I was thinking yesterday not so much of miscommunication, exactly, as of ambiguity.
A customer called to ask for posters on DNA and evolution. It struck 
me that “a poster showing the process of evolution” was a tall order, but I was able to find him books with prepared transparencies depicting dinosaur family trees, diagrams illustrating natural selection, and stuff like that. When he arrived, I took him over to the biology area.
“We know it didn’t happen,” he assured me as I was showing him things in the biology area. “Evolution never happened.”
I was struck dumb. Obviously, I couldn’t say, “Who’s this ‘we’ — you got a mouse in your pocket?” or settle him down to review the theory of evolution and the evidence for it.
I contented myself with, “You want to teach it anyway?” Just trying to clarify the situation so I could help him find what he needed.
What he was after, he said, was a poster that would illustrate his anti-evolution talk. We naturally do not have anything actually designed to mock scientific theories, so I sold him his DNA poster and let it go at that.
I think, after consideration, that he actually wanted one of those
ape-to-man pictures which are often parodied. I am not old enough to have seen the serious forerunner of the parody, if there ever was one, but this guy must have been expecting that our biology posters would include one.
In another example, #2 daughter has started part time at her new job, training. If I understand correctly, the training section consisted of someone’s showing her to her office and leaving her alone with nothing to do.
From the brief reports I’d had, it seemed possible that the other workers resented her and were shunning her, or that she had happened into an internal mess of some kind which no one was prepared to explain, or that her new boss was scatty in the extreme.
On the third day of this, she began cleaning and organizing things. “What are you doing?” the new boss asked in alarm. “Working,” said she. He thrust a stack of things at her and said that he wanted them to be computerized. “You remember we talked about the scanning thing?” he said.
It seems to me possible that he, being an older gentleman, could have thought that when, in the interview, he mentioned that he wanted his company to move into the 21st century, he had given her the information she needed.
“All this straw,” he figured he was saying to Rumplestiltskin, “I want it turned into gold.”
#2 daughter, being of a different generation, might have assumed that he meant he had some specific computer tasks for her to do. She might have thought he was saying, “I would like our current systems updated and streamlined.” She then would wait for some intimation of what the current systems were.
I don’t really know either what the poster shopper or the company owner wanted, but I always like to have a theory.
I ran into my first creationist last September. The line that stopped the conversation was “There’s no evidence to support evolution.”
How do you reply to that? It’s like standing outside on a bright, sunny day and having someone inform you that the sky is red. They are operating in a reality that is so different than everyone elses that they meet the criteria for one definition that I’ve read for the word crazy.
The bigger question is how did someone alter his perceptions that radically? Is he saying that because he was threatened with something, or does he really believe it?
I’ve been doing posts on my phone. Now xanga has made that obsolete.
The computer is password protected, and I wasn’t able to get the password, so I couldn’t configure it for the internet. While it had a CD or DVD drive, it didn’t work, so I could only create things to view on the screen. The store was willing to let me return it, so that’s what I did.
The refund is en route.
I have to replace my phone, and I want to do some investigation first. I may be able to replace it with something that will let me edit my website, and incidentaly xanga, too. It’ll cost more, but that’s probably still the cheapest way to go.
In the meantime, I plan to get all but a few personal things moved out today, which is going to mean moving a lot of stuff for someone who’s pulled a back muscle and done something BAD and very painful to her hip. I hope to be completely gone tomorrow. Then I’ll be calling shelters, and if I have time, I’ll look at the phones. I want to find one that’s in service and try accessing my website to make sure it works before plunking down the extra money.
I don’t know why xanga won’t let me sign in but will let me leave comments.
the biology teacher at our local community college teaches evolution as a “theory with no evidence to back it up” — says a friend of my who used to teach psychology there. “i mean, this is academia!” she told me, horrified.
your daughter’s job sounds very much like my first “real” job out of college. utterly confusing and depressing at the same time. i guess i should have taken note of how happy the girl was to train me — the girl i was replacing that is. she couldn’t wait to get out of that office. and with good reason, i soon discovered.
I don’t think I’ll be knitting on the bus 🙂 But you are right, it would be a good time to do so if I did knit. How much knitting would you get done in an hour’s bus ride?
Phew. That kind of stuff is exhausting. So is, “What do you want?” “Di.” “What?” “Di!” “I don’t understand.” “DI!” I’m pooped.