Bored Panda

I’m showing my age here but I used to work for an estate agency, and we had sales offices set up at the site of large new housing developments. Our primary method of communication was fax. One of the sales associates telephoned our office to say that the fax machine had run out of paper. No problem, I said, one of the guys is coming your way later for a house tour, I’ll give him a box of paper to give to you. We then had an almost 20 minute long argument when they kept insisting “NO, YOU JUST SEND ME A BLANK FAX BECAUSE I NEED THE PAPER, IT WILL JUST COME OUT OF MY FAX MACHINE.” It was like trying to nail jelly to a tree. Difficult, irritating, and it achieved nothing :)

Ninjewdi reply

I grew up Jewish in Oklahoma. I ran into this a lot. Had a classmate in middle school try to convince me that Christianity predates Judaism. I told him, "But Jesus was Jewish." His response: "Exactly!" No irony. Totally genuine. Conversation over.

themightypianocat reply

I used to argue a lot with my sister when we were kids. She would do this thing where she would say something, and then I would reference back to it literally a minute or two later to prove a point and she would say “I never said that” or “that’s not what I said”. Absolutely impossible to argue with someone who will just deny having said things that could hurt their argument. Also, trying to change the course of an argument if they feel like they are “losing”. A coworker once called me an idiot for doing something “incorrectly” when I was actually doing it the right way. When I politely explained to them that the way they suggested doing the task didn’t actually work, they started asking “why are you getting so angry?? I was just trying to help” etc. So now we’re arguing about whether I’m angry or not instead of the right way to complete the task.

ulaef reply

Not my story but once my friend (friend A) was having a friendly (turned sour) debate with another friend (friend B) about how sometimes people just don’t have a choice, in the context of, they can’t just choose to live a frivolous life because of their family background etc. Friend A proceeds to say, “what about starving children born in Africa, it’s not like they had a choice.” To which Friend B answered....”WHO ASKED THEM TO BE BORN IN AFRICA? JUST DON’T BE BORN THERE.” That’s when we knew.... :—)

GreyFoxHound1 reply

For a short while, I worked as a line cook at a Cracker Barrel, and there was a little saloon style door that led to the staff section (kitchen, bathroom, etc). There was a staff only sign on the door, above the doors, and on the wall behind the doors at eye level. Usually if someone from the customer side comes in, they said, "Coming in" before opening the door, so they didn't hit anyone, but of course customers didn't know that. So when this dude opened the door and hit a waitress carrying a ton of drinks, we were reasonably upset with him. He said, "You should really put a sign up." We showed him all the signs, and he goes, "That seems a bit excessive."