h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am all ears. I like funny stories.

Not that you need to know this but: got an e-mail back from my aunt she's preparing to go on holiday so if she fnds tiem she'll e-mail the story otherwise it will have to wait until she gets back. In any event as soon as I get the full version - it shall appear on here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled forum.

*awaits interestingness*
^. .^
= ' =

Mudhooks - your ideas will be welcome in the Graveyard:

F19585?thread=402168

Just to resurrect and realign this thread a bit:

I went to the supermarket today (as you do) and as I was pootling about in the drinks aisle examining the respective merits of Papua New Guinean coffee or Columbian, or possibly Ethiopian, or how about the inexplicable packet with a picture of a rhino on? oh no, that's tea (and still inexplicable) I overheard the following conversation:

Customer (lady wearing silk neckscarf and twinset): I am looking for the tea, can you help me?
Shelf-stacker (polite young man, very tall): Of course, madam, it's on this aisle here.
Customer: No it isn't.
Stacker: It's here, next to the coffee (moving over to the tea and pointing at it).
Customer: No it isn't.
Stacker (clearly confused, but doing his best): Was there a particular sort you wanted that isn't on the shelf?
Customer: Just plain tea. That's all I want. Where is it?
Stacker: (indicating shelf): We've got Typhoo, and Tetleys, and our own brand, look, they're right here...
Customer: look, young man, I want tea. Stop messing about and tell me where it is!
Stacker: I am pointing at the tea right now, Madam. It's right here. on these two sets of shelves.
Customer (looking where he is pointing for the first time in conversation) Oh! Why didn't you show me that before?

Whereapon she scoops up a box of tea nad marches off, leaving the poor lad standing there with his mouth open. (I went up to him and told him I thought she must be a bit nuts and that I thought he was very patient. He said thanks and went back to stacking... the tea...)

Cripes....

That is the sort of idiot I would like to smack upside the head with a large, flat stick. The kid of person I would have said "Careful, now, or I am going to get out my whacking stick...(under my breath, of course).

Invaraibly, they will say something like "I have been looking for half an hour (despite the fact that you witnessed them alight from a bus and enter the store not 4 minutes ago) and can't find the computer books."

"They are right here (pointing to the 14 rows that start immediately behind his left butt-cheek)."

"Where? (exasperated and looking over your shoulder in the opposite direction of your pointed finger)."

"Right behind you, Sir!."

"I don't see any computer books. Are you not going to take me to them instead of pointing?"

"I'm not sure how much closer you want to be to them, Sir."

I have "immortalized one such lame-brain in the following cartoon:
http://public.fotki.com/Mudhooks/artistic_stuff/my_cartoons/adventures_in_books.html

By the by "pooting" has a different connotation here... It refers to ....ummmm.... burping in your pants, so to speak...

By the way... I was just thinking about how I was going to ressurect this thread. So Thanks!

Not pooting, Mudhooks (yes, thet can mean, er, extra air in the trousers here too, but it's a very unusual term). PootLing. Taken from those very small very old cars whose engines go 'put-put-put' as they meander veeerrryyy sslllllooooowwwwwllllyyy along a country lane infront of you.

Ah, yes.... blame it on the ancient eyesight... I see the "l" now.

I spent - I timed it - 23 minutes queuing in the bank today. There was only one window open. In front of me, ruining the bank-staff's day, was a man who wanted to take out £50 in 50p coins. They weighed them infront of him, which is standard practice - so many coins of x value weigh so many grams, and the little weighing machine has the values on the dial so the customer can see too. They weighed the coins in ten batches. He claimed they had miscounted. They re-weighed the batches. He then claimed the scales were wrong, that wasn't £50, and INSISTED on counting every SINGLE COIN, all 100 of them. Then he claimed he'd lost count and started again. Then he complained that they were too heavy. I heard the chap at the counter ask why he'd asked for it in 50p coins then. Answer: 'Well, they're lighter than £2 coins aren't they?'

100 coins versus 25 coins... ARGH. And what pray was wrong with a £50 note?

And he smelt very weird. Sweat mixed with ribena at a guess. Ick.

Quoth Yogi Berra, "You'd better cut that pizza into four slices, waiter. I'm not hungry enough to eat six."

When my mother was in University, they had a science teacher who, one day said "I'll need that table (pointing to the back of the class) brought up here (pointing to the front of the class). He then busied himself pulling together some papers.

A couple of girls went back and got the large, heavy table and brought it up to the front. When they were a few feet from the front, he looked up and exclaimed "No, No! That is too heavy for you girls. Take it back and let the boys carry it...."

Unbelievable!
If I were the old lady, I would be so embarassed! If I were the shelf stacker, I'd be tearing my hair out...

There are some people that just make you go Mmmm, aren't there?
I get very annoyed at banks who don't employ enough staff, and make the ones they have work like beavers. I actually put a complaint in to head office once, and was told I shoulda used an ATM. Only problem, as I already told them - I was putting $$ in my son's account, and he had his ATM card and was at school...
One particular bank is very bad for not having enough staff, some of them have even confided that to me when I mutter about delays.
So, I take my walkie to the bank.

*reviving an old tradition

Bookmarks thread with the information leaflet from a packet of antihistamine tablets.

*bookmarks with his payslip, always good for a laugh*

I can understand the frustration a shop assistant feels when a customer won't see what's right under their nose, but consider the frustration of the customer when a product is put somewhere they find totally illogical. For many years our local supermarket put paper hankerchiefs with the toiletries - fair enough. Recently I went looking for them and couldn't find them, so I asked a shop assistant where they were. He led me to an aisle amongst the baby things! Not the next aisle to the toiletries, but some distance away.

I've heard that shops rearrange their store layout from time to time to get people to see products they don't normally see. Some people may find it logical to have the hankies amongs the baby products, but there are people who don't have babies but still need hankies. Why should these people spend time amongst products they have no need for, hunting for products they need?

The other day, I needed to get some paper plates. I was in Loblaws (one of our larger grocery chains). I looked in the snack-food aisle, in the aislke with picnic supplies, the toilet paper and kleenex aisle, food-wrap aisle, party supplies.... I finally found them in the baking aisle!???!

Why, in the name of all things holy, would you put paper plates next to flous and sugar?!? I was mighty peeved, as I was in a rush to get to an event and the store is about the size of your average football stadium.

The other thing that really ticks me off is that, instead of putting the big sign which lists the items you will find in the aisle at the beginning of the aisle, they have is right in the middle, usually surrounded by all sorts of other signs which makes it hard to read.

Which brings me to another thing.... Not retail-related, but eternally frustrating.

When you are driving down the street and loking for a cross-street. Instead of having a sign that is large enough to be seen and placed someplace that, if it WAS big enough to be seen, would be legible, they have one tiny sign, placed on one corner of the intersection, and placed on the back side of a telephone pole, usually hidden by branches.

This is the same for even huge intersections. Instead of having a really large sign hanging over the intersection, they have a reagular-sized sign, off to the right-hand side. In the case of intersections with multiple lanes with turn-lanes, you kind of want to be able to see the sign before you are half-way through the intersection. Nothing pisses me off more than finding I won't be able to get into the turn lane for the intersection I want, or am in the turn lane of the wrong street because the sign was too small to accurately read.

Cities where the directional signs are really, really bad, too, really bug me. Halifax, Nova Scotia and Shubenacadie, NB are two of the worst I have ever encountered in my life (though Montreal comes in a close third).

If you're going to get on to road name signs, don't go to Hamburg, Germany. The road names there are tiny. The other problem with driving in some parts of Europe (France, Belgium and Holland spring to mind) is that road direction signs for various places only start to appear when you're about a mile from the place you're trying to get to. You need a darned good map and a lot of confidence that you're on the right road, 'cos you won't see any mention of the place until you're almost there. Oh, and don't go to Antwerp. Once you're in, it's pretty hard to get out again.

I think that's the point, once they have you, they won't to keep you as long as possile