Why is it so dark?

[JarethsPet]

Background: Someone either didn't call in our fuel numbers or Sandy caused a shortage at our delivery plant. Either way our gas station ended up running out of fuel on Sunday. So to combat this problem my boss decided to shut down the pumps, turn off the canopy lights and the sign. The only thing open was the towing and the mini mart which has the brightest lights known to man.

You think this would have been an obvious sign.


One regular customer, who is known for their elevator not going to the top floor because of more then recreational drug use, pulled in to the gas pumps. He rolled up to the first one and then the second one, after which he got out and looked at me in the store. I had to go outside at this point and explain to him that we were out of fuel because he picked up the pump and stuck it in his car.

The lights are off and there are signs at this point on every pump saying we are out of fuel.

"Oh, I guess I'll go somewhere else then?"

[BrenDAnn]

More proof that customers don't look at their surroundings. Wow. You know, it never fails to amaze me how they will try to use the one pump that's out of order, even though you make it obvious that that particular pump (or all the pumps in your case) is, indeed, out of order. Signs? Pssh. They don't know what those are...those things with words and stuff on them. Seriously. We expect them to READ? How dare we! Or...maybe more people enjoy being blissfully ignorant than I ever thought possible. Hmm.

[Pixilated]

*snip

"Oh, I guess I'll go somewhere else then?"

"Not at all, sir! Feel free to just stand there until things are back to normal. Shouldn't take more than a week."

[Chromatix]

I have a sneaking suspicion that some people find it sufficiently difficult to read that they have to put conscious effort into it. Certainly that's the case for me - but only when trying to read languages that I don't know very well (eg. Japanese), whereas I tend to absorb English text without even meaning to.

The circumstances which could lead to such a situation are probably best left for Fratching.

[Chanlin]

I can say that some of it begins early in life. I'm student teaching right now. I have two classes, one is at the 9th grade level the other at 12th. In both classes I established at the beginning of the year that the daily schedule and homework assignments would always be written on the board in the exact same spot. It has been that way every day since school began the first week of September.

I still without fail get one student in each class each week that will say "What are we doing today?" Or when I go to collect homework, "I didn't know that was due today." At the very least I can get away with just pointing at the board where its written and reply "How did you not know?" Or "It's written right there."