Paying Attention?

This one is short and to the point. Our lunch hours are staggered so that someone is always present at work while others are at lunch (as I'm sure it is with most businesses). Kim happened to be filling in at the reception desk while the receptionist was at lunch. The reception desk faces out into the elevator lobby, so that the receptionist can see when someone is getting off the elevator.

So I returned from my lunch and proceeded into the office, and after I had been in there for five minutes or so, the phone rang. So I answered it, and it was her.

"Did Jim come back from lunch yet?"

My mouth said, "No, he's not back yet."

My head said, "Don't you think that since you're sitting at the desk, and you see everyone who gets off the elevator, and you haven't seen him get off the elevator since he's been at lunch, that you could come to the logical conclusion that he isn't back yet?"

I mean, is it really that difficult? Apparently some people have trouble with that sort of logic. And it makes me want to stab myself.

Across The Street

A few days ago we were talking about various places to eat lunch in the downtown area where we work, when Quizno's popped up in the discussion. As usual, Kim had no idea what we were talking about, but felt the need to add to the discussion by saying how she loved Quizno's, even though she only gets the veggie sub because she has so many dietary restrictions that her diet consists mostly of veggie burgurs and cereal.

So she mentioned wanting to go soon and get a sub at Quizno's and asked where it was located at. Our building sits at the intersection of two streets, and the building housing the Quizno's is diagonally across the intersection from us. So I tried to explain:

"You know the building diagonally across the street from us? The one with the Bojangle's in it?"

"No, I don't know where that is."

"Hmmm...ok. You know how you go out the front of the building and cross Tyrone St. directly in front of you?"

"No, I don't know where Tyrone St. is."

Time for more tongue biting, since Tyrone St. is the street that our building is located on, and the street name is right in the address, and it's right out the door. But I tried one more time:

"OK, you know the side door you walk out of, when you walk by that restaurant The Tavern?"

"I don't know where that is, but ok."

This was where I had to give up, since a) it's in our building, and b) you almost have to walk by it to get on the elevator in the morning. You can literally look into it from the elevator hallway. Yet she didn't know where it was, and apparently didn't know what street she was on. In fact, she didn't know the names of any of the surrounding streets, despite walking two or three blocks from the bus station every day.

I'm not sure whether to classify this as ignorance, laziness, idiocy, or just plain moronic.

My Reflection

I work in a law firm, and we deal with a lot of big documents. Often, these documents are sent off-site to be converted into PDF images and burned onto a CD. When these CDs come back, we stick them into the computer to make sure that they open the way they're supposed to, then we take them back to the client.

So one day a stack of CDs comes back in, and Kim picks them up and takes them over to the computer to check them out. I'm working on something else when she announces to nobody in particular (but to me because I was the only other person in the room) that she can't get the CD to function correctly.

So I walk over to the computer where she's at and get an "Unable to read disc in Drive D:" message. "You put the disc in the correct drive, right?"

"Yes, I stuck it in and that message popped up."

So I fiddled a little by trying to run the disc manually, but still got the same error. So I opened the drive, and there I was, staring at my reflection.

"The shiny side is supposed to go up in the drive right?"

Trying my best to bite my tongue and not completely lose it, I calmly said, "No, actually the label side is supposed to go up. Why don't I finish these, and you go work on something else?"

I know that CDs are a relatively new technology, having been around for only about, oh, 15 years or so. However, in those 15 years I've put a lot of CDs into a lot of CD players and into a lot of CD-ROM drives, and I can never recall one where the label side goes down. Ever.

I swear, I'm not making these up.

Highs and Lows

So a week or two after the Komodo Dragon story, I thought maybe that was a one-off thing. Maybe she wasn't really as stupid as she sounded with that story. Maybe she was just confused about what we were talking about. Or maybe I had misspoken and she had misunderstood me.

Wrong.

I was at work early one morning discussing some things with my supervisor when she walked in. She said her good mornings, as she usually does, and launched into some sort of blathering nonsense, as she usually does.

And then this exchange took place...

She announced to the two of us, "You know what? I was watching the news this morning and the anchors said something that didn't make any sense at all! They said that the high was going to be in the low 50s today! How can you have high and low at the same time? You can't!"

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I said "You must have misunderstood what they were saying. They were probably saying that the high temperature of the day will be in the lower end of the 50s, meaning that's the highest the temperature will get during the day."

She responded with "Oh, so you mean if they said the high was in the low 20s that 20 degrees is high in this part of the country?"

I was growing fearful, but I tried again. "No, what they were saying was that the highest the temperature will be today is in the lower part of the 50s like 50-53 degrees. Not that 50s is a high temperature."

Her response? "Oh whatever. Now you guys are just guessing."

I stared at her in disbelief, mouth gaping open for a few seconds, as my supervisor began trying to explain again. I couldn't say anything, I had to leave again and go slam my head against a wall.

Actually, I wish I'd slammed her head against the wall. Maybe it would have knocked some sense into it...

More to come.

The One That Started It All

I had been working at my current job for about three months when I started coming to the realization that I really had something special on my hands. By that I mean, I've dealt with some seemingly incompetent people in my life, but with this, I honestly believe I've found the dumbest person I could ever meet.

To give some background, this woman (I will not reveal her name, but for the sake of these writings, she will be referred to as Kim from now on) is 43 years old. She has never been married (though she has constantly spoken of how she wishes she was), is from a northern state, and moved here to North Carolina in July of 2006. She basically has no friends here, she lives alone with her dog, and seems to get little social interaction. Because of this apparent limit on social interaction, she talks so much that I'm constantly stuffing cotton in my ears to stop them from bleeding.

So one day I was working away minding my own business when she enters the room and starts up about how she had been watching television the night before, watching Oprah or Dr. Phil or some such show that I'd rather stab my eyes out than watch. And she said...

"You know what I heard on Oprah last night? This doctor was on her show, and he said that the human bite is the most dangerous bite in the world because of all the bacteria contained in the human mouth."

I had to pause for a moment and consider how ludicrous this statement sounded, but I wanted to try and approach the argument politely, so I said, "Now wait a minute, let's think about this. It seems to me that something like a poisonous spider bite would be more dangerous. I think you'd be a lot more likely to die from a poisonous spider bite than if another person bit you."

And she responded with...

"But spiders aren't animals. They're arachnids."

I thought maybe she'd misunderstood something along the way, so I tried to explain it to her. "Now let me explain it to you. On Earth, you're basically one of two things. I know there are non-living things, and there are all sorts of living things like bacteria and protists and viruses and whatnot. But going back to seventh grade science here, if you're a living thing on Earth, chances are you fall into one of two categories. You're either a plant, or you're an animal. Now you are correct that spiders are arachnids, but that's narrowing it down. They're still animals."

Her response? "No, you're wrong."

I stood in shock for a moment. Was I really hearing what I think I was? And before I could compose myself and try to explain again, she started in with, "And also, I was watching this nature show on PBS last night and they were talking about these things, I think they were called Komodo Dragons, that have so much venom in their bite that it's the deadliest bite in the world."

This was getting crazier by the second. "Time out," I responded, "just a second ago you told me that the human bite was the most dangerous bite in the world, and now you're telling me that the animal with the deadliest bite is the Komodo Dragon. Is there not some sort of correlation between most dangerous and most deadly? You're not making any sense."

"But Komodo Dragons aren't animals, they're reptiles."

At that point, I was afraid I was going to pop a blood vessel if I stayed in the room, so I just walked out, thinking to myself, "How can someone who has (supposedly) graduated from college (she claims to have a degree) honestly believe that Komodo Dragons are not animals? She's got to be an idiot."

Little did I know that this was only the beginning...

More coming tomorrow.