When working in car dealership parts departments many times I was asked "Can you call the factory and have them look around and see if they might have one somewhere?"

Today you can get just about any part for a 55 to 57 Chevy including complete new body shells, not so in the late 70's. I was the assistant parts manager at a large Chevy dealer outside of Detroit when a guy brought in a '57 Bel Air hit hard down the driver's side. While the car was driveable there was no repairs possible to the door and quarter panel.

The body shop manager called me to come out and look at the car and to ask if I had any solutions. At the time I had a couple of friends in the business of buying and selling Tri-Five parts, both of them would travel out west buying rust free metal. This guy would have nothing to do with that, he insisted on new GM (ha!) body parts for a twenty two year old car. By this time he attracted one of the service advisors and the service director, if you are unfamiliar the director is management level above the managers of the body shop, the service department and the parts department.

Listening to this clown for about ten minutes on how he knew that somewhere in GM there had to be new parts and how we needed to try he left the perfect opening. His statement "These cars are real popular today" was met from me with "They couldn't be that popular, Chevy quit building 57's and started building 58's in their place!"

Now he's fired up even more. Utters a statement that was physically impossible for me he smoked tires out of the service lane. All goes quiet for a minute, we all start laughing. Body shop manager said "I was trying for a half hour to get rid of him, you did it in half the time!"

My older sister and I were in a heated argument as kids and she thought she'd end it by saying "did your mother ever have any kids that lived?"

I just looked at her and replied "I guess not"

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
Probably not so much dumb as irritating. . . .

My irritating moment.

We just bought a new car, the salesman introduced us to the clerk who would take care of all the paper work.

The dialogue was a constant "do you want this extra, do you want that feature, for only $$ you can get xyz, you can prepay for service abc. After each bit, I said no thank you, let's just sign the papers and take the car. Repeat, repeat. Finally, "if you try to sell me one more thing, I will tear up the papers and walk out". She couldn't quite figure out what I was saying.

I attended a town hall here in Connecticut during the original Obamacare debates. One very liberal participant came up to me afterwards to tell me she disagreed with my comments during the town hall. She said:

“I know what’s going on in the world! I am very informed. I read real newspapers, like the New York Times.”

Okay, so I’m going to throw myself under the bus here...

Back in 1986, I was fresh out of basic training and starting tech school. The conversation in class turned to cars, and someone mentioned the Jaguar XJ12, and I felt the need to add this brilliant insight: “I think those have a dual inline 6”. The instructor looked at me to see if I was serious, and then said “Yeah...they call that a V-12.” Needless to say, I never chimed in about cars again...at least not in that class.

quote:

Originally posted by mttaylor1066:
I attended a town hall here in Connecticut during the original Obamacare debates. One very liberal participant came up to me afterwards to tell me she disagreed with my comments during the town hall. She said:

“I know what’s going on in the world! I am very informed. I read real newspapers, like the New York Times.”

Maybe she meant to say real newspapers, like Pravda.

I was doing some volunteer work with college students. In a chat session, one student told the others "I am in law school, and am 30 years old, so I know more than any of you" (ie, listen to me). I commented to a director about Dunning-Kruger, people who don't understand very often don't realize they don't understand.

Which reminds me of another moment. I taught accounting/finance at a Silicon Valley college. Every quarter we would analyze financial statements of name brand publicly traded companies. In the volunteer work, one of the students, a first year engineering student, told me he knew more about financial statements than I did.

Padres game, buddy and I are sitting in Toyota Terrace where you can have food ordered and brought to you.

I know three menu, he does not. He orders a regular hotdog. I order the Padres dog.

Beeeaaautiful college age gal brings us our order. His hot dog is a standard size. Mine is about 10" long and 1.5" in diameter,

He asks the gal, "why's his so much bigger than mine?"

Without missing a beat, I reply, "cause of genetics. "

She laughed so hard and so loud many people turned around. To make it worse, every time she came back (with beer), she started laughing.

Back in early 1990's, camcorders were all the rage.
While on vacation at a resort, a buddy was recording his girl on while sitting on the deck overlooking the woods.
She then says, "This place is so nice. Everything is made of wood. Even the trees!". He was like, "Wait, what did you just say?". She denied saying that, but to her dismay, it was recorded.

“I said it would be ready in 6 weeks. It’s only been 8”.

What weirdass math class did you attend?

4 of us on a long road trip. We’re all suddenly thirsty, but not hungry. We each order a soda from the talking clown, nothing else. Girl taking the order blurts out, “Would you like something to drink with that?”

Laughed till we cried. Said young lady could not even make eye contact as we picked up our order. Her coworkers also on the floor.

“Wow, a Corvette (my buddy’s). That’s like the Cadillac of cars!”

I don’t remember what it was exactly that my former sister in law said but it was in reference to how her and my wife’s brother would share the kids in their recent divorce and it had to do with odd and even days. My wife had to explain to her the different between odd and even numbers. I witnessed this conversation and it took explaining it twice before she understood the difference. I really like her but she is one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. I know that’s a horrible thing to say about her but it’s the truth.

“Where do you want to go today?”
“How about Maui?”
“You want to take a plane or boat??”
“Nah, let’s just drive”.

We were on Oahu at the time.

quote:

Finally, "if you try to sell me one more thing, I will tear up the papers and walk out"

I like that. Could have used it recently. The guy kept asking me and I kept saying no, nothing. Finally I just stopped answering him and he got the message.

“Do you know what historical event happened on December 7, 1941?”
“Umm, isn’t that when the Japanese bombed Pete’s Harbor?” (Pete’s Harbor is a popular lunchtime spot on the SF peninsula.)

years ago we were giving my mother in law (long since departed god bless her) a lift to a family wedding. she was intrigued by the the voice on the hand held nav system I was using and then asked 'how does she know where we are?'. my wife and I cracked up

quote:

Originally posted by 1flynDO:
My personal favorite is at every single funeral someone comments “He/she looks really good.” I used to let it slide now I don’t. I go ask you do know he is deceased? They say yes. Then I ask how good can someone look if they have passed.

I mean, all things considered, it's possible for a dead body to look pretty rough. One kid from my neighborhood had an unfortunate accident trying to make his own pipe bomb. No one said he looked good when they interred him in a Ziploc bag.

My appendix crapped out late at night on feb 28 2005, wife takes me to ER. ( she got pulled over for speeding on the way as Im screaming in pain but that’s another story) The ER decided I wouldn’t die if I waited till the AM when a specialist surgeon would be in and remove it. I can’t go home. No problem. I had paid the $100 ER co-payment and would wait in a gurney until 8am. 2 weeks later I find out that I can get the $100 refunded since I was admitted to the hospital directly from ER. So I go to the business office with my paperwork work and say I need my $100 back. I was young and broke and $100 was some scratch to me then. So lady looks at me with the most serious face and says. “You went to the ER on 2/28 but your surgery wasn’t until 3/1” I said “your right and I never left the building, please refund me “. She sat there and stared at me and then the light went off and she was very apologetic for not realising it was the next day. February being a short month of course.

One more from me.

In basic training in the Army, we were required to low crawl around 100 yards through a field filled with small amounts of explosives in safe spots and 3 M60 Machine guns were firing over our heads all the time we were doing it. The machine guns were set so that at the end of the 100 yards the bullets were around 12 feet or so off the ground but when you got to where they were, they were firing around 5 feet off the ground.

The drill sargent was telling us what to expect and not to panic and stand up and we'd be perfectly safe and then he mentioned there were a bunch of lizards in the field we were in.

A guy I'd become fast friends with who had a tendency to use 4 bit words spoke up and said "drill sargent, are they venemous?"

The sargent thought about it for 5 or 10 seconds and said "no, they're green."

Of the 100 or so guys in the trench with me, 3 or 4 started laughing and the rest looked around like, "what's so funny about green lizards?"

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
“Do you know what historical event happened on December 7, 1941?”
“Umm, isn’t that when the Japanese bombed Pete’s Harbor?” (Pete’s Harbor is a popular lunchtime spot on the SF peninsula.)

Maybe the opposite of dumb, a few years ago my then 3rd grade grandson called and asked, "grandpa, could you explain the connection between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima".

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
In basic training in the Army, we were required to low crawl around 100 yards through a field filled with small amounts of explosives in safe spots and 3 M60 Machine guns were firing over our heads all the time we were doing it. . .

I remember the experience quite vividly, Feb 1971, Fort Polk LA. But we had 5 M60's (I was assigned to help transport them back to the arms locker.)