To wonder what stupid questions you've been asked

[backtolifebacktoreality]

Last weekend I phoned a local florists
and asked them to send some flowers to a nearby friend.

The friend lives in a relatively small cul de sac. The florist obviously asked the address for them to be delivered to. I advised they lived at No 12.

She then went on asking all sorts of questions about how she could find the house once in the street, ie what side of the road etc. She then asked questions about what would make the house recognisable to her, ie what colour front door.

I had to bite my lip but really wanted to respond "the fact that is has the number 12 on the door"!

I once worked as a waitress. There were two of us and we we both had the same first name. A customer who knew this asked if we were sisters.

My very first boss had a thing about getting new young employees to look daft (especially if they seemed niave) (Go and get a tin of tartan paint type of thing).

One day he hilariously (only to him) said he sent little Timmy (can't remember name) to buy some bubbles for a spirit level....
Whole place was laughing when Timmy came back with a box of ten spirit level bubbles....
Silly 'rites of passage' stopped there then as said boss didn't like being laughed at.

To be fair, a lot of houses these days don't have numbers on them.
And sometimes whole estates are built with arcane numbering systems.
And then there are the houses with extensions or where half is turned into an annexe.
So if she wants to ensure the delivery is fast and foolproof (ég cost effective for her) she may have discovered it is best to ask all these questions

Oh, this will go down like a lead balloon. But hey ho. I'm not so sure it's a 'stupid question' more pointless.

Our DCs went private. When one DC was in Yr 6 I was asked: "So you're not considering [the local state school.]" Didn't mean for secondary, seemed to be asking whether after seven years in one school I'd suddenly pull her out in the final year. Bird has flown!

Hadn't suggested I was ambiguous on the choice but more to the point- Who would be interested in why we made that decision? So fucking boring hearing about people's school choices. I can see if you're kids are at an age when you're still deciding (and perhaps want advice on a particular place) but the mum's kids were roughly the same as mine and in alternative schools etc etc. (She actually teaches in a private school herself.)

Anyway - maybe just making conversation. But the sort of thing where you wonder whether you can just pretend to not hear.

@africa2go - exactly the same!!! 🙄

In an Asda, years ago, I asked an employee if they sold trainer socks. She looked blank for a minute and then said "oh are they like trainer pants?".

After discussing my medical history with an A&E doctor - in particular my recent hysterectomy...

"Could you be pregnant?"
Me: Not unless my uterus has grown back...
Doctor: "Oh of course... yes..."
30 seconds later...
Doctor: "And you're sure you're not pregnant?"
Me: "Well if I am, then I'm about to be REALLY famous... as is little Jesus II here!" (me patting my belly).

It also took me months to sort out my late mother's Virgin media account because they couldn't grasp that I didn't have the ability to bring her back from the dead to speak to them!

Is it all one word when i give my email address out. Yeeeees. No spaces between the words

Is that all lower case? Doesn't matter!!!!

I was selling a toy car, intended for a doll to be put in. I even included a photo of a doll sitting in the car.
I was asked “could a child fit in this car?

Errr, not unless your child is the size of a doll!!

Spoke to local council after Fil passed away lady says “well he will still need to fill in the forms” I said “he’s died” she replied “well he’s still going to have to fill in the form”
After several minutes of this i told her if he definitely has to fill them out best she sends them to the undertakers see if they can get him to do it before the funeral

@FatOaf

My maiden name was a colour. A common, everyday colour. One syllable. Can only be spelled one way. Yet endless people asked me how to spell it! For years!

Unless it's Black (or possibly Blue), I'm not sure about this:

Green/Greene/Gryn
White/Whyte
Brown/Browne/Braun

Also Grey/Gray which always confuses me.

It sounds like the woman could well have had some kind of disability, such as a visual difficulty, OP

She’s not likely to be driving round delivering flowers then, surely?

@junglejane66

I said to the man in the train ticket office 'I'd like a return ticket please' he said 'where to'? I said 'back here of course'

Talk about stupid questions!

Going where?

Don't think the question asker was the stupid one in this scenario. . .

@backtolifebacktoreality

And another stupid question this morning ...

I dropped my son's college application off at our local college this morning.

I passed the envelope to the receptionist and she asked "is the application form complete"?

As if we are going to drop off an incomplete form!

I work in education, the receptionist was not being unreasonable. You wouldn’t believe the shite people hand in

“Do you work here” wearing the actual uniform 🙄

As far as questions like belonging to a terrorist organization or witnessing criminal activity etc, I used to conduct various interviews on behalf of the US Govt (not immigration/social services) that often included questions that one might think 'self-incriminating', sometimes intentional, sometimes routine. You'd be surprised at the number of people who, because of nerves or fear, would blurt out the truth.

@firstimemamma

I took my son for his pre-school booster the other day and he nurse said to my son "so then, do you go to school?" She knew he was 3 and he was getting his pre-school Jab.

That was probably just child level small talk rather than ignorance.

I had a baby at home and a doctor I didn't know came to give us a routine check up the day after she was born. I'm guessing hadn't attended many home births. He was very young and nervous and his bedside manner left a lot to be desired. At one point he stood with his back to me, staring into her crib and asked me "How many weeks?' I was a bit bewildered and answered "Just the one day'. At which point he snapped at me saying "I meant how many weeks were you?' Sadly it went downhill from there. Later on (in an attempt to make chit chat and maybe relax him) I asked him did he have any children himself to which he replied. Dry crossly "No, but I know what I'm doing!'"

Looking back it's making me laugh out loud but at the time I was mortified.

In our town, there are two houses that are number 1 on one of the roads. Then number 1 then number 1 again. No letters. Just the number one. There is a bend on the road in front of the first number one, but we can't see that it changes to another street name by the bend neither on the road nor on Google maps. We can't figure out what is going on.

Today I was waiting outside of my tiny local post office holding two big parcels. It's one in one out as it's tiny. A man crossed the road could see me as I'm about a meter from the door (leaving space for the current customer to get out) and went to push the door open. I said 'it's one in one out' and pointed to the sign 'oh are you waiting to go in?' he asked! Really!?! No I'm just standing outside holding to parcels to show people who walk by!

@PinkWednesdays

Went to the doctor complaining of a lot of rectal bleeding. Doctor asked me if I’m getting it mixed up with my period…

I wasn’t, and it turned out I had bowel cancer (all fine now).

Same here. Unfortunately they have fought me for many years now saying I was getting it mixed up with my period and now I'm 36 and really very ill, to the point they couldn't even go ahead with surgery yesterday as all my vitals went dangerously low when being put under 🙄😥. I'm glad to hear you're doing well now. Xxxx

We were at a pub for lunch the other day and we asked for a highchair. A different person from the one we asked brought it over and said, "Is it for the baby?"
My DH couldn't help saying, "No, it's for me!"

I am visually impaired. I have been asked:

So does the dog help with the cooking?

So if you’re blind, does that mean you can’t see what I look like?

Having got help in a shop and after paying,”where have you parked your car?

And at an interview, where I walked in with a cane, demonstrated a screenreader and a braille display while talking through the benefits of the job, “do you drive?”

Those are just a couple off the top of my head…

Can’t believe how often companies demand to speak to the dead.

It’s so stupid and upsetting! Because yeah I’ve been holding out on bringing back my loved one but now you’ve asked I definitely will.

funnily enough, this happened to me today. I run a stall at an indoor market selling haberdashery and yarn. a man came in today and said that his wife was knitting him a jumper for Xmas and she wanted him to check out the yarn colours. I suggested a popular DK yarn but he kept looking at it then said not much choice of colour is there? puzzled I pointed at there is over 30 colours in stock but he said I don't want a patchwork jumper. It took a while but due to space I display a ball of each yarn but have large notices everywhere saying it is a display and have lots of each yarn colour in stock under the stall but he obviously thought I had only one of each colour! hence the patchwork jumper idea