To wonder why people are such morons?!

[proximalhumerous]

Semi-lighthearted...

First moronic occurrence: Received an email yesterday copied to four people, so six people in the conversation altogether. Let's call them Alice, Ben, Charlotte, Dan, Emily, plus me.

So Ben had written to ask me to say in advance whether I need a particular item on a particular day. This item is provided by Dan. If I do need said item I should email Ben, copying in Alice, Charlotte and Emily. But not Dan. So basically now everyone is now in the loop apart from the one person who actually provides the item.

Second moronic occurrence: I emailed someone (not Alice, Ben, Charlotte, Dan, or Emily, as it happens!) requesting to book a room for a specified date in July. This person said she would check whether it was free. She then proceeded to write to all the other clients who make bookings for this room to ask whether they are using it on X date - which is an entire fortnight before I actually need it.

Third moronic occurrence: I wrote to ask for a refund for a train ticket, explaining that, owing to delays, I had had to purchase a new ticket and catch the following service on that route (a four-hour journey) half an hour later. I was asked whether I had used both tickets.

Please make me feel better with other tales of people's idiocy.

Most people wouldn't know the origin of the word moronic. My daughter would have fit the category in the early 20th century. No offence taken, but it's good that people bring it to attention.
I, being menopausal, have become highly intolerant of people in general. Great thread!😜

Booking an easy jet flight when 6months pregnant.
Call handler could not be convinced that the unborn baby didn't have a name yet. Went round and round in circles until I gave up and rang back the next day to speak to someone different.

Not at all - I try to be reasonably intelligent, efficient and reliable, and don't like making mistakes myself. I don't want anyone "hauled over the coals" but just find examples like the ones I described to be irritating and time-wasting, and they happen so bloody often.

Also all three of those were people who were supposed to be doing their jobs - I wasn't just asking them a random favour.

'Thick, stupid & idiot', all (have historical disablist roots? 'Village idiot' for instance was a label for someone who today would probably be recognised as having autism, add, etc I think we should interpret them in the spirit in which it was used & not over think.

@CantHoldMeDown

The idiot that reversed into my stationary car in a car park and tried to argue that it should go 50/50, even when I pointed out the rear dashcam which had caught every moment of the incident and would clearly show that he was the only one moving.

Similar to our neighbour who moronically parked her car on her sloping drive without applying the handbrake, which inevitably rolled off her drive when she was inside the house (no one in the car) and wrote off my car parked outside my house opposite hers. She just couldn't understand why it was her fault. Like yours, my car was stationery, empty and legally parked. If it hadn't been there, her car would have crashed into my house, but she still didn't get it that it was her fault!

Hilarious! Definitely a TSI/carrot.

Calling back another day is what I do when I have to talk to HMRC call centre staff. The vast majority havn't a clue and rather than wasting time, I'll just make a note to call back another day in the hope of getting someone who knows what they're talking about. Sometimes it takes several attempts, especially if it's a more technical/complicated matter.

I do the same with GP receptionists - you can tell pretty quickly whether they're competent and it's just not worth persisting when you get one that isn't as sometimes you may as well be talking to your pet gerbil!

I think it's because schools only teach "comprehension" on literature pieces these days rather than on factual things like they used to. I remember doing comprehensions on recipes, instruction leaflets, etc. but noticed nothing like that when our son went through school over the past decade - it's now all about poems, fiction extracts, etc.

Emails

me
Hi Joan, please can you print these documents for me ? Thanks BOD

Joan
Hi Bod, do you want me to post these out?

Me
No reply as I have now left the office

Next day
Joan
Hi BOD, I have posted these for you

Facebook post offering something for free x size collection is y area

Still available
Yes
What area?
Y
Size
X
What's the address?
Gives address
What area?
Gives area
How much?
Free
What's the postcode?
(Fml look up in the conversation)
Gives postcode
What house number
(Am I in a parallel universe here?)
Gives house number
Will it fit a small teenager?
(How should I know? Seriously?) Reiterate size which is under age 10
Can you deliver?
No
Don't you have a car
😒
No delivery
I think I will leave it thanks I'm trying to do a no spend June?
Ok 👍
.
.
Is this still available?
NO
worst of all she is a fucking neighbour she would only have to walk a street and a half

The real problem is that too many people rely on the Internet for their day to day tasks. Yes, it's a handy tool but it's now taken over even the above average intelligent humans from actually having to think. This has reduced everyone to 'moronic' thinking levels. To the extent that many/most jobs include IT tools to sift through applicants; the Civil Service being a prime example.And dare I say these 'morons' make policy for the mere humans amongst us to follow.

And yet here I am venting my spleen on an internet forum rather than in the real world. We're doomed I say, doomed.

You just need to think how intelligent the average person is - then remind yourself that half the population is less intelligent than that. It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter them.

My current least favourite form of stupidity - saw several examples only today - is people overtaking cyclists with no thought whatsoever about traffic in the opposite side of the road. DH had a near head on collision a few days ago, blind corner, car on his side of the road overtaking.
Just fucking wait until you can overtake safely!!

And that handy byword for putting your intelligence above others - aka the over use of 'critical thinking' as an explanation. Critical thinking is just an academically-led explanation used by those that think they're smarter than you and always reminds me of the Harry Enfield Loudsa Money sketch... More Than You.

What a brilliant way of explaining it - so true.

People just don't apply any thought to what they're doing, and IME they never have.

This was a while ago pre-COVID when we were more cash-based than now: near where I live is a row of shops and a bank, over the road from which is a church with a load of parking spaces outside it. Driver stops by the bank, blocking half the road while his mate gets out to use the ATM. And what does he do once his mate gets back into the car? Pulls into one of the parking spaces to turn round. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I have a good one. My mobile phone stopped working. Phoned the phone company from DPs mobile. Got through, explained the issue.

Call handler: Are you calling from your phone?
Me: Er, no, my phone's not working.
CH: We do like you to call from the number you are calling about
Me: Yes, but it's not working, I've literally just explained that to you.
...
And later:
CH: Can I send a code to the number on the account?
Me: Still no. It's not working. That's why we're taking.
...
At the end of the call:
CH: In future, can you please call from the number you are having a problem with
Me: MY. PHONE. ISN'T. WORKING.

I mean how dense can you be?!

Yes, that's true. We have a sandwich/pie shop in our village on a narrow road. There is parking in either direction away from the shop, literally just 5 or 6 car lengths and you could park an artic lorry, yet every day, tradies vans park blocking the road whilst someone goes in to buy their lunch - just why?? No logic at all, it's often not even the driver, so you can't even say he doesn't want to leave the van unattended out of sight. The other day, it was a scaffolders truck and all 3 lads went in to buy their pies - it was chaos when they came out again as cars were queued up each way and the scaff van couldn't move off either - all because the driver was too lazy/stupid to park 20 yards away where the road was wider and there was on street parking where he wouldn't have been blocking the entire road.

Changing broadband tv provider (or trying to)

Do you want to get rid of your land line?

Me: No, because we don't get a mobile signal in our village

Him: So you don't have a mobile phone?

Me: I do, but we only get any sort of reception when we come up the hill out of the village

Him: So you do have a mobile? So you can get rid of your landline?

Me: No because you don't get a signal in the village. If a delivery driver needs to call, I put the landline on the order

Him: So your mobile doesn't work?

Me: Yes, in does but no-one gets a signal in the village

Him: So you don't have a mobile?

Me: No, we don't have a mobile so we need to keep the landline.

Him: So if you remove the landline, your bill will go down......

Is there an intelligence test that applies to specifically MN users? That would be fascinating I think and I'd be fully prepared to be graded as below average, near moronic, actually moronic. Because then I'd be able to disgorge myself of the highly intelligent coil that has burdened me for my life...as I watch things going down the tube.

Would be a pig in shit if I could take 'gardening leave' now and just be really stupid.

DP has taken to calling people who's stupid behaviour he's complaining about 'turnips' to save unintentionally causing offence when none is intended.

@CantHoldMeDown and @ElleneAsanto - just out of curiosity, which side of the 50% do you place yourselves?

Selling 2 wooden chairs. Clear photos and wooden in the title and description. Chap comes round and after many painful minutes of him looking at them and trying them out said he wouldn’t take them as they were too hard. Well yes - they are made of wood?