The all purpose "people are dumb" thread

[anarky]

I thought we had one of these. But I guess not. Just post anecdotes about how stupid people are.

Here's one. I got home today and checked my mail. I'd ordered an out-of-print CD earlier in the week, one of those that's dirt cheap used and not on iTunes or Amazon MP3. It was in the box. (I'm sure you guessed that part.)

I was feeling pretty good about this purchase, since it was from an actual music store with tons of feedback (one of those "1,000+ transactions per month" guys). But something was amiss. It was just in an envelope all by itself. No padding. None.

I opened it, and it was clear that it had left the store in excellent shape. It looked like someone who's as anal with his CDs bought it, listened to it once, and got rid of it to this store. There was a price tag on it, which didn't bother me. But when I opened it to verify the condition of the disc, it was cracked clean through (and it was then I noticed some seemingly minor case damage apparently caused by localized crushing in the same area the crack through the CD).

So I can't help but wonder: if you send out CDs by mail for a living and do it so often, don't you know that they kinda sorta need padded envelopes, at the very least? This store saved maybe $0.20 in shipping costs by sending it the way they did, but they're going to have to now issue a refund on top of it.

[Sleazer]

Did it get abused while sitting in the mailbox over the weekend?

[anarky]

Here's a good one.

I was reading an article on Yahoo! news about the new curriculum standards in Texas. It's fucking scary. Really. Really. Scary.

So, even though the stupidity of people who comment on such shit boggles my mind, I start skimming comments anyway.

One guy is saying this is great, because schools are so left wing as it is, and closes with a comment that our kids are run through an information mill that would "make Goebbels proud."

<smack>

A couple of people point out Goebbels was a fascist and a Nazi. One of them mentions that that's ultra-ultra right wing.

Another guy comes in to correct these two misguided fools, saying, "Sorry, Goebbels was a National Socialist, as left wing as Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, and Hitler."

At that point, I figured reading this was probably killing off my brain cells.

[Diabolical]

Reading a customer review of the Johnny Got His Gun* DVD and saw this little gem:

One Star
this movie doesn't make any sense. the main character (johnny) doesn't even have a gun in most of the movie. and he never gets it. he doesn't even have arms to shoot a gun with, so even if he had a gun it wouldn't do him much good. i think they should remake this movie and give him arms in it so that he can have a gun and then it would make sense.

*AKA The movie Metallica used clips from in the video for "One."

[anarky]

Here's a good one: we got a phone call today from Sallie Mae. Apparently, my wife is overdue on her student loan.

The student loan for which we didn't receive a statement.

The student loan, the first payment of which was due in mid-March.

Um, call me stupid, but doesn't it help a company get repaid if they send THE VERY FIRST FUCKING STATEMENT?

[Diabolical]

No surprise, Sallie Mae is run by a bunch of fucking morons.

[anarky]

When we both had loans with them before, we were paying by check, and, every month, one check would cash for the wrong amount. Sometimes it was a few cents over, and we just noted the difference in the checkbook register. Sometimes, it was a few under, and we had to call and bitch them out, and they had to research it, and, sure enough, it was always corrected. It didn't matter if I wrote the check, she wrote the check, or even if we typed the damn thing (which we tried once). They said that it was the scanner on the computer. I'm thinking a retard entering it by hand.

I had another loan through a small bank in Virgina that got bought out. They'd always been uber-shitty about sending statements; I'd always write them a nasty letter saying, "Once again, I did not receive a statement; however, enclosed is a check in the amount of the payment that was due last month." It was a pain in the ass to deal with them over the phone; they had literally two people in the student loan department, both were rude, and one clearly was not a native English speaker nor had she made any attempt to learn to speak understandably. (I don't mean she was in India. I can usually understand people in India, even if they don't understand me.) I also had to write checks, because they were technologically in the early stone age.

So, one month, right after the buyout, I sent the payment in about a week before it was due after, again, not receiving a bill. I noticed some three or four weeks later that it hadn't been cashed. So I bit the bullet and called them. Turns out, they'd sold all their student loans to Sallie Mae without telling any of the customers! We were still on the hook for the payment, only it was going to Sallie Mae in Pennsylvania instead of Virginia. They had no apology for not telling anyone this seemingly vital information. And they were collecting the checks to send to Sallie Mae; they, being dinosaurs, couldn't just cash them and credit the Sallie Mae accounts.

The best part of this shit; they didn't bother to tell Sallie Mae they were going to be forwarding the checks! So a day or so after I called, I got a late notice from Sallie Mae. I had to call them and explain the deal; apparently, they'd been hearing quite a bit about it. (Not sure why they didn't send bills the first month. It seems to be habitual with them.) So, eventually, the check was forwarded, and everything was good.

The real funny part: about two months later, so about three months after I'd called and four months after the first Sallie Mae payment that I didn't know about was due, I got letters from both the bank and Sallie Mae informing me of the change! And it's not like anything sold between banks is a spur of the moment deal, either; there had to be at least two months before that when they knew of the upcoming change.

Needless to say, with all these problems in mind, when we started getting notices from paid-off credit cards that we could get cash advances for 2-4% fixed for the lifetime with no fees, we paid off every piece of shit Sallie Mae loan. Like you said, they're morons.

It just boggles my mind that even a bank made of up morons doesn't seem to realize they have to send at the very least that first fucking bill if they expect to get repaid.

[Diabolical]

I recently got a late notice in my email.
It was at least 3 days before my payment was due.

[Sleazer]

Wow Nark, I can't believe how awful Sallie Mae is...I haven't paid by mail with them in years (I started repayment in 2001 so I've been at it awhile). I guess I'm the opposite, in that I've been paying online for YEARS, but they still send me a statement booklet every year, which I just recycle because I always do it online now. I'll tell you one thing they screw up for me, though...it takes DAYS (as in, 3 or 4) for my online payments to post to my account. DAYS.

Sprint posts my payment within the hour, whereas Sallie Mae takes days...hmmmm, which one of the two do I pay daily intere$t to? Sallie Mae...hmmmmmmm.
I've complained to them online that it shouldn't take that long, that they're soaking me for the extra quid, but I just got the canned answer about how long it takes to post, blah blah blah.

[anarky]

I noticed Sallie Mae doing that, too, Slea.

Latest one: Yahoo! News has started allowing comments on news stories. If you want to kill brain cells more quickly than by freebasing pure grain alcohol (cut with PCP), read some comments.

But, sometimes, you get a funny one. I clicked on a story called "NC prosecutor: Nelson band member charges pending." I thought maybe Matthew or Gunnar was up on murder charges. No, turns out it's about Willie Nelson. Apparently, his bus was raided while he wasn't on it, and you'll never, ever, ever in a billion jillion years guess what they found. (In case you can't, it's the same stuff that would surely be in Snoop Dogg's bus.)

One of the comments read as follows:

finally! cops actually catch bad people that will harm the world but its sad. they could have not done that and now that will be on their record FOREVER............but sorry about your hand.i never heard of these guys

What's funniest? This guy thinks that Willie Nelson's band is concerned about their criminal records and apparently were innocent until someone gave them pot, which they were trying out, or something? Isn't "Have you been arrested for possession at least once in the past week?" actually on the job application? Or is it the "sorry about your hand"? (I'm guessing he meant "band"?) Or maybe the assumption that Willie Nelson's band members are apparently a terrorist cell? (Seriously, two of the sentences in there don't seem to belong together.)

Or the real fucking kicker, "never heard of these guys"? Fuck, people who hate country music love Willie Nelson. Or at least accept his existence and know who he is.

[anarky]

Looking at the election results locally this morning, I was flabbergasted.

I might take the responsibility of voting a bit too seriously. I look at everything, even the things and people I know I'm voting against. I want to be fair, and make sure my vote isn't a waste. Unfortunately, I'm too often reminded how seriously others don't take it, particularly on the local level.

The county DA was up for re-election. I didn't know much about him one way or another until researching for the election. Pretty standard decent DA material; no Harvey Dent, but the crime rate is down and conviction rate is up. And he specifically targets child molesters, gangs (a few of the local biker gangs have made national news with their terrorist attacks on police in one nearby city), political corruption (a few cities around here are really bad about that), and identity theft. I can't find anything bad on his record, even searching news archives.

Running against him is a judge. This judge has a long history of letting child molesters go free, like one guy who molested a three-year-old hundreds of times and was sentenced to probation. One lady was getting threatening texts, messages, and even a handwritten letter from her ex, saying he was going to kill himself and their baby. The judge refused to hear the case, saying there was not enough evidence, and, well, the guy killed himself and the baby.

That's not the tip of the iceberg. He's funded entirely by two rich fellows. One was indicted on political corruption charges by the current DA. The other is an associate of another guy who's in jail for political corruption charges.

He blatantly lied about the conviction rate being down, and some ridiculous number (like 93%) of criminals going free due to incompetence in the DA office. It didn't take 24 hours for every local media source to debunk this claim. He hid and lied about his own record, which was pretty incompetent.

And he engaged in some pretty nasty push-polling. I know this because I got a call a month or so ago, asking about different things that could be said in campaigns and how effective they were. They were all attacks, and all pretty bad. Though they alternated back and forth between the candidates, I found that the attacks on the judge were all factual and easily verifiable. Not a single one of the attacks on the DA could be found from any independent source (aside from a blog post mentioning the polling), including the one that he was under federal investigation for turning a blind eye to his wife's criminal career (which should be major news).

So, short story, the DA might not be a golden boy, but he's effective. The judge is fucking 21st-century Boss Tweed.

But the judge put out more campaign signs with his name on them.

So guess who won?

Really, if you don't know anything, don't vote on an issue or office. Leave it blank.

[anarky]

Here's an interesting one.

A local air conditioning company paid for what appears to be a locally-made commercial for Glenn Beck, which aired on the Food Network just now. It was clips with a bad voice over telling you to watch Beck on Fox News at whatever time, then ended with a picture of the company's fleet of trucks and a phone number, with a voice over that said, "Brought to you by Whatever Air Conditioning, serving all your air conditioning needs."

Is it just me, or is it borderline retarded for a seemingly nonpartisan company offering a completely non-political service to link itself in such an overt manner to a controversial political pundit on either side of the aisle?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Sadly, if he's trying to reach the largest audience, most people are stupid. And most stupid people are conservatives. And most conservatives are Republicans. And most Repulicans would watch Glen Beck.

And if you're willing to pander to the Lowest Common Denom, you can pretty much do anything.

[anarky]

Yeah, but, prior to his airing that commercial, no one knew his leanings. Beck devotees are no more or less likely to go to his business than they were before. They're too concerned with making sure there are no holes in their tinfoil hats and completely misinterpreting Thomas Paine.

All he did was alienate any Beck haters, thus standing to lose more business from his ad than he gains.

[Ran]

People who videotape fireworks. Are they really going to watch it again?