why can i never get a plumber

can you make it warmer in here.. yeh close the windows..

you must be busy..

can you come round after tea tonight..

it says 24 hrs on the advert why cant you fix my boiler at 2am..

you come highly reccomended ( by someone i ve never heard of) so can you do me a favour..

oh.. ( with gasp of theatrical suprise) i havent the cash can you take half now and comeback next week for the rest..

In every shop,workplace,takeaway etc. i happen to wander into. ‘He’s here, he’s come for you’.
Feels like i’m living in a Peter Kay joke sometimes.

“You can’t sell many tickets there?” I work in a signalling centre controlling close to 190 miles of track and people think I sell tickets!

“Do you do a Singletrack discount?” 😉

Well?

it says 24 hrs on the advert why cant you fix my boiler at 2am..

Seems reasonable to me. What am I missing?

Whilst working on a supermarket checkout whilst i was a student:

“careful, the ink’s just dried on that one!”

It’s 6pm on a saturday, I have been on this till for 8 hours…. I have heard that 20-30 times today.

Or while working on the delicatessen – standing in front of perhaps 150 different types of cheese:
“can I help you sir?”
“Yes, I’m after some cheese”
*pause…..
“okay…… what sort of cheese were you after sir?”
“Ummm, cheddar I think”
*pause…..
“Okay, well here are the 25 types of cheddar that we have”
etc

Not working in a supermarket = the biggest incentive to pass my finals

More student job tedium from a while back:

Just opened up the SU bar, we had ten different beers (or close approximation of beers) on tap, about another 10 in bottles, and of course pint and half-pint glasses.

Student: One beer please.

Me: Yep, you’re going to have to be a bit more descriptive with that one.

My job is to get our customers and their pupils to ask MORE questions…

These aren’t exactly stupid questions but they’re very common and quite annoying. One that never seems to go away…

“Which is better, LED/LCD or Plasma?”

The exit by Panasonic from the Plasma market may resolve this. The other, becoming ever more common…

“Can’t I do it wirelessly?”

I work negotiating waste contracts worth hundreds of millions as a technical adviser:

So you’re a glorified bin man then?; or

So why don’t my council collect x and when will they start?

So you’re a glorified bin man then?

@zokes…

used to have a regular in my old pub who’d order a “glass of beer”. After a long list of “what size glass” (a normal one), “what beer” ( whatever best) I learnt that in Leeds at least, a glass of beer is Half a bitter.

as a paramedic, everyone,asks “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” I’m usually half way through describing a naked, obese man in a hoist with diarrhoea before they start turning pale, either that or face worms.

I’m also getting a bit sick,of “are you a first,responder? My daughter is one of them, but she’s a volunteer!”. That’s great, whilst I have the utmost respect,for community respnders I’d like to think there is a line where my skill set surpasses theirs!

“can I help you sir?”
“Yes, I’m after some cheese”

batfink, much much earlier:

I’m also getting a bit sick,of “are you a first,responder? My daughter is one of them, but she’s a volunteer!”. That’s great, whilst I have the utmost respect,for community respnders I’d like to think there is a line where my skill set surpasses theirs!

Not if call me Dave and his chums get their way.

Meehaja, I regularly get asked “do you have to send an ambulance, can you just send a paramedic?”

A person having a heart attack or a family member calling about a patient who’s had a stroke ” will I/they have to go to hospital, I/they don’t want to go to a hospital”

“What do you think this rash/spot/abscess is?” No idea, I can’t see over the phone, that’d be why I want you to go see your Dr

“I’ve had this itchy raised rash for 3 days, is it meningitis?”

But the one that makes me bang my head on the desk ” I’ve had this toothache for 4 weeks, I want an emergency dentist tonight, where’s the nearest?” usually asked at 2am on Sunday morning

I used to work for Coca-cola in central London and had to drive a branded van around. I used to be asked for a free coke around 30 times a day, every day.

When I worked in recruitment (I know, I’m sorry) a qualified accountant asked me if she could take her poorly cat along to a job interview at a major bank HQ

bencooper said » “Do you do a Singletrack discount?”

Well?

Used to, when I advertised in the mag years ago – is there still a list of discounts for subscribers?

“Why do you have to work Christmas/New Year/Easter/ Bank Holidays?”
“Can you analyse my urgent samples before all the other urgent samples?”
“Thank you for analysing my urgent samples and phoning the results……….are they normal?”
“Are you a vampire?”
“Can you do twice as much work, with half the staff and no new capital equipment?”
“What’s wrong with Window’s 2000 Pro?”

I could go on………………………love the NHS.

Another..

How do I do a Pivot Table?..

Or

How do I do an IF statement?.. or Whats a vLookup??…

Both these really get my goat, folks should know the basics of Excel in the environment I work in..
😈

“I need a spoke.”
“Sure, how long?”
“About this long.” (Holds up hands about a foot apart)

See also:

“I need an inner tube.”
“What size?”
…

We seem to attract people asking stupid questions at work. The most common stupid one seems to be:

“Can you move the ambulance please, you’re parked in my space/blocking the road”
Usually when the motor’s sitting there with the disco lights going and us busy with a patient.

The most annoying one, which I’ve had a couple of times,
I’m busy doing CPR on someone in the street and get a tap on the shoulder……

“Can you give me directions to ????????”

No, piss off, I’m a little busy at the moment 😯

😯

when guiding the ones that used to get asked over and over again were:

“is it hard?” – everything is relative

“will i have to push?” – if you can’t pedal, then yes

“can i ride it?” entirely dependent upon your skills

“how high are we?” usually when trying to set their altimeter (my thinking being that it really doesn’t matter)

“when does the snow melt?” when going past a glacier

“is my saddle high enough?”

“should i put more air in my tyres?”

“should i put my jacket on?” that used to so get on my tits. how should i know how their body reacts? if i said yes then que ten minutes of fumbling with rucksacks and various layers. you lose so much time when people begin to faff.

perhaps not entirely stupid, but annoying when you get the same Qs all week from the same people.

Not a stupid question, but a standard nimby response to any scheme I’m presenting in a public consultation:

“We really do love what you are doing, and we really support modern architecture. Its just that we feel it’s not right in this location”

and

“Yes we love your scheme and the design really fits well for this area. Oh hold on – there’s some social housing in there? Well this is definitely not the right place for this.”

and one of my favourites when looking at an already cleared housing site. Proposal was for new elderly bungalows.

Local resident, “You’re not going to put housing here are you?”
Me, “Yes, but it single storey only”
Local resident, “Well we’re definitely going to object as it will take away our amazing view”
Me “You’ve only just got the view as the previous houses have just been demolished to make way for the new scheme.”
Local resident, “Well maybe….going to object anyway.”

Sometimes I get loads of abuse, threats or pelted with stuff, so the above is always preferable.

“Hi konabunny, this is client’s PA, can you update me with [tedious complicated project]?”

No, but I’ll update the client if she calls. Even more irritating when followed by “yeah, I saw you emailed client with a long email about something, but I didn’t bother reading it before I called you”.

I also like:

” So do you use CAD?”
Me, “Yes”
“So does the computer does all the drawing for you then?”
me, “er, not quite….”

Is this Edinburgh Castle?

Clue – I don’t work there…

You work in the Starbucks over the road right ?

I do some gardening for a nationally-known outfit, big houses and such. I quite enjoy it, and lots of the public are interested and interesting. There’s always one, though…

‘You can do mine when you finish if you like’, inevitably spoken by a charmless twunt.

One’s natural response would not fit with the fantastic visitor experience corporate bolleaux, except where a smack with a spade might just fit the identify visitor needs and respond in a natural, helpful way category.

What do others think? Can I have votes please?

“is this petrol station not open then”

said the old dear I had rushed towards, who had driven in though the site gates, up to the pump island that didnt have a pump on it, and who’s car was slowly sinking axle deep in the freshly laid concrete slabs adjacent to the island.

“What do you do for a living?”
I’m a stress engineer.
“That must be stressful ha ha”
Yawn

bencooper –
“I need a spoke.”
“Sure, how long?”

I’d be all over that with a big old “well, I was hoping to keep it permanently”. Boom! 😀

I do some gardening for a nationally-known outfit, big houses and such. I quite enjoy it, and lots of the public are interested and interesting. There’s always one, though…

I used to do conservation volunteering, one of the other volunteers was a bloke called Douglas who was a large bearded biker type. One day we were digging a large hole to plant a new tree, and a kid was completely getting in the way and trying to steal tools. He eventually wandered up to Douglas and said “What’s going in the hole, mister?”

Douglas looked down at him, pulled out a large bilhook, and said “You.”

The question I always get asked, although not whilst at work is, ” can you get me a job offshore?”.
Which would be less annoying if these were people who had a trade behind them, but invariably, they don’t, and I have to explain that skilled jobs need skilled people. On a weekly basis almost. For the past 8 years.

When I worked in a chip shop I often got

‘Have you got any chips left’?

When I said yes, I would get a ‘you shouldn’t have cooked so many then’.

I got my own back when one person how long the chips would be and I answered ‘about 2 inches, give or take’.

My how I laughed.

I’m sure as MTBers we’re all familiar with people saying ‘oh that looks like hard work’ as you ride up some hill or other.

Why yes, it is hard work. What’s your point?

“Is there a problem with [system]?”

I don’t know, is there? Why don’t you turn your neck a few degrees and look at some of the two dozen other people in your open plan office who are also using it in order to find out?

When working on an outage:

“Is it fixed yet?”

Yes, I just decided not to switch it back on or to tell anyone.

“How long will it be?”

Well, that depends entirely on how long I have to spend answering questions rather than working on it.

Not a question exactly, but “it doesn’t work.” Could you be any less specific? In what way doesn’t it work? Do you get an error? Is it on fire? Throw me a bone here.

“Is the Internet down?”

It’s designed to survive a nuclear war, so that’s not likely.

“Can I ask a question?”

Evidently. Would you like to ask me another one?

“Can I borrow a cross-head screwdriver?”

No, because if you can’t tell the difference between Philips and Posidriv it’ll invariably come back looking like a bradawl, and I’m not prepared to replace my tools on a fortnightly basis.

Cougar – and IT people wonder why they have a bad rep for customer service.. 🙂

My sisters a GP, every year she gets this just before xmas, usually on a Sunday night

Patient: I need an emergency appointment tonight…
GP: what’s wrong?
Patient: I’m bad with flu
GP: how long have you had it?
Patient: 4 weeks
GP: I am sure you just have a cold, it will go soon, buy some lemsip..
Patient: But I need antibiotics, as I want to be well for the big day