

Problem is what's posted is just my Greasemonkey hack stylesheet, and it was never really finished.

it was a man, trayce!

"There are stores in Ethiopia?"

Srsly asked by an American lady (in the 80s, so who knows?) "They eat with fork and knife here?" (Here being Belgium, Europe).

"Do you think in english or in spanish?"

When I was in my mid-teens I would think in English. (I'm Dutch speaking.)

at my previous job (computer programmer) I get this phonecall:

me: Hello
caller: Hi, are you the best mechanic in Montreal?
me: um, no
caller: ok bye

Is he black?

Head of HR on seeing new recruit for the first time, from the back.

Two colleagues who were present had the following Q&A immediately afterwards.

- Who was that?
- She's the human resources manager.

Silence.

(Oh, and yes, he is as it happens black.)

"I was told he would be southeast Asian"

It was probably just Scott Bakula checking where he'd turned up.

― nabisco, Monday, October 27, 2008 12:57 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Had it been Scott Bakula, all he would have had to do is look down at a table and see a newspaper with the headline CHENEY SWORN AS VICE-PRESIDENT before uttering "oh boy."

(It took me one day to think of this, another 12 hours of me mulling the fact that such a headline was never written except maybe as a sub-head, and another 10 hours of me forgetting to find this thread again.)

lol

It took me one day to think of this, another 12 hours of me mulling the fact that such a headline was never written except maybe as a sub-head, and another 10 hours of me forgetting to find this thread again

Worst Barenaked Ladies song ever.

or, best.

"Why are your eyes blue?" was I asked aged 10. I really had no clue as to what I should reply.

that reminds me of one of my co-workers this summer, who said to another on a break, "your eyes are really blue. do you ever feel like when you look up at the sky, they're recharging?" not clueless, just really cute.