AIBU - This is simple. Isn't it?

[TheNestedIf]

This is an analogy. I am not a plumber. This is not really about taps or water or plumbing.

I have a tap that is supplied by one and only one source of water.

This could be pipe A or pipe B. I need to find out which.

I cut off pipe A and the tap still works.

Therefore, the tap must be supplied by pipe B and cannot be supplied by pipe A.

The fact that "tap" and "pipe" both contain the letter "p" does not add any confusion to this simple logic problem does it?

YANBU - Yes. That is very straightforward logic.

YABU - Nope. No idea. You must be some sort of super-genius. Explain it to me over and over until the final star winks out and the universe dies.

2 counters in a bag. One red, one blue. Pull one out without the other person seeing. Ask them to see what is left in the bag, and then deduce what you have.

It is a colleague. I am absolutely certain it isn't a sex/gender thing. This person is this mentally lazy with everyone.

To continue the analogy, I am more annoyed with them than usual this evening. They embarrassed us by doing the equivalent of phoning an electrician to do our plumbing job, then roped me in unexpectedly and went quiet when the electrician asked for a list of parts. It isn't the electrician's job. It's ours.

How do you know that there is only one source of water?

If we lived in the same house, I definitely wouldn't be messing about with pipes or taps. I'd be building a patio.

You can't tell for sure until you cut off pipe B. There may be a hidden pipe C which you can't see.

If there was more than one source of water, my bucket would fill a lot quicker and it wouldn't match with other taps and pipes where I know for certain there is only one source of water. There is definitely one and only one source of water.

Sorry, I should have said. We did cut off pipe b as well, and the water stopped. Pipe b isn't important, though as it doesn't help get pipe a working.

Tell them to google “the process of elimination” and not to contact you again until they know what it means.

You have 2 choices. Find out where the stopcock for (a) is or run a spur pipe off (b).

If I told them to google "the process of elimination" and not to contact me again until they knew what it meant, they would definitely phone me and try to get me to talk them through it for another five fucking hours.

The only answer is to ask another male colleague, let's call him colleague Bm to 'explain' the logic to you while colleague A is listening. Colleague A will then 'explain it to you. Then you exclaim over how clever both of them are and tell them at last you understand the problem, thanks to boh of them.

Job done.

Then you get to hit colleague B over the head with a length of redundant lead piping, if it makes you feel better.

Oh, colleague A gets piped, not B. Logic failed my pink girl brain!

Can you tell us the whole situation please?

What’s happening? I don’t even know who I am any more.

Am I pipe D?

Have I had a bloody stroke?

What the heck is this thread about?

If this ^ is how you carry on I'm not surprised the colleague can't be arsed.

It definitely isn't a sex or gender thing. Male colleagues could explain it until they're blue in the face. This colleague will not try to re-explain it to me nor even take it in. If anyone remembers that bit in Father Ted where Dougal is revealed to have a head full of hopping rabbits... that's basically them.

I'm liking the lead piping solution, though. May even throw a rope, spanner, revolver, spanner, dagger and candlestick in there, too.

Sorry, Gertrude, it would take paragraphs. To cut a long story short, this person can't solve or remember the solution to a logic problem despite having it explained to them repeatedly and despite it being their job. I believe they're shortly not going to be my problem for a while, but I'm grumbling on here because they have embarrassed and annoyed me today and I needed to vent.

I understand the pipe analogy but it possibly isn't so simple in the real life alternative?

What we need to do to fix the problem won't be simple, but eliminating pipe b really was as simple as that.

Drives you bonkers in this scenario......but also possible they are dyslexic as this also an affect processing skills like this

Are you engineers or software devs by any chance

This is a familiar scenario

I guess dyslexia is a possibility, although they've never mentioned it. Their written work is often difficult to read. It helps to know what they're talking about rather than going in unaware.

Yes. Software. I thought the username might have given it away. This is why it's so frustrating. It's a job that revolves around logic yet that simple problem is an issue for them.

@TheNestedIf

If we lived in the same house, I definitely wouldn't be messing about with pipes or taps. I'd be building a patio.

That made me smile!

@TheNestedIf I presume the conditional as per your username is what they have the problem with!
If this gives them trouble then honestly they shouldn’t be in this job!
I’m a bit slow with conditionals but only because words are hard, I draw a flow diagram and get it immediately.
If a flow doesn’t help then they are beyond saving. This is one of the basics that’s taught in EVERY beginner course for every programming language....

If we lived in the same house, I definitely wouldn't be messing about with pipes or taps. I'd be building a patio.

Proper laughed at this!