Is it silver?
Asked about a £7.99 bracelet.
Closely followed by are these real diamonds?

Today

Q – Why would you like to work in Financial Services

A – Because you pay by far the best (in my speciality).

Obviously I answered totally different. 🙂

As a maths teacher I frequently hear

When am I ever going to use this? You don’t need maths in real life!

All my customers: “Has this taken longer than you expected?”

Me: “erm, yes, sorry”

Ah yes the antibiotics question.

Actually, it’s never a question, it’s always a demand.

“I’ve had a cold since yesterday, I need antibiotics”

“I’ve got a bit of a sore throat, I need antibiotics”

FFs no wonder bugs are becoming resistant to antibiotics

Oh and my fave, “I saw my Dr earlier, they said I’ve got a virus. They didn’t give me antibiotics, I want some”

I think I’m lucky in that I get few daft questions in my work, as I don’t really have to deal with the public. The most common though is a variant on the theme:

“can you do x?”

Well, yes I can, but you know it’s not my job and you’re not paying me to do it, so no.

Well, yes I can, but you know it’s not my job and you’re not paying me to do it, so no.

Working in ecommerce you can guarantee that about 4.45pm on christmas eve someone will call the sales team and ask if you can get a parcel to them in time for christmas, when you say no you get shouted at up to and including being accused of ruining christmas.

I also regularly used to have to deal with customers who’d got there address wrong on their parcel and were apoplectic that it hadn’t made its way to them in a timely fashion. A few years back I was on the phone to a woman who’d put down someone else’s address on her order, we’d delivered it ahead of schedule and to the address she provided but she demanded to know why we hadn’t spotted that it was the wrong address.

Thankfully I don’t have to talk to customers now so get asked very, very few questions.

People asking about woodburning stoves, do they get hot? do i need to stop the kids from touching it?
WTF, get asked at least once a week, how do people so stupid get through life, let alone be in charge of a solid fuel heating appliance.

Call sign: “er ATC, we’re reaching flight level blah de blah, can we get further climb?”
ATC: ” negative, traffic 1000ft above crossing right to left”
Call sign: ” oh yes, we have him on TCAS/visual”
Why ask then?

Always 3 standard replies when people hear my job.

“Is it stressful?”
“Which tower do you work in?”
Or my personal favourite
“Are you the guy with the Ping pong bats?”

I don’t get why IT people get so uppity about answering some fairly basic questions.

If part of the plant goes down on the shop floor, the fitter doesn’t huff and puff and sigh when asked how long the plant will likely be down. He gives a rough estimate.

It’s not really that hard to be polite and helpful.

(This is not aimed at anyone on here, just an observation)

Genuinely got this the other day.

My email to them

“Could you please forward the license file to myself.”

The reply, via email.

“I just want to ask where do I need to send the copy of the license? May I have the email address please.”

Had an ex-customer’s engineer on the phone this morning, because they couldn’t access the product.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have a support contract any more”.
“But we’ve paid for access”
“You have a licence to access, but no support”
“But we’ve paid for access, and we can’t access”
“You’ve paid for the licence to access, but not for support if there’s a problem accessing it”
“But we’ve paid to access it” etc etc etc
The analogy I ended up using was that of buying an album – if your CD player stops playing it, there’s no point ringing the record label.

When my dad was dieing, he decided with me to plan his own funeral, as he used to be a funeral director he knew the questions to ask, undertaker turns up very profesional,limited sence of humour, planned the church, mourners, cars and flowers etc etc, came to the price, which was very reasonable.

I said to the funeral director, How much for cash, the funeral director went a funny shade of white then red, almost started choking, then regained his composure and said im so sorry i cant offer a better deal for cash, and ive never been asked that before.

Me and my dad then burst out laughing, dad explaining i had a strange sence of humour, and that we would pay the full amount.

The undertaker then saw the funny side. 😀

Bet you wished you had been drinking tonight

the fitter doesn’t huff and puff and sigh when asked how long the plant will likely be down. He gives a rough estimate

The point is that in IT people ask questions that cannot be answered, and then get all cross when you tell them they can’t be answered.

Imagine if your car is dead one morning, and you tow it into a garage. If you asked them right then how long it’ll take to fix and how much it’ll cost, would you expect an answer? Would you call them at 3pm and ask them the same?

No, you’d say ‘do you know what’s wrong with it yet?’ or at least I’d hope so.

Actually, I do get asked if I know what’s wrong yet. However they then ask me how long it’ll take before I find out. How the hell should I know that?

I get asked, with monotonous frequency –

“can I go to the toilet”

My response depends on the time they ask me.

For all the IT people complaining about dumb questions, sometimes you don’t help yourselves. After an afternoon not receiving emails all of a sudden I had a load come through the 1st being an email to the whole company saying that there was a problem with the email system which meant emails couldn’t be delivered but they were working to resolve it. No other communication on it. Well done fellas, genius.

and when youre walking up a steep hill pushing your bike,and some fat stupid walkerist shouts, “I suppose thats a push bike then”.

Just to add to molgrips answer (though I’m probably just saying the same thing a different way), when the fitter gets called in to fix the plant he’s probably already been told where it’s failed, or if not he’s aware of a limited number of ways in which it could have failed.

When the IT bloke gets called in he’s dealing with an infinite number of different ways for things to fail, and the user has probably been no help at all in describing the nature of the failure. Repair time could be anything from 5 minutes to days, weeks, months or years (depending on the scale of the system involved). One of the most important parts of an IT geek’s job is managing expectations – unfortunately many of them aren’t very good at it. The trick is to teach customers not to ask the question, though if they do and it’s on something where I know likely causes of failure well I may give what I think is a worst case answer (that can still come back to bite you). Experience suggests that people might moan when you give them a long timescale to start with, but they’re generally actually happier if it then only takes you 5 minutes than if you’d told them 5 minutes to start with – the worst thing is to tell them 5 minutes for a job which takes hours.

Well that is stupid, but it’s also whataboutery.

Is there water all around the island?

I don’t get why IT people get so uppity about answering some fairly basic questions.

If part of the plant goes down on the shop floor, the fitter doesn’t huff and puff and sigh when asked how long the plant will likely be down. He gives a rough estimate.

It’s not really that hard to be polite and helpful.

(This is not aimed at anyone on here, just an observation)

Obviously this is old equipment, as now it’ll be controlled by IT at the bare minimum – and until I take a look I’ve no idea how long it’ll take to fix nor (if it needs parts), how long a supplier will take to deliver/fit the part.

How long have you been here (asking how long the business has been established)

My reply is a swift look at my watch and.. oh.. since about 10 o clock

My reply is a swift look at my watch and.. oh.. since about 10 o clock

You must a cool watch if it tells you when you arrived earlier, mine jsut tells me the current time!

My reply is a swift look at my watch and.. oh.. since about 10 o clock

For years, my website said “Established Tuesday (about tea-time)”

For all the IT people complaining about dumb questions, sometimes you don’t help yourselves. After an afternoon not receiving emails all of a sudden I had a load come through the 1st being an email to the whole company saying that there was a problem with the email system which meant emails couldn’t be delivered but they were working to resolve it. No other communication on it. Well done fellas, genius.

Yep, email is the preferred method of informing our staff that the email server is down

do they work?

no, we sell then cos they are broke and shit.

Every time I go out surveying. I pause to check my map. A passer by stops.

Passer by: “Are you lost?”
Me: “No. I know exactly where I am. I’m a cartographer. I’ve got 1:10k and 1:25k maps on me. Which I know how to read. I’ve got c.10 satellites on me at any one time pin-pointing my position to <2m on this hand-held computer. I can give you my exact co-ordinates in British national grid, or lat-long. Which would you prefer?”

Actually, that’s I lie. I just smile politely and say “I’m fine, thanks”.

Just for a bit of revenge on the IT bods

‘can you fill out a project brief?’ i have done, on average three times a year for the past four years while you’ve been failing to deliver the freaking project. We got presented abill for 12k of developers time the other day – not seen exactly what, if anything, they’ve developed and the IT PM doesn’t seem sure either.

and

‘can you tell me what’s wrong with it?’ No i can’t, that’s why I’m phoning you.

” So,tell us how you are going to transform our high performance computing department?”

“we like what you’re proposing, but your fees a higher than everyone else – what can you do about it?”

meh

None really apart from, “aren’t you a bit too young to be retired”

Q. We need to test this new software.
A. Yeah I’m working on the test plan now.
Q. No we need to confirm its good by Friday.
A. As soon as I’ve finished the test plan were on it.
Q. Can we not just test at a high level..

A week or so later,
Q. Can you help we’ve been testing and found some issues.
A. Ok what test were you doing.
Q. No we were testing at a high level.
A. So what do you believe the software should have done.
Q. Can you fix it.

And repeat…

Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk
Dad can I have some chocolate milk

“Can you fix it?” – no, not if I don’t know what it is you want fixing (and it seems you don’t either).

thestabiliser said » ‘can you tell me what’s wrong with it?’ No i can’t, that’s why I’m phoning you.

“Can you fix it?” – no, not if I don’t know what it is you want fixing (and it seems you don’t either).

I know what it is, but i don’t know what’s wrong with it. bit like you and capitalism.

“Is it true a pregnant women can wee in your hat?” No.
“I pay your wages!” I pay your benefits now go away.
“You can’t arrest me?” Yes I really can if necessary.
“Busy night?” Nope thats why I’m here.
“Can I have a photo with you?” Yes and before you ask no you can’t wear my hat.

Girls in Marketing Dept overheard:

“Is Surrey a town or a city?”

😯

When working at a used car dealers as a student, washing cars on the forecourt:

“Ooh, Could you do mine next?”

Repair time could be anything from 5 minutes to days, weeks, months or years (depending on the scale of the system involved).

Moreover,

Usually, diagnosing a problem is the difficult bit, fixing it is easy. Therefore there’s often very little time which passes between “I don’t know how long this is going to take” and “there, it’s working.”

“Can you fix it?” – no, not if I don’t know what it is you want fixing (and it seems you don’t either).

Brings to mind the scourge of incidents logged by email – “i get an error trying to access the product, please can you assist?’
“Not a problem, but give me a fighting chance and tell me the error, hey?”