Day 29: Life's little bloopers

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 29: Life's little bloopers

People often wonder if there’s intelligent life ‘out there’. The question is, is there intelligent life here on earth?

For instance …

I was at the mall yesterday. I had a nail appointment at 3:00 p.m. and since I was a bit early, I was killing time by looking into store windows.

I came across one store with a selection of golf shirts. I stopped and had a closer look.

A woman passed me, went into the store and started speaking to a man. The man in question was dressed in shorts and a golf shirt, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. He sat slightly hunched over on a box, had earphones in, and seemed engrossed in something on his cellphone in his hands.

The woman approached him and said, “Excuse me.”

When there was no reaction from the man, she repeated, “Excuse me.”

When the man didn’t respond she became a little agitated and persisted with, “Excuse me, do you work here? I need some help.”

Still no reaction.

With another “Excuse me,” she touched him lightly on the shoulder. That's when she realized what I had known all along … the seated man was a dummy, a mannequin!

After a quick look over her left and right shoulder, she made a swift exit. Nobody had seen that, right.

While I admit that some women’s elevator doesn’t quite go to the top, there are dumb men too. I should know, I met one the other day.

I went to the mailroom, to pick up some documents from one of four multi-purpose copiers and found a man staring at one of the machines. It was quite obvious that he had a problem.

While waiting for my documents to finish printing, I kept an eye on him.

He placed some papers in the top tray, tapped them lightly so they were nicely lined up, pushed one button and then another button and then waited. When nothing happened, he let out a long sigh and removed the papers.

He went through the process again, placing the paper in the top tray, making sure they were lined up properly, followed by a push of two buttons. When the machine remained dead still, the man’s frayed nerves got the better of him. He did what so many people do in a stressful situation … he started talking to the machine.

“What’s the matter with you, you stupid thing,” he mumbled. “The papers are there, I pushed the buttons, now start faxing!”

“Problem?” I enquired politely.

“I don’t know what this stupid thing wants,” he turned to me, while helplessly raising his arms the way a bird would flap his wings. “I’ve tried three times now and this machine just doesn’t want to fax.”

“Can you show me?” I asked. “Maybe you’re forgetting a step.”

“I feed the papers in the tray like so,” he demonstrated, placing the documents for the fourth time in the top tray, “I make sure they’re all lined up, then I hit the Fax button and then the Start button.

“Are you sure you have the right fax number?” I wondered.

“Fax number?” he said with a frown.

“The number of the recipient,” I said. “The person you’re sending the fax to.”

We both looked at the printer/scanner/fax’s computerized screen and we both knew right away what the problem was … no number had been keyed in.

If this had been a blond woman, and a man had witnessed such a mistake, she’d never heard the end of it. Fortunately for the man, I have a more discreet nature, although I must say, feeling a giggle tugging on my jaw muscles, I’ve never left the mailroom in quite such a hurry.