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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

How can you not know?!

423 replies

TittyGolightly · 19/04/2017 19:52

I work with a woman (29 and a mother of one) whose lack of general knowledge I can't quite believe to be normal. Ask anything about TOWIE or IACGMOOH and she knows it (unlike me) but the following are just some of the things she hasn't known in the past couple of weeks:

that we aren't "doing cows a favour" by milking them
that tea grows on bushes (or that it's a leaf)
that coffee comes from beans
that bees are being threatened by modern farming practices and that if there are no bees we will have no plants (inc fruit and veg)
that reindeer are real
that early humans lived in caves
that a month isn't 4 weeks

She "has no idea" how anyone can know this stuff.

Is this normal now? My 6 year old knows most of this!

OP posts:

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Grilledaubergines · 19/04/2017 22:54

mrsjames

A few years ago I had cause to hide very badly my shock when a young co-worker declared Cost Per Mille (a standard phrase in our industry) to be 'cost per million'. You know, because 'mille' is short for million. Not latin for thousand

Well I didn't learn Latin at school, don't work in your industry and have never had a conversation where the Latin for thousand was discussed. not knowing this earth shattering fact doesn't make me ignorant.

There's plenty you won't know.

Runny · 19/04/2017 22:55

It's not just young people who are like this. My DM has a friend who whilst on holiday in Italy visited Pompei. She was shocked to find it a ruin because she thought it was ' a resort with beaches and bars and hotels and stuff'.

Rosieroundabouts · 19/04/2017 22:56

I'm learning a lot of new things on this thread

KoalaDownUnder · 19/04/2017 22:56

My astonishingly smart, v accomplished friend genuinely thought that 'leopard' was pronounced 'LEE-oh-pahd'.

saucyxjack · 19/04/2017 22:56

Had to check the entire thread to see if anyone had posted a similar story to mine. Nope. Nobody else once worked with a teenage girl that looked up from her computer and asked the question "Germany did win the war, right? Beat that

Derlei · 19/04/2017 22:56

outnotdown

I had to chuckle at that; my mum was reading a pop up book to DS a few months ago about dinosaurs when she randomly asked me if any dinosaurs still roamed the earth. We had a good laugh about it but I always feel sorry for her as she was pulled out of school at 9 to care for her younger siblings

CurlyhairedAssassin · 19/04/2017 22:58

I once worked with an older lady who excitedly showed me a book in the library we worked in. This book showed photos of an expedition to deepest dark darkest forests somewhere and some never seen before photos of a unicorn. She was convinced that it was like the dodo being found again. I told her it was just a coffee table art book with an inventive photographer, a white horse and a stick on horn but she wouldn't have it.

FlyingDuck · 19/04/2017 22:58

In my first term at university, three of my four flatmates thought Glasgow was the capital of Scotland; they were completely insistent, and I had to argue it out with them until I could find proof. Two of them were studying geography!

Ladydepp · 19/04/2017 22:59

Saucy - OMG!

Runny · 19/04/2017 23:01

Also, fairly recently I had a Facebook friend who I had previously thought was pretty intelligent ask what the difference is between Catholics and Christians. I didn't know where to begin with that clanger.

Years ago I went to Dublin with a family member and she couldn't get her head around the fact that we were no longer in the UK but in a independent sovereign country called the Republic of Ireland. 'But Ireland is in Britain isn't it?' No, why do you think you had to change your money into Euro's and show your bloody passport at the airport you daft bint?

RedBullBlood · 19/04/2017 23:05

Born and raised in Co Durham, moved south and have been told surprisingly often that I don't have much of an Irish accent...

StrumpersPlunkett · 19/04/2017 23:06

I learned 2 new things in the last couple of weeks.
So as well as omnivore herbivore and carnivores there are detritivores.
Giraffes are ruminants and therefore have 4 stomachs.

ConferencePear · 19/04/2017 23:12

I think my general knowledge is pretty good. The trouble is I don't know what I don't know.

PigletJohn · 19/04/2017 23:13

There may be something I don't know, but I don't know what it is.

NonnoMum · 19/04/2017 23:24

Hummus is made from chick peas, isn't it?

Gwenhwyfar · 19/04/2017 23:29

"* that we aren't "doing cows a favour" by milking them"

Apart from the ethical issues around dairy farming, I was always taught that when dairy cows need to be milked, they really NEED to be milked and will be relieved when it's done. Yes, the whole system is a bit crap, but I always presumed milking them at milking time is better than not doing it if you see what I mean.

BadLad · 19/04/2017 23:30

The last time a thread like this came up, a poster on here was surprised to discover, from reading the thread, that Gordon Brown was no longer PM.

This was a few weeks after May had become PM.

Witchend · 19/04/2017 23:32

I think everyone has gaps in their knowledge which leaves other people surprised. I doubt anyone wouldn't have that-something they've just not come across, or plainly not interested in.
Ds (9yo) can leave grown men who think they're fairly knowledgeable about the subject floundering with his comments on certain military knowledge, in which he'll say "but I thought everyone knew that".

Doesn't mean that they're ignorant, just their knowledge is different.
For example, I remember being surprised that dh didn't know that a female Blackbird is more brown than black. Coming from a family of twitchers, although it doesn't particularly interest me, that's the sort of knowledge I think of as basic.
Dh was astonished I didn't know that some of the "underground" is over ground. Having never been to London at that time, and lived over 400 miles away I doubt the subject had ever come up. As he travelled regularly by tube, he didn't even realise people might think it was all underground.

Goldfishjane · 19/04/2017 23:33

Bad, I remember that but I thought it was a wind up.

XsaraHale · 19/04/2017 23:39

I think there is plain ignorance/lack of common sense and then those people who genuinely have not had 'worldly' experiences or maybe a different culture/generation etc...the latter I do not mind. Nobody knows everything in the world...it's great to share knowledge.
I got asked ,if as a Muslim, I eat "that Allah meat, the Urdu meat" ... the lady was elderly and had tried her best to use the correct term( how I saw it)
Oh and no, I'm a vegetarian so no Halal meat hehe

user1471451355 · 19/04/2017 23:45

Last fall I mentioned Donald Trump in conversation, to which my acquaintance replied "who's that?"

We're American.

GabsAlot · 19/04/2017 23:46

saucy wins sorry but thats the best one

my dsis is a bit like this especially with current affairs-she refuses to watch the news because its depressing so just looks blankly when i start talking about anything like that

AGnu · 19/04/2017 23:46

I think this whole kipper thing is a bit of a red herring...

My cousin completely freaked out when she found out what the blue bits in stilton are. This was around the time I had to teach her how to do percentages. She worked in finance at the time, is nearly 20 years older than me & I was about 12 at the time. Her lack of knowledge astounds me on a regular basis, like when she didn't know Gran Canaria was off the West coast of Africa having just been there, but what bothers me is her lack of interest in what she doesn't know. I remember when I discovered Hawaii is the other side of America & much further away than I thought it was. This fascinated me & I spent a long time examining the map the find out what it's actually close to & what is where I thought it was. It's people with no curiosity about the world that I just don't get.

Gwenhwyfar · 19/04/2017 23:52

"I knew someone who didn't believe me that gherkins were pickled cucumbers. "

News to me!!

AGnu · 19/04/2017 23:53

My favourite lack-of-knowledge story was my great-grandmother who was baffled by teabags when they first became a thing. She didn't think it saved any time when you had to faff about cutting those little bags open...

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