Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Amara]

rebook the howler on the qwerty

This is great! I'm going to have to remember this one as well as one I came across while browsing some archives here: "shave the whale" as in "Gotta go; I have to shave the whale."

[Hillia]

My son is friends with a family from Brazil and is learning a lot about the country, culture, etc - he's even picking up Portugese.  The brain hurt came when he told his father and stepmother that the inhabitants of the country spell it 'Brasil'.  They insist that he's just being stupid - everyone knows it's spelled 'Brazil'. 

[Yvaine]

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."

I would guess it meant that the gifts they were buying would then elicit thanks from the people they gave them to,  Which is still not a perfectly pure sentiment, since the reason for buying gifts is not supposed to be "to get thanks from people," but is an improvement. Unless there was more to the commercial--I didn't see it.

[Amava]

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."

Good grief, that /is/ crass. I'm not even American and don't have much emotional connection to Thanksgiving, but that is /so/ wrong! 

[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."

I would guess it meant that the gifts they were buying would then elicit thanks from the people they gave them to,  Which is still not a perfectly pure sentiment, since the reason for buying gifts is not supposed to be "to get thanks from people," but is an improvement. Unless there was more to the commercial--I didn't see it.

Oh no, they made it clear that the joy was in getting stuff.

[WolfWay]

rebook the howler on the qwerty

This is great! I'm going to have to remember this one as well as one I came across while browsing some archives here: "shave the whale" as in "Gotta go; I have to shave the whale."

I finally got some clarification on the howler monkey rebooking.

It was meant to be "relook the hover on the questions". (Our applications have a question mark picture next to each button so that if a user is confused about what the button does, they can hover their pointer over the question mark and a small box pops up with information for them. There seem to be some wording issues with the information for some question marks).

<sigh> That's so dull. I was really hoping we were going to be adding some howler monkey noises into our error message pop-ups for when users do silly things. That'll scare them into reading the error messages and doing it right the first time. 

[hjaye]

I just remembered this one from many years ago.

Whenever I would stop at the local 7-11 for gas, I would always write a check and make it for five or ten dollars over the amount so I could have some cash for the day.  I had stopped and bought gas, say ten dollars worth and wrote the check for fifteen dollars.

I saw that the clerk rang up the total on the register as fifteen dollars.  I pointed out to her that her till was going to be out of balance by five dollars since she was giving me five dollars back.

She looked at me like I was stupid and said in a very condescending tone, "Yes but you wrote the check for fifteen dollars."  I just said "OK then" took my money and left.  As Ron White says "You can't fix stupid"

[sevenday]

Regarding the 7-11 check one, but if you had $10 gas and $5 back and the check was for $15, it would balance correctly in the register when she gave you the $5 bill. Or did you mean that she wrote that the cash back was $15 and not 5? 

[pierrotlunaire0]

Our cash register system is set up so that if the customer has written then check for the wrong amount and it is over: you input the amount of the check, and the computer records you owing (and assumes you gave back) change.  If you record the entire check, you balance.  It's when clerks input the amount it should be, and still give the change: at close, I have to manually fix the deposit.

[Virg]

WolfWench wrote:

"It was meant to be "relook the hover on the questions"."

OK, with that clarification, it makes my brain hurt.  Relook?  I can see why autocorrect tried to fix that.

Virg

[snowflake]

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."

I would guess it meant that the gifts they were buying would then elicit thanks from the people they gave them to,  Which is still not a perfectly pure sentiment, since the reason for buying gifts is not supposed to be "to get thanks from people," but is an improvement. Unless there was more to the commercial--I didn't see it.

Oh no, they made it clear that the joy was in getting stuff.

Getting stuff is great, until you look around your house and realize you have to store it.  It always causes a moment of brain hurt to see that (at least in my area) most stores have massive home storage sales right after Christmas.  I'm going to have to do some toy purge after Christmas. 

BTW, the best Christmas present is that my sister (who can sympathize on the stuff accumulation) asked if my kids would like getting Pizza coupons for Christmas.  FABULOUS!  Ordering pizza delights them like nothing else and it won't take up space.

[cabbageweevil]

My son is friends with a family from Brazil and is learning a lot about the country, culture, etc - he's even picking up Portugese.  The brain hurt came when he told his father and stepmother that the inhabitants of the country spell it 'Brasil'.  They insist that he's just being stupid - everyone knows it's spelled 'Brazil'.

I came across a variant of this same issue, a fair few years ago; though my encounter with it was a matter of someone "putting on airs", rather than obstinacy / stupidity.

It concerned a hobby with which I'm keenly involved, and a gentleman who was a highly-learned student of this hobby; he sometimes let the acclaim which he (deservedly) got for his erudition, go to his head a bit -- "whatever he arbitrarily decided, went".  Much action with the subject concerned took place in Brazil, and our hero spent a good deal of time there, and reported his findings in hobby journals (English-language). He decided one day, out of the blue, that it was proper in his journal articles to spell the name of the country as "Brasil", because that's how the inhabitants render it in Portuguese.

His fellow-hobbyists and journal-readers gently made it known to him that in this, he was being something of a pompous and self-important twit, and -- re a publication which was in English -- unnecessarily and distractingly complicating life. To his credit, he took the hint, and went back to using the "z" spelling.

[sevenday]

Pierot, I get that - but the op says she had about $10 of gas, and "usually writes a check for 5 or 10 over."  So if she had $10 of gas and wanted $5 change, wrote a check for $15, and gave that to the clerk... clerk then enters it into the computer as $15, the till balances as long as the $5 is given to the customer.  So I'm not seeing the brain hurt here yet.

[alkira6]

Pierot, I get that - but the op says she had about $10 of gas, and "usually writes a check for 5 or 10 over."  So if she had $10 of gas and wanted $5 change, wrote a check for $15, and gave that to the clerk... clerk then enters it into the computer as $15, the till balances as long as the $5 is given to the customer.  So I'm not seeing the brain hurt here yet.

From my gas staion experience (working) your till would come up $5 short.  If you enter $15, but give $5 back, you only net $10 in the till because of the change given out. And if this was a gas transaction, the total would not give the option of change, so according to the till records there would be $15 going in but nothing going out (as change).

[sevenday]

It might not balance in dollar bills when the till is pulled, but once the checks are counted against the till, that "missing" $5 would show up.  Otherwise how would anyone get money back using a check anywhere?  My mother used to do this too, ask for a little extra over the amount, nobody ever complained about entering X amount and giving Y from the till.  At the end of the day, as long as the physical bills plus the checks add up to the register's record of activity, the till should balance.  That's why I'm confused.  That's how it works here, anyway - other places may be different.  I think this is one reason, however, that places here that DO take checks now don't allow you to write it "over" the amount.  Too long to reconcile through their banks maybe?