Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Gyburc]

I think I may have posted this story once before, but it really was a brain-hurty moment...

A couple of years ago, DH and I suddenly discovered just before Christmas that our accounts with BigUKBank had been frozen and when DH tried to withdraw money, the ATM ate his card. So we went in to the bank to try to sort things out, and ended up speaking to a manager.

It transpired that the postal service had temporarily decided that our address didn't exist, and had started to return all post to the senders. (We don't get much post anyway, so hadn't noticed this.) BigUKBank had sent us statements by post, and they had been returned, so they had put a stop on our accounts.

We asked the manager why BigUKBank hadn't tried to contact either of us before stopping the accounts. 'But we did - we always do,' he replied. 'We sent you two letters by post to alert you to the problem.'

  But why did they send us letters by post to an address from which post was being returned?

'Oh, we always send letters! Some people don't like to receive notifications by phone.'

We did try to explain why this made no sense, but I really don't think he ever got it. 

[lady_disdain]

My brain hurts...

An acquaintance declared that Thai food is from Taiwan. Ok, there is a phonetic resemblance but, nevertheless, we explained to him that it was actually from Thailand. Food from Taiwan is correctly referred to as Taiwanese.  The clincher came at this point. We were accused of being ignorant, as everyone knows that Taiwan is just a fancy version of Thailand and that we shouldn't go around using posh expressions if we didn't know how to use them correctly. It just made us look silly, you know.

All said in an extremely condescending tone of voice, of course.

At this point, I just changed the subject. I am not going to spend time and effort trying to explain something to a person who so obviously thinks I am a fool.

[BarensMom]

This is when the "forward" option comes in handy. I worked for a woman who would do the same thing and I would just hit "forward" and send it off.  Nothing like a e-trail to CYA.

I've posted about her before.  She was the one who would give me a blank envelope with a letter inside and write the address on a Post-It for me to type on the envelope and send.  My boss at the time saw one of those when I was off sick and put a stop to it.  She also was the one, who when I came back from being treated for my back pain, had 22 boxes of brochures she wanted me to move and unpack.  HR put a stop to that also.

If you were her assistant, I don't see what was wrong with what she did at all.

I was "on restriction" not to lift anything over 20 lbs and she knew it.

Well, that would make a difference for the boxes, but what about the envelope? To me that would be exactly an assistant's job description!

The brain-hurty part of that is that the boss wrote the address on a post-it instead of on the envelope that she stuck the post-it on.  Unless boss had sloppy handwriting, that's just redundant.

The boss hand wrote the address and expected her assistant/employee to type it.  Makes perfect sense to me.  At my job I do the outgoing mail packages.  My co workers often will give me the recipients address either on a post-it or printed from the data base and I type it onto a mailing label - its just easier and more consistent and more professional all around to have the addresses typed and all outgoing mail to always look the same.

Barensmom indicated that it was her boss that saw this and put a stop to it, indicating that Barensmom is not the woman's assistant. So rather than working for the woman, perhaps it would be more accurate that B works with the woman. Is that correct Barensmom?

Yes, the boss saw it and told the woman that if she could write the address on a Post-It, she could easily write it on the envelope and have it out the same day, rather than let it sit for an entire week on my desk waiting for when I returned from sick leave.

[Luci45]

My brain hurts...

An acquaintance declared that Thai food is from Taiwan. Ok, there is a phonetic resemblance but, nevertheless, we explained to him that it was actually from Thailand. Food from Taiwan is correctly referred to as Taiwanese.  The clincher came at this point. We were accused of being ignorant, as everyone knows that Taiwan is just a fancy version of Thailand and that we shouldn't go around using posh expressions if we didn't know how to use them correctly. It just made us look silly, you know.

All said in an extremely condescending tone of voice, of course.

At this point, I just changed the subject. I am not going to spend time and effort trying to explain something to a person who so obviously thinks I am a fool.

You showed a lot more restraint than I could! I would have pulled out my iPhone and proven it, thus making him look the idiot and being rude.

[BarensMom]

My brain hurts...

An acquaintance declared that Thai food is from Taiwan. Ok, there is a phonetic resemblance but, nevertheless, we explained to him that it was actually from Thailand. Food from Taiwan is correctly referred to as Taiwanese.  The clincher came at this point. We were accused of being ignorant, as everyone knows that Taiwan is just a fancy version of Thailand and that we shouldn't go around using posh expressions if we didn't know how to use them correctly. It just made us look silly, you know.

All said in an extremely condescending tone of voice, of course.

At this point, I just changed the subject. I am not going to spend time and effort trying to explain something to a person who so obviously thinks I am a fool.

You showed a lot more restraint than I could! I would have pulled out my iPhone and proven it, thus making him look the idiot and being rude.

I would send him the Wikipedia links for both countries.

[Shalamar]

lady_disdain, that reminds me of when a co-worker decided that he loved the word "irregardless".  Never mind that this isn't an actual word - he used it every chance he got, and he always rolled it out with great relish, obviously proud of himself for having such a great vocabulary. 

Then there was the co-worker who told me that I'd have to fix a program of mine, because it was "err-ness".  I looked at him, puzzled, and said "I'm sorry - it's what?"  "ERR-ness."   "I ... don't know what you mean."  "ERR-ness!  ERR-NESS!  You know - it's wrong!"  "Ah.  You mean 'erroneous', sport."

"rebook the howler on the qwerty".

Tsk!  You mean you didn't do it immediately?   What are you waiting for? 

[lowspark]

My brain hurts...

An acquaintance declared that Thai food is from Taiwan. Ok, there is a phonetic resemblance but, nevertheless, we explained to him that it was actually from Thailand. Food from Taiwan is correctly referred to as Taiwanese.  The clincher came at this point. We were accused of being ignorant, as everyone knows that Taiwan is just a fancy version of Thailand and that we shouldn't go around using posh expressions if we didn't know how to use them correctly. It just made us look silly, you know.

All said in an extremely condescending tone of voice, of course.

At this point, I just changed the subject. I am not going to spend time and effort trying to explain something to a person who so obviously thinks I am a fool.

You showed a lot more restraint than I could! I would have pulled out my iPhone and proven it, thus making him look the idiot and being rude.

Sometimes, even proving it won't change someone's mind if they are dead set they are right. I once had a similar type of geographical disagreement with someone and I sent her the links to prove my point. Her response? "We'll just have to agree to disagree." I just let it go after that. She was right in her mind and nothing was going to convince her otherwise.

Not so much a brainhurty conversation as a brainhurty email.

Got a To Do list from a coworker who typed it up on her iPad. Autocorrect savaged a few words, so I have instructions to do things like "rebook the howler on the qwerty".

IIIIIIIIIII'll get right on that, then...?
 

I'm just really curious to know what she actually did mean to write!

[Yvaine]

Yes, the boss saw it and told the woman that if she could write the address on a Post-It, she could easily write it on the envelope and have it out the same day, rather than let it sit for an entire week on my desk waiting for when I returned from sick leave.

I had a boss for a while who would be working in a part of the building far from me, walk through a number of corridors and up many stairs, to ask me to make a quick phone call that could just be made from where she was. And she'd hang around and watch me make the call, so it's not like she was even saving time.

(Before anyone gets offended: And yes, as her assistant, it was my job to do this, and she had the right to ask me to. But it made my brain hurt because it was much more time and effort to hike all over the workplace than it would have been to just make the call herself.)

[2littlemonkeys]

Not so much a brainhurty conversation as a brainhurty email.

Got a To Do list from a coworker who typed it up on her iPad. Autocorrect savaged a few words, so I have instructions to do things like "rebook the howler on the qwerty".

IIIIIIIIIII'll get right on that, then...?

HAHAHAHAHA!  "Does the howler want a touch screen or keyboard qwerty?"

[RegionMom]

"rebook the howler on the qwerty".

Sounds like she wants a Harry Potter Owl to re-reserve a letter/reservation. 
 

My first "real" job out of college was temping in an office that would have error reports printed out around 3pm.  But since this was in the Deep South, and computers were pretty new, I would hear "AIR messages" and thought that since the computers were hooked up to the new fangled internet thing, that the messages came over the "air" before printing out.

Fortunately I realized that is was an error report, not an air report, before I wrote anything down.  I also had a southern accent so probably could have said it either way and been right as rain.

[Shalamar]

That reminds me of when I first met my then-boyfriend, now-husband's sister.  She was talking about some family members, and she referred to them as "Annie Bell", "Annie Bev", "Annie Carol", etc. 

Later, I said to Mr.S "Gee, your family has a lot of Annies.  Is it a family name?"  He began to laugh, saying "Nope - that's Rhonda's way of pronouncing "Auntie"."

(For the record, Rhonda wasn't a little kid - she was in her twenties.  I guess she'd always pronounced "Auntie" that way and never got out of the habit.)

[snowflake]

My brain hurts...

An acquaintance declared that Thai food is from Taiwan. Ok, there is a phonetic resemblance but, nevertheless, we explained to him that it was actually from Thailand. Food from Taiwan is correctly referred to as Taiwanese.  The clincher came at this point. We were accused of being ignorant, as everyone knows that Taiwan is just a fancy version of Thailand and that we shouldn't go around using posh expressions if we didn't know how to use them correctly. It just made us look silly, you know.

All said in an extremely condescending tone of voice, of course.

At this point, I just changed the subject. I am not going to spend time and effort trying to explain something to a person who so obviously thinks I am a fool.

You showed a lot more restraint than I could! I would have pulled out my iPhone and proven it, thus making him look the idiot and being rude.

Sometimes, even proving it won't change someone's mind if they are dead set they are right. I once had a similar type of geographical disagreement with someone and I sent her the links to prove my point. Her response? "We'll just have to agree to disagree." I just let it go after that. She was right in her mind and nothing was going to convince her otherwise.

I've "proven" things before only to be told that you can't trust the internet.  Yeah, I've caught errors on Wikipedia, The New York Times and other sites before.  But I sure as heck trust them more than some random person's brain.

On the other time, I once had someone try and define "Psychosis" for me as a replacement for "violent behavior."  I have a professional degree that is related to mental health and have worked with many people diagnosed with psychosis who have never been violent.  So I was giving them the best lay description I could of what constitutes psychosis.  They whipped out their iPhone and showed me this blog that was poorly-written, misspelled and supposedly written by a lawyer about mental health and the legal system.  Uh yeah!   

[Virg]

lowspark wrote:

"I'm just really curious to know what she actually did mean to write!"

I don't know what she typed to get "howler" but I'd bet that the last word is supposed to be "party" because we had a running joke about that typo.  If you're touch-typing party and put your pinky down high on the "a" key, you get "pqwarty", which was done once in an office email and henceforth made us all talk about offices pqwarties every time it comes up.  I have no doubt that her autocorrect saw that and the only thing it has in the database with "qw" in the pattern is qwerty, so that's what you get.  "Rebook the (mumble) on the party" makes reasonable sense, so there you go.

Virg

[Midnight Kitty]

My brain hurt when I heard a commercial promoting a store who started their "Black Friday" sales at noon on Thanksgiving Day.  Their slogan was "Happy Thanks-getting."  Yes, "getting," because they weren't even suggesting that these shoppers were buying Christmas gifts for others, but were buying stuff they wanted for themselves. 

Thanksgiving Day is one of my favorite holidays because it gives us all, regardless of religion, skin color, ethnicity, or national origin, a chance to pause and be thankful for all the good things in our lives.

It's going to take me a long time to get over "Thanks-getting."

[ladyknight1]

We are having round robin staff losing their personal property. Yesterday, it was my bosses gold, diamond and gemstone ring (found in the ladies room under the sinks), today it is the director's purse (not found yet, and most likely left at Starbucks this morning). Immediately upon those items being reported missing, our office manager and senior assistant started questioning everyone who had entered or left our office suite. 

I am working on incoming prospective student's files and I attempt to sort out any problems in advance. I have a student on my list who has a decent, but not great track record and whose advisors at her current institution are allowing her to take eight classes this term. Twenty-four semester hours, which is doubling the usual full time load.