Makes sense...kinda
There is a 23 year old girl in the Northeast of England, who up until last summer thought that oil rigs drilled for oil, refined it into petrol and pumped directly down underwater pipes to petrol stations.

"Well that's why when a new petrol station opens it'll often be on the site of an old one won't it? Because the pipes are already connected and they'd have to dig up people's houses if they wanted to move them."
(SpongeGavShitPants, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:59, 2 replies)

And these people are allowed to live...
Best Beloved is a maths teacher, doing her level best to educate the 16 to 19 years-olds of this once fine country.

One day I arrived home to find her in a somewhat despondent mood. She'd been trying to drum the concept of fractions into the heads of a particularly recalcitrant bunch who were arguing vociferously that they had no need of such rubbish in a modern world.

Sighing she begun to explain using a diagram of a cake, cutting into halves, quarters, eighths etc...

Suddenly their little ears prick up, and the class is all exited attention.

"So, miss, right. A half, is like, a fraction yeah ?"

"Yes, it is. Cutting the cake into two equal pieces..."

"Okay, so like a quarter is a fraction, that's like half of a half ?"

"That's right! and an eigth is a half of a quarter." she replies, somewhat surprised by this genius level of creativity.

"So, right, if I'm buyin' an eighth off Tooma for a tenner, an' de likkle fucker says he'll sell me a sixteenth for £15. I is right to be cuttin' his face for rippin'me. Yeah ?"
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:37, 6 replies)

Summer 2001 (may be a roast, I can't remember)
And a young Kroney is in the States on a six week jaunt through the South. As a trip it was something of an eye-opener to a middle-class boy from Surrey. It was the first time I truly appreciated just how safe and comfortable my life was.

I had left the trip until I was 21 for obvious reasons. There's no point going to a different country if you're not going to be old enough to do everything you might want to do, after all.

On this occasion, I was sitting in Miami airport having caught a Greyhound from Fort Lauderdale. I was heading back up to Tampa and, having done the journey down on a Greyhound, I had no intention of repeating the experience on the way back up. I elected instead to fly all of 45 minutes. There was a bit of a wait before my flight, so I decided that I'd like a nice beer. Thus began one of the biggest episodes of fuck-wittery I have experienced to date.

"Hi there, I'd like a bottle of Budweiser, please." I said, to the big, fat, thick-looking mouthbreather behind the bar. She looked at me with obvious contempt.

"ID," she said.

I sighed and produced my passport. I was four weeks into the trip at this point and the novelty of having to produce my passport every time was wearing thin. She all but snatched it off me and stared at it with knitted brows.

"I can't serve you, you're underage," she said, hanging onto the passport.

"Yes you can, I'm 21, it says so right there!" I said, pointing at the relevant section.

"You're not 21, it's the law here."

"Yes, I am. I was 21 this year, in May. I've been 21 for several months now." I was getting a little annoyed at this point and it may have come out in my tone.

"I'll get my manager."

So the manager comes out, looks at my passport and says:

"You're underage, we can't serve you."

"For God's sake. It says my date of birth right here," I take my passport back and point to the bit that says 'Date of Birth: 31-May/Mai-1980'. I hold it there for a bit. "See? Can I have my beer now, please?"

I get my beer. I pay and go to sit down. Whilst I'm passing the time, I try to figure out what the hell just happened. The date of my birth is clear and bold next to my photo. After staring at it for a bit, I start to laugh. At the top of the page is the passport number, followed by the only other date on the passport, the date of issue.

My passport was issued on 31st-Oct-1997.

That would have made me three.
( Kroney, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:37, 5 replies)

A biomedical science degree does not necessarily mean you have a grasp of basic maths
Mrs SLVA is a medical lab assistant and had to make up some solution or other. A bio-medical scientist (BMS) told her it's a 1:2 solution.

Wife: "So, 100ml of chemical to 200ml of water?"
BMS: "No, 100ml of each"
Wife: "But that's a 1:1 solution"
BMS: "No, it's a 1:2 solution, you use 100ml of chemical and you get 200ml of solution"
Wife: "That's not how ratios work. 1:2 means 100ml of chemical and 200ml of water"
BMS: "no it isn't"
Wife: "Yes it is."
BMS: "No it isn't" (with an air of I've got a degree in medical science and get paid way more than you do.)
Wife: "Ok, so what amounts would make a 1:1?" (with an air of I know what I'm fucking talking about and I've only got a C at GCSE Biology and a D in maths)
BMS: You can't have a 1:1 solution

Mrs SLVA face-palmed so much that she actually beat her face into the shape of a wok.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:37, 6 replies)

My friends mum
once recommended a film to us that she had seen in the cinema recently. Apparently it was called "Dreamworks".

D'oh!
(Roopy all is not what it seams, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:32, Reply)

Jonnies
When I was in my early teens, I was convinced condoms were put on every night to prevent wet dreams messing the bed.
(kitescreech still here, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 12:31, Reply)

Haute Cuisine
G8 `96 in Lyons I was rigging TV stuff. The Press enclosure had a food complex as they were showcasing "gastronomie", and it was all free.
I speak fair french, one of the guys I was with didn`t retain any despite doing it at school.

This particular lunchtime we went to a counter with the choice wild duck or saumon en croute. He took one look at the duck that he thought he would be adventurous and sample, it`s been cooked in red wine and is dark meat not "like chicken" as he expected: "that looks raw, don`t they cook things here? I`ll have that thing instead".
We sit down, I start eating my salmon, it`s really good.

Suddenly he blurts out:
"fuck me, there`s fish in this bloody pasty! Yours alright?". I had no-one to share it with.
(tootired Is searching for a funny sig, nothing good so far, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:54, Reply)

No Electricity
I used to have an electric pre payement meter- and so occasionally* we would run out of 'leccy. Usually you can tap into your emergency 'leccy, but once thats used the only next step is to go and actually buy some.

Face palm moment a plenty when you send your girlfriend off to the shop with the Pre pay card and £10. Sitting in the dark to pass the time you realise you might aswell watch some TV.... a few moments pass of trying to switch on the TV before facepalm. Then whilst giggling to yourself about how silly that idea was, you try and make a brew - because that will pass the time instead.... D'oh

Then you think of trying to read a book.... in the dark? best put the light on...... D'oh

This goes on until you realise you depend on Electricity for pretty much everything in your house.


The same too goes for bread when your hungry... every tried to make a quick bite without bread?


*frequently
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:54, 3 replies)

Wales!
Way back in the mists of time when a much younger Mon was at secondary school a few select pupils were chosen to go on a weekend trip away with the history teacher to Wales to take in the historical sites and visit the place where the Prisoner was filmed. The group that went were all the top set but what they had in brains they actually lacked in common sense. One good example of this was Amy, a straight A student who was gullible, one of the group Darren knew this and thought he would have fun with her on the Friday before the trip.

Darren: You all ready to go yet?
Amy: Yup all packed
Darren: Have you had your money changed yet?
Amy: What?
Darren: Well Wales is another country isn’t it they have their own currency
Amy: Really?
Darren: Yup they trade in coins called the Lek. It’s actually spelt leek but you know how the welsh language is
Amy: Shit, I’d better get some
Darren: Remember to ask for the Welsh Leek when you go get your money changed!
(Amy wonders off to lesson and Darren chuckles to himself)

The problem is that Darren didn’t count on the woman at the bureau de change being a total spacktard and not paying attention to what was an obvious pisstake, poor Amy turned up to the minibus with her spending money split into half British pounds and half Albanian currency.

I would say that Darren felt bad but he didn’t. During the ride to wales he even convinced Amy that the sheep we saw on the hills were specialist ones that had longer right legs than left (Which was how they were able to stand on a hillside so easily).
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:34, 1 reply)

My housemate once asked me
whether christmas day was on the 24th or the 25th.
( weaver., Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:27, 1 reply)

There's been a few, the best I can think of right now...
2 weeks ago, a survivor of the Holocaust came into the school I work at to speak to the kids about his experiance. One of the boys in Year 11 (not bright) didn't know what a Holocaust survivor is, another "couldn't remember" what the holocaust was, and another thought it was somewhere where you get free money.

I only left the school a couple of years ago, and I generally hang about in the DT block to help out when things go wrong, as I can get away with anything in there, and all of the above happened during a very rare outing to the rest of the school.

I think I'll be staying in the DT block from now on.
(one-winged-angel-616 isn't as depressed as she sounds, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:25, Reply)

My mother
is a wonderful woman. However, over the weekend she insisted on telling me sloth was pronounced "sl-oh-th". "Really mum, are you sure?" "Yes, I saw one in the zoo once and read the sign". (She's a primary teacher.)

On the same day she was searching for something on the TES website and complained that "Every time I click clear filters it takes me back to the start of the search again!". After explaining that was what it was meant to do, she said "But we have filters at school because of the children, I thought it was something to do with that".

My face decided to say hi to the table by banging it.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:09, Reply)

Speaking in tongues
I was chatting to a chap from the USA.
"so where you from?" he asked
"London" I replied
"ahhh bonjour" he said
(Stopitnowplease, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 11:00, 2 replies)

How do you spell that?
I had to send a laptop to a client in St Leonards-on-Sea. It was needed urgently and had some valuable data on board, however for some unaccountable reason our company insisted on using City Link Couriers, a company more suited to irretreviably losing and/or damaging IT equipment.

Anyway, I gave the address to the dispatcher on the end of the phone.

Me: "Town - St Leonards-on-Sea
CL: "Can you spell that please?"
Me: "S-T space L-E-O-N-A-R-D-S hyphen O-N hyphen S-E-A"
CL: "How do you spell 'hyphen'?"
Me; "... Can I speak to someone else, please?"
(North Utsira South Utsira, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 10:52, 2 replies)

A few days ago
At my college we have an internal e-mail system that is available for all, but it's not much used. However, a few days ago, I received a message on the system from my irate ex-girlfriend. Nothing ignorant in that you may feel, but it was the actual content in the message that amused me. Message was as follows:

"yOU ARE AN INDIOT"

I rest my case.

EDIT: I do not rest my case actually, as I have more. A few days prior to this, she sent me an e-mail which I found rather offensive but have sadly lost. It did contain many spelling errors, however. So I sent her an e-mail with corrections to her bad spelling. The following e-mail conversation then took place (and bear in mind she is doing maths at A-Level):

Her: I CAN SPELL THE BASICS LIKE FUCK OFF AND FUCK YOU

Me: Ah, the old 3 word vocabulary (i.e. "fuck", "off" and "you") . I remember those words with fond memories when they were slung around on MSN, mostly by you towards me.

Her: CLEARLY YOU CANT DO MATHS COS THEY ARE TWO WORDS NOT THREE

And now I rest my case.
(General_Manchego, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 10:35, 6 replies)

Pub Quiz
I was given the task (actually I volunteered because of the free beer) to host the weekly quiz in a local wine bar.
Given that the same team won every single week due to current affairs and showbiz type questions, I decided to make the main portion of the quiz around science and nature.
It gets to the end and the swapping of each other teams' papers to mark and we get down to the nitty gritty.
The team that normally wins were getting more and more irate and I could see them grinding teeth and they started to argue the toss over the answers with me.

One of the questions was, "What is the only type of fish that can swim backwards?" The answer being an eel.

And that's when matey chirps up. *Bear in mind that he was a middle aged chap and held with high regard by most people in the town.

"Eels go across land they're not a fish"

"Yes, eels do have the ability to travel across land, yet the defining characteristics of the eel determine it to be a fish."

"IT'S NOT A FISH!" he bawled at me.

"Ok, what is it then?"

"B b b b b ITSASNAKE" was what he blurted out.

It took a good couple of minutes for everyone in the room to simmer down from laughing and pointing at the big stroppy baby who was just about to lose a meaningless pub quiz.

*Actually, he was a cunt.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 10:27, 7 replies)

Goes around, etc.
Until the age of nine, I couldn't read at all. And it never occurred to me to count past five until I was about twelve.

Still, I once had a cook who didn't know the difference between bain-maire and sous-vide, so I suppose you can't have everything.

And then there was Tanya, who insisted on leaving the tea-bag in her cup after adding the milk! oh how I laughed at that one! But she did get me out of my horrid front-wiping habits, so I guess we're even.
(Clerk T Hazarde are all the wine, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 10:16, 5 replies)

Seeing a few teacher comments brought this back to me.....
At primary school rougly around 1983 me and a mate were having an argument about who was on the earth first, white or black people. At the time we were in a history lesson, so thought this would be the perfect place to ask the teacher, I was convinced black people were, just because of the cradle of life (Africa) etc although mordern thinking suggests it's inconclusive(I think). Without skipping a beat the teacher turned around to us and said "oh that was white people they were on the earth first"...to this day not sure if this was ignorance or the fact that she was a little bit racict in her views...In the unlikely event that you look at BT3A, Mrs Longstaff, I never did beleieve you, may have been the guilty look on your face after you said it.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 10:10, Reply)

tv gold
A few years on a celebrity version of wheel of fortune in NZ the boxer David Tua was on.
When he said he wanted to buy a letter he asked for "An O for awsome"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk
(welgar, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 9:56, 2 replies)

I'll just pop this one here then
Just because a teacher is a teacher, doesn't mean they know stuff.

I well remember the French lesson where we were asked to name an animal. "Le Poisson", says I in my best French accent.

"A fish isn't an animal!"

"Err, yes it is."

"No it isn't"

"..."

"animals have fur."

"... ...!"
(Mork, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 9:30, 2 replies)

I grew up in South Africa
For most of my younger years I was under the belief that every time a white person had a baby with a black partner it would always turn out albino. I think I was about 13 when I realised this wasn't true.

We had a maid. She used to clean, cook and get horrendously drunk on her day off. She used to live in a little maids quarters out round the back of the house. She was very superstitious and used to sleep on bricks to keep the 'tokolosh' away. He's a mystical creature with horns and a tail and a massive penis ,so they say, and he takes you away in the night. As I recall the only thing that took her away in the night were the police when one of her boyfriends came to visit only to find her in bed with another man. It ended up turning into a drunken brawl in the street and that was the last we saw of Constance.

I also had this unfaltering belief that all black men had large penis's. How my long held generalisations based on scant research and heresy were shattered when a friend confirmed to the contrary. She had encountered some small black one's. Well, when she said small she meant larger than a small frankfurter sausage, but not as big as her arm. Her words, not mine.

And no post on ignorance would be complete with indulging you in the utterances of a female. In this case my ex. She once asked me how many sides a triangle has. She asked this while were half way through City of God so quite where the context and thought pattern which led to this was contrived from is beyond me.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 9:22, Reply)

Fruit buzz
Living in a small, decaying seaside town, we found ourselves without anything to smoke for a few days and were almost suicidally bored. This led to two friends (in my absence) trying the old trick of drying orange peel under the grill and smoking it, a technique I'd never heard of before. The following day I called for one of them, who answered the door saying,

"Guess what, me and Russell got stoned off oranges last night."

"Really?" I replied, amazed. "How many did you eat?"
(Haywood Manley, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 9:06, 1 reply)

If only everything orange could be fanta...
Many years ago (as mentioned many times on here), I worked in a sales office. One morning as I was making the tea I noticed we'd run out of milk, so nipped over the road to get some more. Being the kind soul that I am, I first asked if anyone else needed anything.

"Yes please, can you get me some jam?" asked Sandra*, giving me a shiny pound coin.

Returning from the shop, I handed her the jam and continued making the tea. A moment later, as I returned to the office she called across to me:

"Ken, I asked for jam, this is marmalade!"

It wasn't, it was apricot jam, the only flavour I'd been able to find - I explained this to her, to be told "No, jam is red. If I wanted marmalade, I'd have asked for marmalade!". My protestations of "But it's jam, it's sweet and apricot flavoured, marmalade is bitter and orange flavoured" were met with "No, jam is red, and marmalade is orange. This is orange, it's marmalade".

Even after my friend joined in (morning porky!) she wouldn't back down, and I ended up taking it back for a refund.

The worst of it all is that the whole conversation was conducted in an ever so smiley nice way, as if she thought she was telling me something that I should have already known O_o

* - not her real name
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 8:52, 5 replies)

I have one of those friends that knows everything about everything. Or thinks she does.
A few of us went out for a bit of a girly get together tonight (at the hilariously named Henry & Harry's Goat Hill Tavern - fab bar, 141 beers on tap and seriously strong mixed drinks).

We were discussing the new Health Care Reform Bill that's just been passed and discussing how it's going to work etc (bear in mind this involves insurance companies, not converting to an NHS type system).
Said friend decides to start babbling on about the NHS. We're in America. She's American. She's never visited the UK.

Naturally, I listen with ever growing amusement about how the people of Britain pay 70% in taxes to cover the NHS, and how even after treatment patients still have to pay part of the doctor and hospital bills, and that's why the Reform bill should not pass the next round because in America that's what we'll all be paying. Oh, and the bit about "even if you have cancer, you have to wait 3 years before you can get chemo"

By this point, a few other tables are listening in and joining the debate....meanwhile I've kept quiet. Our circle of friends are telling her to shut up, knowing exactly what's about to come out of my mouth if she doesn't.

She didn't. I pointed out the error of her ways and she still tried to tell me I was wrong - even after regaling her with my tales of NHS treatment! Another English guy was sat at the table behind us, tapped her on the shoulder and in broad Brummie re-iterated everything I had just said, with a few not so subtle *ya daft bint* type insults thrown in.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 8:11, 12 replies)

Where do the commas go?
In my first proper job after leaving uni I was working in a small import/export company that dealt with a lot of stuff from Japan. To avoid currency exchange risk we invoiced our customers around Europe in Japanese Yen, which meant a standard invoice would normally be around a million.

I had an assistant, the boss's wife, who once asked me in all seriousness, "Where do the commas go when you write 1,000,000?".

In a previous job she had been an account manager for a large computer company. It went bankrupt in the early 90s, I sometimes wonder if the two were connected.
(Scooby Don't, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 7:48, 1 reply)

Ornithology!
I believe that some people are unaware that the bird is in fact THE word.
(kitescreech still here, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 7:29, 10 replies)

On a coach full of British Infantry....
being shifted around my the army. Academic excellence was not a prerequisite for the anti tank platoon, so my lot seldom entered quizzes but were like sponges soaking up any shite you could pass into their empty heads.

Lad behind me leans over the seat behind and taps me on the shoulder and points through the window at some sheep in a field... "Hey Piper, why do some of those sheep have blue spots and others have red spots".

"Well" says I, "The blue ones make blue jumpers and the red ones make red jumpers".

"Cheers" he says... then I hears him turn round and says to the lad behind "Do you know why those sheep have different colours" and the story subsequently goes round the coach.

Tank missing retards the lot of them!
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 5:58, Reply)

Bucket of Steam
In the good old day in the Royal Navy there were many varied ways of ripping the piss out of new trainees (or nozzers). Two are detailed below:

1) Send the unsuspecting idiot to the Engine Room with a bucket with the instructions to bring back a bucket of steam. Idiot fills bucket and returns however steam evaporates on the way......and so it goes on !!!

2) Send the unsuspecting idiot to the Shipwright (Carpenter) to ask for a 'long stand'. Shipwright cottons on and asks idiot to wait....goes on for hours !!!
(cpoweaad, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 5:32, 8 replies)

Not my brightest moment...
Visiting a mate's house many, many, many, years ago (I was about 12) I popped into the loo and saw a small plastic cage suspended just under the rim of the bowl.
It was empty.
I'd never seen such a thing before so I asked him what it was for.
"Ah, that's where my sisters put their tampons after they've used them, you flush a couple of times and they rinse out, then dry them on the line and they're good to go again."
I believed him for YEARS until I saw an ad on TV for toilet flush blocks and spanged myself in the head.


*Decades later, I reminded him of this over a beer and he laughed like crazy. "Did I really tell you that? What a bloody brilliant thing to say!"
( difficultchild, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 5:15, Reply)

i work for a health insurance company
never mind the doctor who thanked me for reminding him to send in his bills (and then promptly sent me a bunch of medical records without a bill) or the man who was quite upset that we'd assigned his son to a drug dealer (and couldn't be bothered to understand that 'pcp' actually means 'primary care physician')--my absolute favorite was the billing representative who asked me for my name.
"Stina--S T I N A."
she said, "ess-tee-aye-enn-ay, how do you spell that?"
really, lady? really?
(fai is rocking khaz modan server as of, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 3:32, 1 reply)