Some Dumb Things

One of our premier mental institutions used to send psychiatrists to court to testify in mental health hearings. That is where a judge determines if someone is sane enough to be released. I remember the time when a psychiatrist was going to testify and was sworn in. The judge asked him a question and all he did was smile. The judge asked the question again and again all he got was a smile. The next question the judge asked the psychiatrist was do you speak English and he smiled again. The judge became furious, this was the treating psychiatrist and the record stated he didn’t believe the person should be released. The judge sent for the hospital administrator and asked him how this person could communicate with the patient and he was told by body language. The doctor was thrown out of the courtroom and the administrator warned to never let something like this happen again.

Tweeting can really get people in trouble and I am not talking about the president. I am thinking of a woman who was a very big deal at a not for profit agency in New York. She couldn’t resist talking about people while she was on a trip. She talked about someone who she said had BO and someone who had bad teeth. Then she said she hoped the particular place she was going didn’t give her aids. Then to make matters even worse she decided it was funny to put down black people in that country. Her tweets had garnered many comments and views and believe me most of them were not friendly. She might have been a success on Twitter but not for her position. People were following the movements of her plane and saying things like has it landed yet I can’t wait for the bitch to get fired. Why would any rational person put out such hate filled tweets and think they were funny knowing they could affect their life in many different ways?

The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. There were a couple of crooks who decided it would be a good idea to rob cash machines. They were not the first to do this as we all know cash machines are often the target of criminals. They may have been the first however to put up what they did on social media and include pictures of the money and THEMSELVES. Guess what happened to these guys? The police made one of the quickest arrests in history and now the only people they can brag to are with them behind bars.

The government has done a lot of stupid things over the years. The budget of the Department of Defense a few years ago contained $283,500 for bird watching. 3.2 billion dollars was budgeted that same year for vacations for federal employees placed on administrative leave. Not all amounts budgeted for useless and misplaced ideas are large; take for example the $5,000 which was budgeted by the National Park Service to make a film about the best fiddler in Madison County, North Carolina. Here is a good one. About $150,000 was budgeted for a study to find out why politics stresses people out. If you have a problem getting your dishes clean you can blame the government. They mandated that dishwashers could not use more than 3.1 gallons of water. The federal standard for a flush of your toilet is 1.6 gallons of water so now many have to flush twice using 3.2 gallons.

Sometimes businesses do dumb things. Let me tell you about a printer I ordered years ago from Amazon. I needed a printer so I ordered a nice Cannon printer. The printer came in a few days and then it came again in another few days. I called Amazon and told them what happened and a sales person said there was no record of a second printer being shipped so just to keep it. I said wait a second we both know eventually I will be billed for two printers so I want to return one. Again I was told there was no way because there was no record of shipment. At that point I gave up and never opened the second printer. A couple of months went by and I began to think maybe I gained an extra printer until I received a charge for the second printer. I called Amazon and spoke to someone and told them the story but it was clear they didn’t believe me although they were polite. I told them I never opened the printer and they decided to let me return it.

Sometimes when you try and do the right thing you catch flack for it. I have told this story before so if you have read it sorry. I worked near a bank and on paydays sometimes someone who was going to the bank would ask me if I wanted them to cash my check. On this occasion I was busy so I thanked them and said okay. When they got back from the bank they handed me a sealed envelope which I opened to count my money and there was $50 too much. The bank was a training bank for tellers so I asked him which teller it was and went there to return the extra money. I did not want the teller to get into trouble or have to make up the shortage. I went over to the teller and quietly told her she made an error and gave me $50 too much. Immediately she attacked me verbally and told me I was wrong. I said look I just want to return the money and she got even nastier. The manager and I were friends and I am sure she realized he was looking at her so she begrudgingly took the money but had a look like she wanted to kill me. I went to the bank for something a couple of days later and she was gone.

I guess the dumbest thing of all has to do with the Social Security Agency. There are a lot of living people who get declared dead by that agency every year. A study was taken and the figure was at least 6,000 a year and one of them said you might wish you were dead when you try and correct this. A woman’s father died, but the Social Security Bureau listed her as dead. The woman found out she was dead or at least classified dead when she was turned down for an auto loan. When this happens Social Security sends the death report to all three credit agencies. An expert stated this was the most painful credit report error because it goes out to everyone.

Another old story is so good I have to tell it again. I was waiting to see an agent in a bank about a car loan about 10 years ago. This was just when one bank decided to have machines instead of tellers. The only human you could talk to was a woman who had a counter which was surrounded by the machines. I had nothing to do because I was waiting so I watched as people went up to the machines and either deposited money or withdrew it. One guy went up to a machine and punched it the amount of money he wanted but all he got was a receipt and no money came out but he had been charged. He went up to the woman at the counter and told her he got a receipt but no money came out. I will always remember what she told him it was “Impossible.”

There are a lot of dumb things going on, but just because someone makes a mistake does not qualify as dumb unless it is really DUMB! Like the time a guy used to go out for stuff for us when I was on the night shift. This guy was really cheap and wanted to go out because he got something free from the diner because of the large order. I asked him to get me a New York Times and when he got back he handed it to me and I noticed right away in was a day old and I said to him this is yesterday’s paper. He got very sheepish and said he found it in the garbage and thought I wouldn’t notice.