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  • Electing to be stupid

    So today, on this U.S. Election Day, I ran into the following two imbeciles:

    Imbecile the first:

    I encountered this local MENSA member in the seasonal department, where I was filling holiday storage (basically the same crappy Sterilite totes we have the rest of the year, except in red and green).

    She was waving some Halloween item under one of our customer service call boxes and she asked me "Why isn't this scanning? I need a price check on this!"

    Le sigh. If it doesn't say "Price Scanner", what makes you think it is one?

    Imbecile the Second:

    At about the end of my shift, I got called to carry out two 13-inch TVs for a family. They're small, "regular" TVs for lack of a better word, and probably not HDTV-ready.

    I brought them out, put them in the family's car, and the mother asked me "Are those HDTVs?"

    Me: "I don't know. Did you speak to somebody back in electronics to see if they were?"

    Mother: "No, we just bought them and I need to know if we need to buy the converter box to go with them! If we do we're not going to take these."

    Husband: "Why don't you go back and ask right away so we know before we leave? They may not even need it because they're going to be hooked up to satellite."

    He thanked me and told me they'd take care of things from here.

    Seriously, buying something like a TV without first finding out if it will do what you need it to do=EPIC FAIL
    Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

    "I never said I wasn't a horrible person."--Me, almost daily

  • #2
    Two faces for this:
    1129. I will refrain from casting Dimension Jump and Magnificent Mansion on every police box we pass.
    -----
    http://orchidcolors.livejournal.com (A blog about everything and nothing)

    Comment


    • #3
      "It's not scanning! What's wrong with this stupid thing?"
      "It's not a scanner!"
      "I know that, but it should scan stuff for me anyway. I'm the customer!"

      She made me laugh.

      Quoth Irving Patrick Freleigh View Post
      Seriously, buying something like a TV without first finding out if it will do what you need it to do=EPIC FAIL
      Welcome to my world.

      Some poor woman a few weeks ago spent about half an hour with her son staring at our networking shelves. I asked repeatedly if they needed help, and they refused every time. She said her son knew what he was looking for; her son said knew what he wanted. They bought an access point. Two days later, they returned it and bought a router instead. Another three or so days later, they returned that and bought one of those powerline ethernet extender kits. That came back, too, and was replaced by a "high-gain antenna" USB wi-fi receiver. Throughout all of this, they insisted that they needed no help whatsoever.

      When they brought the USB receiver back, they finally talked to me. (There may have been more--I only witnessed the access point and router before this point and got the rest of the information from a co-worker.) They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
      I suspect that... inside every adult (sometimes not very far inside) is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way.
      - Bill Watterson

      My co-workers: They're there when they need me.
      - IPF

      Comment


      • #4
        Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post
        When they brought the USB receiver back, they finally talked to me. (There may have been more--I only witnessed the access point and router before this point and got the rest of the information from a co-worker.) They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
        Wireless dial-up??????

        Wouldn't that be the same logic as trying to attach a rocket booster to a bicycle?

        Come to think of it, that kid might have had better luck with that . . .
        Human Resources - the adult version of "I'm telling Mom." - Agent Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (NCIS)

        Comment


        • #5
          Quoth DGoddessChardonnay View Post
          Wouldn't that be the same logic as trying to attach a rocket booster to a bicycle?
          Why do I now want to buy a couple rockets... big ones...

          Comment


          • #6
            reminds me of copy lady who came in today wanting to use our "self-serve" copier.

            Me: Hi, how can I help you?
            SC: *walks over to copier* I just need to make a few copies really quick.
            Me: Ok, do you need help?
            SC: No, I got it. *looks at copier confusedly and aligns paper wrong, pushes a random button.* It says insert key counter... whats that mean?
            Me: Here, tap this magnet to the silver circle and it counts your copies.
            SC: *takes counter and proceeds to tap everywhere BUT the silver circle, producing many annoying error beeps*
            Me: *walks over to do it for her* There ya go, did you want me to copy these for you?
            SC: No I can do it. *proceeds to fuck up several copies* Uh, how do I get it to enlarge the text?
            Me: *shows her* Anything else?
            SC: No I got it.
            30 seconds later
            SC: Uh, how do I get it to print double sided?
            Me: *shows her* Would you like me to do them for you?
            SC: No I GOT IT.
            30 seconds later
            SC: Uh, where's the button to get it to staple the corner?

            Sigh.

            Comment


            • #7
              Quoth Gurndigarn View Post
              Why do I now want to buy a couple rockets... big ones...
              I'm so happy I wasn't the only one to think that.
              If I dropped everybody who occasionally said something stupid from my list of potential partners, I wouldn’t even be able to masturbate

              Comment


              • #8
                Quoth DGoddessChardonnay View Post
                Wireless dial-up??????

                Wouldn't that be the same logic as trying to attach a rocket booster to a bicycle?

                Come to think of it, that kid might have had better luck with that . . .
                I have wireless dial-up (essentially my main PC serving as the 'router', hooked up to a wireless router with DHCP turned off, so it's just serving the dial-up access to my 2 other PC's and my laptop on occasion).

                Why? No good alternatives. I'm too far for DSL, no cable, the 2 wireless ISP's around here are like choosing from bad or worse, and no way I'm going to satellite. The dial-up connection's good enough for being online and to keep all my computers updated.

                Well, with the rare exception. I need to take my PC to work tomorrow to get Steam updated...

                That being said, if the kid want to keep his PS3 updated, then it probably will do. Any game playing online, however...

                Comment


                • #9
                  Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post
                  They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
                  It IS do-able, but there's no easy off-the-shelf fix because it's not something you often need to do.

                  Basically, you need a PC with a wireless card that can do connection sharing, and someone with the smarts to set up both machines to talk to each other, or hook the PC via ethernet up to a Wireless router... basically a couple of the options they bought would have worked, if you had added the know-how to do it.

                  I suspect the kid was the family 'computer whiz', and had some pride invested in being able to fix this himself WITHOUT asking for help. He'll be fun when he grows up and it's time to ask for directions while taking his family on vacation.
                  Check out my webcomic!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post
                    They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
                    Not as impossible as you'd think. USB Wifi dongle + ICS or Sygate/Wingate.

                    I used to have a dialup modem before I got DSL, and used Sygate, one NIC and a switch to get the rest of the machines online with it. Still use basically the same configuration now, just dual NIC with one going to the DSL modem instead of having an internal dialup. I've also used ICS to share the net connection to the Nintendo dongle (with Buffalo drivers instead of the Nintendo ones)

                    It wouldn't be that rough to set up, just sooooooo slow.
                    "English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results."
                    - H. Beam Piper

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post

                      Some poor woman a few weeks ago spent about half an hour with her son staring at our networking shelves. I asked repeatedly if they needed help, and they refused every time. She said her son knew what he was looking for; her son said knew what he wanted. They bought an access point. Two days later, they returned it and bought a router instead. Another three or so days later, they returned that and bought one of those powerline ethernet extender kits. That came back, too, and was replaced by a "high-gain antenna" USB wi-fi receiver. Throughout all of this, they insisted that they needed no help whatsoever.

                      When they brought the USB receiver back, they finally talked to me. (There may have been more--I only witnessed the access point and router before this point and got the rest of the information from a co-worker.) They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
                      Two customers stand in front of the Deli counter, staring at the order form. They are talking to each other.

                      SC1: WTF is a commander sandwich?
                      SC2: I dunno.
                      SC1: WTF is a commander salad??
                      SC2: I think it's like the sandwich but salad.
                      SC1: Do they have oil and vinegar here? I don't see it.
                      SC2: Oh they have to. All sandwich places do.
                      SC1: This is so stupid. I don't know how to do this fucking thing.
                      SC2: I know! They should like, do it for you.

                      This continues for a while as I'm standing directly in front of them, with only a glass display case, chest height, between us. I'm wondering to myself "Why the fuck don't you ask ME, the EMPLOYEE who makes these damn things all day LONG all your retarded questions instead of bitching to each other about how you don't know what anything is????

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Quoth HawaiianShirts View Post
                        They wanted to make their dial-up connection wireless so the son could use his PS3 online.
                        tis possable. IF you know what you are doing, and how to do internet sharing (yes ive dont it)
                        Crono: sounds like the machine update became a clusterf*ck..
                        pedersen: No. A clusterf*ck involves at least one pleasurable thing (the orgasm at the end).

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          If I'm remembering correctly from my tech support days, Apple's airport base unit (basically a wireless router) Had a dial-up modem in it for a wireless connection for dial up. at least the original ones did.. Not sure about the new ones.
                          Just sliding down the razor blade of life.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Yes, the early models of Airport Base Station did do this. I even have a first-edition "Graphite" one sitting in storage somewhere, in which at one point I even replaced the capacitors. This one only did 802.11b though. It, and the modem capacility, were actually very useful at the time.

                            The latest models do not have the modem port, unfortunately. I don't know exactly when they discontinued that part, but I think it was somewhere in the "Snow" series. I have the next-to-latest edition "Extreme" with 802.11n, and it doesn't have a modem port. But it does let me attach a hard disk and a printer via USB, and share them among all my Macs.

                            ...I wonder if a USB modem would work with it?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              There were also 3com routers that had dual dial-up modems for the WAN side. It was pretty interesting.. I did something like it (dual dial-up load balancing/fallback ethernet/wlan router) with a linux machine once for an ISP.
                              I pet animals, I rescue insects, I hug trees.

                              "I picture the lead singer of Gwar screaming 'People of Japan, look at my balls! My swinging pendulous balls!!!'" -- Khyras

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