Stupid Questions......

We've been told over and over that there is 'no such thing as a stupid question'. Most of us who work with the public also know that this just isn't true....so, for the glory and for the fun (no money involved, sorry), how about posting your favorite 'stupid questions' you've had or heard about.

I'll start:

I'm a glass sculptor. I make small sculptures out of glass, mostly animals and such. I've done this all over the western half of the US, at fairs, art/craft shows, malls, etc.. I only do shows where I can 'demonstrate' (make my sculptures right there).

Years ago I was doing a show at a mall in Southern California. I'll never forget this...I was working on a large unicorn...back then you had to have lots of unicorns. Two middle aged ladies were seated on bench about twenty feet from me, watching me work.

They were chatting, watching me, and having a snack....after about twenty minutes of this, I saw one lady point to me and say something quietly to her companion.

This lady gets up and walks over to me. You have to picture this...I'm seated behind a burning torch with about 20 inches of flame shooting out and spreading around a piece of hot glass. The blue flame from the torch flares to a bright orange when it hits the glass.

The woman looks me in the eye and says:

"Excuse me, sir. Are you piercing ears?"

Whenever anyone tells me there is 'no such thing as a stupid question', I always remember this moment.

Anyone else have a 'stupid question' experience they'd like to share?

Buddy

Many years ago when I first started working at the college, I was assigned the task of pressure washing the brick on the outside of the buildings on main campus. I used a 2,500psi pressure washer which was powered by a 11hp gasoline Briggs and Stratton engine. While filling the gas tank on the unit, a faculty member was walking by and proclaimed:

"So that is how you are getting the outside of the buldings so clean; you are using gas!"

Hi Buddy,

Thats a good one.

If I've heard this question once, I've heard it a thousand times...

Customer walks into the fly shop and asks, " How much does it cost to get started in fly fishing ? ".


Customer comes in with a small tin containing several flies that all have had their hooks broken and asks: Where do you keep the replacement points ?
Fly Shop Employee: Right over there next to the little acetylene tank, but our welder doesn't come in ‘til noon.
( he didn't need stronger hooks, just stronger casting skills. )

Fly shop employee rigging a new line on a new reel asks the customer, " What do you want on the end of this? " (meaning a mono butt, loop, etc. )
Customer answers: A Fish ?

Customer asks: What's a wading staff?
Fly Shop Staffer: The six guys you hire to carry all this stuff down to the river for you.

There are millions of them, but the one that ranks the highest with me, is the one that doesn't get asked. Help is always available.

Best, Dave




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In my college electrical circuits class, our professor was an old man who always liked to tell a bad joke at the end of class. One day, it went like this: "...so if you're ever on a golf course and you find yourself in a lightning storm, you should just hold up a one iron, because not even God can hit a one iron."

Well, right as he finishes his joke, this moron in the 2nd row raises his hand to ask, with all seriousness, this question. "If you actually are in a lightning storm, would it be a good idea to stick your golf clubs in the ground and then lay down between them, so the lightning would strike your clubs instead of you?"

The professors looks at him for a moment and then says, "that is the stupidest question I have ever been asked. Class dismissed."

Back in the gas shortages of the 70's when they still pumped your gas, I pulled into a station that had just run out of gas. The attendant came up and said "we just ran outa gas, truck won't be in til tomorrow afternoon, whats ya wanta do?" I smiled and said, "that's OK, we'll wait."

When my wife and I were first married, she was a decent cook, but, when frying chicken, she could not make gravy for the mashed potatoes worth a darn.

I would go to our local Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant and buy a container of gravy.

If the drive through was backed up, I would go inside. All I would order was a container of gravy.

The cashier would ask, "Is this for here or to go?"
My reply, "For here, just give me a straw."

I got some strange looks.

A while back I stopped at my local convenience store to get a six pack of my favorite brew. A search of the refrigerator case revealed only a single carton with one missing bottle so I decided to settle for five.

I approached the check out counter and the young clerk informed me he couldn't sell me that because it wasn't full. I said, can't you just deduct for the missing bottle? He said, well I suppose but I can't figure out what one would cost. The carton was clearly marked. $5.99

Years ago a few of us were scuba diving off a dock from a resort hotel. We brought the "treasure" we found - sonar transducer, fishing tackle etc. back to the dock. The activity drew a small crowd as we continued to bring items to the dock.

I found a 20# anchor that I was bringing to the dock when an elderly woman asked "Where did you find that, on the bottom?"

In the 60s I was stationed on a Submarine. You would be surprised how many visitors asked "Where are the windows at?" when we asked "what windows?' they would reply something like "the ones you use to see where you are going".
RY

When I was in college a number of my friends worked Mackinaw Island( a famous tourist trap) during the summer. When they came back to school in the fall they had lists of unbelieveably questions that tourists had asked during the summer.

One I remember is "Does this island have water all the way around it?"
The fact that they had to get there by ferry did not deter them

We were deep sea fishing out of Ensenada, BC, Mexico. A fellow fisherman asked one of the deck hands how far north we would have to travel to be on the Pacific Ocean. He said, "We are on the Pacific."
The guy shook his head, "No. We are in Mexico so wouldn't this be the Gulf of Mexico?"

I work as a part time ski instructor. In the Colorado foothills near the continental divide the weather changes constantly and unpredictably. Weather forecasting is more of an optimistic guess than a science.

At least once a week I get asked 'what will the weather be like next Tuesday'? My answer: If I knew that I'd get paid a lot more!

Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public! While not technically a 'question' my all time favorite is when someone actually made it into the restroom toilet stall, still wearing their rental skis! She got stuck and had to call for help! How she got in there unnoticed I can't say, there is even a 6" step up at the front door!

A few years ago, my brother inlaw and I were doing a 10K Volkswalk in the town of Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was a hot day, so at the end of the 6 miles, so we stopped by a 7-11, to purchase a big Slurpee. The biggest Slurpee cup, did not look big enough to me, so I scanned to the left and noticed the biggest Pop cup was bigger! I proceeded to fill the Pop cup with my fav Slurpee flavor, took it to the counter, and when the Checker saw what I had done, he gave me an evil look, and i knew that there was going to be trouble! I asked him: "Is it alright that I did this?", and he said "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE DONE THAT!" I was so damn thirsty, that I told him to charge me anything he wanted to!, so I recall that he charged me over $3.00, for my customized Slurpee. A few weeks later we stopped at a 7-11, in another town and there was this Notice: "Only Slurpee Cups are to be used for this machine"
We joked for months about the trouble that I had started! :rolleyes:
Doug

The Ultimate Stupid Question is "Are You Sleeping?" closely followed by "Are You Awake?"!

One day at the scene of a fire I stepped back to catch my breath for a minute. You have to picture all the red fire trucks with their flashing lights. Also the street is covered with hose laying all over the place. A guy comes up to me and asks - was there a fire?

How about the 3rd post in my thread looking for help on getting stuck spools off an IC-3 reel. I got them off and made a post to let others know.

The question is "why did you have to use hot water to get them off".....Does THAT qualify" I just posted they were stuck and was looking for a way to remove them. How do you answer this question? Is the question about expansion, heat and cold...and the different expansion ratios between plastic and aluminum? Sorry. I am not a physicist.

Why did I have to soak them in hot water to get them off....because it works.

Why does Al Capone rob banks....because that is where the money is.

Gemrod

While dressed in waders and holding a fly rod in a multi-use parking lot I been asked a few dumb questions. Here's two:
Are you going fishing?
Are there any fish in the water?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LouT

While dressed in waders and holding a fly rod in a multi-use parking lot I been asked a few dumb questions. Here's two:
Are you going fishing?
Are there any fish in the water?

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I get asked that WHILE I'm fishing. :/

Years ago I worked in Grand Teton National Park, building trails in the back country. We had a horse packer who loved to fool with the "touri" (tourists). He had several packhorses loaded with a generator (gas) and several coils of power cord, to run a rock drill for making dynamite holes. We'd stopped to take a breather, when some hikers came along. We talked a bit, and then one of them asked the wrangler what he was going to do with all that power cord? He said "it's to run the generator." This guy asked, "where do you plug it in at"? The reply? "Welllll, we just string these extensions cords seven miles, back to Jenny Lake, and plug them in there". It was pretty hard to keep a straight face, especially when the guy believed him.

Similar to others, but this actually happened to me...

I grew up in Morro Bay, CA...a small coastal tourist town. Used to fish the docks and piers weekly. One day, while in High School, my friend and I were fishing off of one of the higher piers when a kid about 12 y.o. walked up and asked, "Are you fishing?"....

I replied that we were trying out for the olympic swim team, and that my partner was on the other end of the line...and I think he almost believed it.

.....but how do you keep the flies on the hook ? :rolleyes:

Dumbest question asked so far this year was: "The sign says 'Catch And Release' only....does that mean I can't take a fish home for dinner?????"

I was working in Seattle for a dot com startup in 2000. We had a computer server crash one day. The server's function was to handle the company's email system, and fortunately no one lost any correspondence, although some messages were delayed a few hours.

The site manager however could not send an email to the directors of the company who were located in Colorado. He had to actually pick up a phone and (God forbid) talk to them.

While bit... errr... complaining about the inconvenience, he seriously asked me; "Why didn't you at least send out a company wide email letting everyone know that the server was down?" (you know, the email server, the one that broke..)

Stupid questions usually come from frustrated people that switch off their brains for short periods.

Here's Your Sign is the debut comedy album of Bill Engvall. Really funny. The concept is that some folks should be give a sign to wear that reads "Beware, Stupid person."
All of the above questions would be answered by Engvall with merely
"Here's your sign."

I used to work for a small ISP (that's how a worm drowner meets JC and Dee).
We used to provide Internet back when you could actually surf the entire web in a single day. Way back before Windows 95. To get customers online in those days we had a little "how to set up windows" printout (several pages) with lots of screen shots etc, for people to follow, and if they had issues, we would let them bring in their systems, and install the software for them.

I was in charge of the tech support crew, and I swear on 2 separate occasions we had people call in complaining that they could not complete our installation instructions, because no matter how hard they looked, they couldn't find the "any key" on their keyboards that our instructions told them they needed to press to continue to the next part of the installation.

You have to love people that follow directions to the letter :)

A twist on the stupid questions....rtidds story reminded me of another computer related story and somewhat involving stupid questions.

I was the network support tech for a construction company and received a call from a frustrated worker in a smaller office located about 80 or so miles away. She claimed her monitor had gone out and they were in the middle of a very important bid. I asked her if she had checked the connection to the computer and she stated yes. I then asked if the power cord was plugged in and the power was on. I was then told to quit asking stupid questions and figure out what to do to replace the monitor. I loaded up a replacement monitor and drove to Olympia, WA the location of the office, from Everett which meant I had to drive through Seattle and the city traffic to get there. When I arrived I carried the new monitor inside and looked at the back of the system which had the failed monitor. I found a loose power cord which I plugged in and the failed monitor promptly started working. I looked at the gal that called in the failed monitor and only said to her if this happens again you now have a spare monitor, walked out of the office and drove back to Everett. When I arrived I had a voice mail from a very humble fellow employee apologizing profusely about a failed monitor and a drive thru Seattle traffic. You see there are no stupid questions just people that can't be bothered with them.

:confused:We have a summer place in Estes Park, near Rocky Mountain National park. My favorite that is asked by tourists several times each summer is:
"how old are the deer before they turn into Elk?"

I grew up in Vermont. I used to go hunting with my dad in the fall. We never got a deer, but the outing in the snow and cold with my dad was well worth the trip.

Every year you would hear the story about some city dude from NYC or Boston or somewhere coming up on a hunting trip, and waiting until no one was around to ask the hunting license clerk "What does a deer look like?"

Much better than the yearly sighting of an out of state license plate with a cow strapped to the roof.

So you see, sometimes that stupid question is a good thing!

Two weeks ago I was fishing in a state park. A man and his son had been watching me catch several crappies. After a few minutes the gentleman came up to me and asked what bait I had been using on the fly.

iaflyfisher

As an IT Systems Administrator I think I've heard every stupid question in the book when it comes to technology. However, the best occured when I was still in college and worked in a retail store called Store of Knowledge.

As part of our line we carried software. This is in the days when floppies were still common and CDs were a novelty. We had a customer purchase some software (delivered on CD) and then call in later in the day because she was having issues with it. I answered the phone (by dumb luck) and the customer explained she was having difficulty in getting the CD into the computer. I asked her if her system had a CD drive (remember these are the days where that was an option), she wasn't sure so I asked her to describe the drives on her system. She told me about the floppy and then described a "cup holder". For a split second I was confused and then asked her, "Is this is the tray that comes out when you push the button on the front?"; her response, "Yeah, the cup holder." I had to stiffle the laugh until I convinced her this was her CD drive and that is where the disk was supposed to go.

My now wife worked for the same store, and one day she was talking to a customer about ant farms. The store sold two sizes, small and large. One day a customer in all serious asked her, "Does the small one come with littler ants". To this day when someone asks my wife or I a really dumb question that is how we refer to it a "littler ant" question.

I teach middle school and each year I start the year by stating that there are such things as stupid questions. I state that if they are asking questions about what we are learning, they aren't stupid questions. But if a student asks a question about a direction or something that I have just told the class (nonacademic) because they weren't listening, that is a stupid question and it will be ignored. This saves me a lot of time dealing with kids who don't pay attention and ask questions about something that I have already told the class.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Panfisha

I get asked that WHILE I'm fishing. :/

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I have too, but given my casting "skills", I always cut the viewer some slack. When I'm casting, there is actually room for doubt...

;)

Ed

Back in the early 30's, my dad was a ranger at Mount Rainer NP. He used to like to tell the story of the lady that walked up to him one day, pointed at Reflection Lake, and asked. "How do you get the lake so blue?" My dad responded, "Each spring we drain the lake and paint the bottom." She walked away satisfied.

My uncle was the Chief Ranger at Yosemite for about 15 years in the 40's and 50's, and one of the major attractions in the Park was the nightly "Fire Fall" off Glacier Point. A fire would be started on the point, and a ranger down in the valley at Camp Curry, would call out "Let the fire fall," and they would push the flaming embers off the point, and they would fall several hundred feet down the face. Anyway, one day a rather irate tourist comes into the office and demands to know when the rocks fall. My uncle was standing there, so he asked the guy what he meant. The guy says they've been sitting up on the Glacier Point road for 4 hours by that sign that says, "Watch for Falling Rocks." Here's Your Sign.....

The next time someone asks you a dumb question wouldn't you like to respond like this?


Yesterday I was at my local Wal-Mart buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Sheriff, the Wonder Dog, and was in the checkout line when woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What did she think I had, an elephant?

So since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again.

(I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me.

I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter's butt and a car hit us both.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard. Wal-Mart won't let me shop there anymore.

Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say, and we're working on new ones everyday!!

:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Normand

The next time someone asks you a dumb question wouldn't you like to respond like this?


Yesterday I was at my local Wal-Mart buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Sheriff, the Wonder Dog, and was in the checkout line when woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What did she think I had, an elephant?

So since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again.

(I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me.

I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter's butt and a car hit us both.


I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard. Wal-Mart won't let me shop there anymore.

Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say, and we're working on new ones everyday!!

:)

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Funny very funny....wish I'd thought of that when I still had the dogs and would be carrying bags of dog food out to truck that contained three large and loud Labradors (but only loud until told "No Noise"; guess they got excited at idea of eating...typical Lab LOL LOL)....and would be asked almost every time "Do you have dogs????" by some well intended person in parking lot....even though if they looked just a bit closer they could see the Labs in their crates

Just off the top of my head

To a police officer:

-Can you hold this (reaching back behind them) flashlight to assist strip a car or handing back a beer.
-One bush to another: is he gone yet? Reply: are you blind?
-Do you have a light (once for marijuana and once for crack)
-Driver of auto with bumper sticker BAD COP NO DONUT: am I getting a ticket?
-Teenager after auto accident: Do you think my dad will see the damage (the car was 3 feet shorter than designed) I meant if I put the car cover back on.