How do these people survive?

[Hitchhiker]

How do these people survive?

My brother sent these to me, I like #6.

1. <LI>Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could
   have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen
   nuggets. "We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the
   counter. "You don't?" I replied. "We only have six, nine, or twelve,"
   was the reply. "So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order
   six?" "That's right." So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.
   
   <LI>I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and
   the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up
   one of those "dividers" that they keep by the cash register and placed it
   between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had
   scanned all of my items, she picked up the "divider", looking it all over
   for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said
   to me, "Do you know how much this is?" I said to her "I've changed my
   mind, I don't think I'll buy that today." She said "OK," and I paid her
   for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.
   
   <LI>A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy
   drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was
   doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for
   a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."
   
   <LI> I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do
   you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have
   replaced the battery to this remote door unlocked. Now I can't get into
   my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would
   have a battery to fit this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm,
   too?" I asked. "No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it
   and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door,
   I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the
   batteries. It's a long walk."
   
   <LI> Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day
   she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of
   typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," the
   secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank
   piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five
   "blank" copies.
   
   <LI> I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home
   was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of
   repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister."
   I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had
   set the "cruise control" and then went in the back to make a sandwich.
   
   <LI> My neighbor works in the operations department in the central
   office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have
   problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in
   one of the branch banks who had this question: "I've got smoke coming
   from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?"
   
   <LI> Police in Radnor, Pa., interrogated a suspect by placing a metal
   colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine.
   The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the
   copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth.
   Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
   
   <LI> A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs
   to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The
   dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and should be fine.
   The mother says, I just gave him some ant killer..... Dispatcher: Rush
   him to emergency!

Life is tough. It's tougher if you're "stupid."

[Hitchhiker]

How do these people survive?

My brother sent these to me, I like #6.

1. <LI>Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could
   have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen
   nuggets. "We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the
   counter. "You don't?" I replied. "We only have six, nine, or twelve,"
   was the reply. "So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order
   six?" "That's right." So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.
   
   <LI>I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and
   the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up
   one of those "dividers" that they keep by the cash register and placed it
   between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had
   scanned all of my items, she picked up the "divider", looking it all over
   for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said
   to me, "Do you know how much this is?" I said to her "I've changed my
   mind, I don't think I'll buy that today." She said "OK," and I paid her
   for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.
   
   <LI>A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy
   drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was
   doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for
   a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."
   
   <LI> I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do
   you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have
   replaced the battery to this remote door unlocked. Now I can't get into
   my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would
   have a battery to fit this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm,
   too?" I asked. "No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it
   and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door,
   I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the
   batteries. It's a long walk."
   
   <LI> Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day
   she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of
   typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," the
   secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank
   piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five
   "blank" copies.
   
   <LI> I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home
   was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of
   repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister."
   I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had
   set the "cruise control" and then went in the back to make a sandwich.
   
   <LI> My neighbor works in the operations department in the central
   office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have
   problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in
   one of the branch banks who had this question: "I've got smoke coming
   from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?"
   
   <LI> Police in Radnor, Pa., interrogated a suspect by placing a metal
   colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine.
   The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the
   copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth.
   Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.
   
   <LI> A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs
   to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The
   dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and should be fine.
   The mother says, I just gave him some ant killer..... Dispatcher: Rush
   him to emergency!

Life is tough. It's tougher if you're "stupid."

[rebelsbeach]

Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could
have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen
nuggets. "We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the
counter. "You don't?" I replied. "We only have six, nine, or twelve,"
was the reply. "So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order
six?" "That's right." So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.

I am continually amazed at the teens that can NOT count back change...

My dad used to say "six of one,half dozen of the other....

[Two Bit]

Really blow thier mind and tell them you want a "Baker's Dozen".

Jerry Clower tells a tale of a little boy that goes into a store during the depression and asks for a "nickel's worth of cheese". The clerk is annoyed and says "We dont sell no nickels worth of cheese". The boy asked what the smallest amount was and the clerk said "a dime's worth". Boy said OK and the clerk cut him a piece of cheese which the boy promptly broke in half, took one half and left a nickel!

If you have never heard Jerry Clower tapes/albums/CD's you need to get one, they are hillarious and clean mouthed to boot. Many of his albums are from the 70's. I dont know if they are on CD. I had some on 8 track tape.

*on edit..I just looked on e-bay and there are numerous Jerry Clower Cd's. I think I'll order some.

[Ray,IN]

I know a guy personally that wrecked his class C when he forgot and went to get a drink from the frig while the CC was engaged. He was nearly killed and the class C was totaled. He was an exec with RCA at the time.

[NWRVer]

Regarding Item #6:
A while ago I heard of this incident (or similar). The driver was very new to this country. He did exactly what was discribed. He later sued the dealer for improperly instructing him on how the cruise control worked. Of course, being the good ol' USA, he won. 4.9 million in damages.
Sometimes I wish I was that stupid.

[doc]

Snopes mentions this cruise control story, but I sort of doubt it.

From Snopes.com

Legend: Driver sets the cruise control on his vehicle, then slips into the backseat for a nap.

Examples:


[Brunvand, 1987]

There was the woman who took literally the salesman's pitch that her new van equipped with cruise control would practically drive itself. Days later, the woman was cruising along a highway in the Washington, D.C., area, when her baby started crying from the back of the van. The dutiful mother momentarily left the wheel to get the baby, and a multiple-car crash (with only minor injuries) ensued. Allstate paid off that claim.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Collected on the Internet, 1995]

This guy saves up his money and finally gets the van he always wanted. Fridge and tv in the back, all the works. He starts driving out on a country road that leads to his home. He sets the van on cruise control and gets out of the drivers seat and goes into the back to get a beer. The van of course goes off the road, and when the paramedics ask him what happened, he said he thought he had auto-pilot.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Collected on the Internet, 1993]

An old china man was driving along in his motor home. He turned on his 'cruise control'. Apparently misunderstanding the function of 'cruise control', he then went into the back of the motor home. The motor home drove off the road and crashed.

Apparently he did not realize that 'cruise control' is not 'autopilot.'


Origins: Brunvand, the master of urban legends, has a fair bit to say about this legend.

The
legend began in the late 1970s when cruise control was first available for RVs (which then was the vehicle always featured in this legend). As he says, "Sometimes it was a retired couple that made the dangerous (but never fatal) error with cruise control, otherwise it was a young and naive driver."

Versions starring a wealthy student from the Middle East also began circulating at that time (one reader recalls seeing such a tale mentioned in a newspaper in 1977 or 1978), but these don't appear to have achieved widespread acceptance until 1984 or thereabouts. Wrote Brunvand: "The implication here, of course, is that rich Arabs don't understand technology, and as a result they may be 'getting what they deserve' when they spend their wealth so lavishly in the United States."

These days, the victim(s) will often be described as an older couple, people you'd find it likely to believe would be baffled by the technology. In earlier versions from around the time of the Great Gasoline Shortage in the U.S., you'd be told the victim was an Arab with too much money and too little sense. In versions earlier than that, the victims were unfamiliar with the technology not because they were new to this country or plain mechanical klutzs, but rather because the technology itself was new.

Brunvand also points out: "A persistent feature in car legends of this kind is the denigration of a minority person (senior citizen, foreigner, woman, etc.) who allegedly misunderstands the nature of some new but fairly uncomplicated technological device."

In the spring of 2002, a telling of the venerable Cruise Control legend became part of a widely circulated "outrageous lawsuits" list known on the Internet as the "Stella Awards":

In November 2000, Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago.
The Grazinski entry had been added to a compilation of other false entries -- it was just another howler tacked on.


signed
Barbara "can drive with the best of them but can't putt worth a darn" Mikkelson

[Hitchhiker]

Hello "NWRVer",

I see that the post above is your first one here, please click here.

[rebelsbeach]

The Winnebago story is NOT true....from Winnebago's web site:

Urban Legends Untrue

[TXiceman]

To add a for real true story to the first list....I was a participant in this.

Young college lady was a summer intern where I worked in Oklahoma. She had brought a can of soup from home for lunch and was in the lunch room where I was heating my left overs (red beans and rice with sausage). She was walking around looking at all of the wall plugs on the counter and ask me if there was a can opener. I told her to look in the drawer by the sink, one was there. She looked in the drawer and close it, still looking around. I went over and opened the drawer and there was the can opener. Laid it on the counter and told, that there it was. She picked it up and looked it over and ask me where was the plug and cord.

She was a junior in college and no idea of what a manual can opener was or how to use it. I took pity on her and opened the can of soup for her. As I left, she was heating her soup in the microwave still studying the can opener.

And this is the future of America?

Ken

[Tom and Patty]

Our daughter went to a small private college in the LA area. Freshman students had an opportunity to do some community service just before school started. Our daughter helped paint an elderly couples home. After the first day she called us and said, "Students didn't know how to open a can of paint! They could'nt figure out how to get the paint roller into the can." She showed them the roller tray .

This from a school that had a high SAT average.

God help us!!!

[earljan34]

Try giving someone the change amount of the bill after the cash register tells them the amount of change to give back! This always is confusing, They can't figure out what to do!!

[TXiceman]

I guess there is a lot of truth in the old saying that God watches over children and fools.

Ken

[bsinmich]

Some of you can probably remember when Chrysler called their cruise control "AutoPilot" back in the late 60s. Maybe that is the reason for their name change.