To share the stupidest thing I have ever heard

[Sparklfairy]

My friend is away in a country that a few days into her holiday brought in quarantine restrictions upon returning to the UK. No big deal to her, she can wfh and organise deliveries etc.

She just told me she was chatting around the pool and people are confused about when quarantine actually 'starts'. Most have convinced themselves it's the day after you land 'to give them time to go shopping and get food and everything ready and stuff'.

So you're quarantined, but you have a magical window of time where you can get supplies and merrily skip round the supermarket infecting everyone saying 'Oh, I'm not in quarantine until tomorrow'.

I'm not sure if they're spectacularly thick or just so entitled they've twisted the rules to suit themselves. I don't normally get annoyed about CV or what other people do but really!?

I will admit that when I went back after mat leave on a reduced hours basis I did look rather quizzically at my first pay slip back. Because it was less money. Forgetting for a moment that I now do less hours.
We can all forget for a moment and not everyone knows everything but I think stupid is when you explain something to someone and they still won't have it or don't get it .
There a lots of things I don't know or understand I don't think it makes me stupid as I'd listen if it's explained to me . what I do hate is when I hear people saying you don't get it do you chuckling away to themselves , that's someone who enjoys making someone feel less superior to themselves.

Yeah, I mean some idiots don't even know that infertility can be hereditary and that compass needles can point the wrong way when they are depolarised! Aren't people thick and uneducated!

If a compass is depolarised then you can point it any way you want as the needle won't move. The fact that it wouldn't point in the direction deemed south is a fair indication that the user was at fault and not the compass.

Mind they also asked whether we had tv or Internet yet and this was 10 years ago so clearly they thought we all lived in Sherlock Holmes or something.

I can well believe this, having met a young woman on a Greyhound bus in Texas (I think it was Texas) who had never met a British person before and so was delighted to meet me and ask me all about our horse-drawn carriages and our castles and peasants. She was so, so nice. She was absolutely fascinated to learn we have paved roads, cars, electricity, McDonald's, a parliament, a democracy...

I am not exaggerating, it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

I have an Australian colleague and another colleague who is truly not all that bright. Last Christmas my less than bright colleague asked my australian colleague if she ever got confused. 'Because it is what- June in Australia right now?'

After a little bit of confusion it turns out that she thought that because Christmas in Australia is in the summer, that it means it was also June in Australia.

She was perfectly serious too.

TBH I think that is a little - well- sort of clueless.

I know of a woman who, during a deep clean of the factory she worked in, asked for someone to help her clean the lift. She pressed the button to call the lift and noticed it had already been cleaned. She then walked upstairs to the next floor, called the lift and said "oh, this one has been cleaned, too"

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable

Really? Are librarians expected to know the history of all local authors? It's really not a mark of stupidity not to be clued up about the fact that someone called "George" is actually female.

And particularly not a contender for "the stupidest thing I ever heard".

Erm, but George Eliot was not a "local" author, she was a well-respected Victorian novelist, and you would expect a librarian, in particular, to know that it is a pen name. I decided I had to finish with the man I'd been living with for a few years but didn't really like that much, when he asked me of the author of the book I was reading at the time, Evelyn Waugh, what other books she had written. We were clearly incompatible. Call me an intellectual snob if you like.

Does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion that the type of Americans that think electricity doesn't exist outside the US are the same type of people in the UK that think Africa (the country ) is all poverty , famine and mud huts?

I have a friend who is deaf. She asked me to ring and ask her HA if they could install a strobe fire alarm rather than the normal one. The answer? "Why? What's wrong with an ordinary one?"

My mum refuses to wear a mask/face covering because it means she’s breathing in just CO2 she will not listen when I tried to explain she’d be dead if she breathed in just CO2

Why risk finding out the hard way @UtterlyDone? 😉

A friend thought that in the olden days people could only see in black and white. Also, when she was younger she thought babies had come from chimneys. Her mum told her that that’s where they come from and they dropped down them. Her younger brother is 10 years younger than her. She doesn’t remember seeing her mum pregnant when I asked her. She honestly thought they really did get dropped from chimneys. Another friend thought that post graduate was for mature students. There was a guy on our course who was middle aged. We saw him one time and she goes he’s doing a post graduate. I couldn’t have been more confused. I said what do you mean?! He’s on our course, in our lectures etc. I had to explain that POST graduate meant after graduating not that it was for older students.

@NotDavidTennant

Yeah, I mean some idiots don't even know that infertility can be hereditary and that compass needles can point the wrong way when they are depolarised! Aren't people thick and uneducated!

If a compass is depolarised then you can point it any way you want as the needle won't move. The fact that it wouldn't point in the direction deemed south is a fair indication that the user was at fault and not the compass.

The needle will usually point the opposite way (i.e. towards South), not always exactly 180 degrees, but pretty close. I know from direct experience. It's actually called reverse polarity, but most people I know refer to it as 'depolarised'.

It's actually pretty common.

www.glenmorelodge.org.uk/reverse-polarity-in-compasses/

www.tgomagazine.co.uk/skills/has-your-compass-been-affected-by-reverse-polarity/

@MairzyDoats interestingly some research groups are looking at remote monitoring of cardiac patients, in the context of minimising trips to hospital and potential COVID exposure risks.

Insects aren't animal. God it kills me everytime. But worse, inlaws once claimed birds aren't animals

Mine is from me when doing work experience in a hairdressers it took ages for the poor woman training me to get through to me that a lady who asked for a cut and blow dry needed it washed too. I just kept say "no she only asked for a cut and blow dry, not a wash, cut and blow dry"

Standing next to a couple of women at the bus stop. One asked the other how often we have a Leap year. 'Roughly every four years' came the reply.

@Furrybutts

My late mum would never put a used tea bag in the bin 'til it had cooled down incase it 'set the bin on fire'

Lady Gawain's school banned art displays in the corridor in case the (hot water) radiators set the paper on fire

@StCharlotte

An Oxbridge educated lawyer: "is infertility hereditary?"

Loving this thread a lot. Thing in particular. I confess it took me a moment

@ImEatingVeryHealthilyOhYes

I was once chatting with a woman and it turned out she’d misunderstood something.

Another time, an acquaintance of mine turned out not to know something.

Hahahahahahaha!

Oh the hilarity!

My little boy had hiccups after I’d finished breastfeeding him one day. My mother in law said it was because I’d had a cappuccino and the bubbles in the froth on top had caused them...

My first driving instructor asked me if Belgium was still in Germany.

Insects are animals, and spiders are not insects, which I think was part of PP’s point.

@butterpuffed

Standing next to a couple of women at the bus stop. One asked the other how often we have a Leap year. 'Roughly every four years' came the reply.

I think they are right. The rule is that there is a leap year every year divisible by four, except foryears which are both divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400 (e.g. 1900 wasnt a leap year).

"Roughly every 4 years" is probably a fair description of the frequency, because it isn't exactly every 4 years.

@butterpuffed

Standing next to a couple of women at the bus stop. One asked the other how often we have a Leap year. 'Roughly every four years' came the reply.

To be fair saying it was every 4 years with no clarification wouldn't have been right either, since the hundreds not divisible by 400 aren't leap years. Hence 2000 was, but 2100 won't be.

I'm dying to know more about the woman who thought her salary shouldn't change if she went part-time! What was her job, what happened.