Gaining from Others' Incompetence: Tales of Incredible Luck!

[jimmy p]

It's nice to see my company's rivals employ incompetent staff. The landlord of my local was telling me that he went to {insert company name} and placed a bet on a British boxer in the Olympics. The price offered was 8/1 by the staff member for the boxer to beat his next opponent. The landlord was puzzled... "are you sure those are the right odds?" but the staff member was adamant. 8/1 was the price. So the landlord upped the stakes to a £100 bet. Fight night arrives, surprise surprise, the boxer wins. He checks the papers and sees that the boxer's price was evens to win the fight and 8/1 to win the tournament. He will now pocket £900 because the staff member wasnt thorough in the checking, and the price given has GOT to be honoured.

When coming back from Turkey, my friend bought some raki from a duty-free shop. In an attempt to haggle, he told the shopkeeper he couldn't afford £10 for the bottle, as he only had £7 on him. The shopkeeper agreed to £7, so my friend handed over two £5 notes (!) and was given £3 change!

Ever gained due to the lack of competence of shop keepers or suchlike? Know anyone who has? Tell all


P.S. I am wearing a new t-shirt. It says

"34DD + 24 + 36 = 100% I've always had a head for figures!" cool huh??

 

[The Bob]

I know lots of foolish people.

There was the time I explain a trick to someone step by step and they still didn't get how it worked.

The time we left someone to kill wasps while the rest of us went to parade and he turned up late.

The time my mother found meat (that was noramlly around £8 - 10 worth) and found the label was wrong and said £0.50! That was a lot of meat, very nice as well.

The time me and a friend explained intervals to someone and they still didn't know the interval between F and Bb. The person was a musician, just to make it clear. Took about 10 minutes for them to work it out.

I will think of some more in time, not that these are any good.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Artman]

jimmy P, cool T shirt.

I agree that the first example was incompetence on the part of the employee. he was even given a chance to check his work and still made the error. The second example however, was lying on the part of the customer and taking advantage of the employee's trusting nature. Even after seeing the two fives he honored his promise of a reduced rate. I can't see the fault in that.

 

[Artman]

Gosh jimmy p, I didn't mean to kill your thread. I just didn't agree with the second one.

I've got one myself. My wife and I owned a small store. One of our employees thought that a 10% discount was always $1.00, no matter what the cost of the item (so a $5.00 item with a 10% discount should have been $4.50, he would sell it to them for $4.00! ) This averaged out Okay for us because if he sold a $20.00 item he would still only give $1.00 discount instead of $2.00, but he made a few customers happy and unhappy before we found out he was doing it. He left our employ and went on to college. Guess what he went for? ACCOUNTING!

 

[jimmy p]

WTF? Did you ever hear from him again? He may have been consumed by the numbers in the end. Anyone else?

 

[The Bob]

Anyone else?

I must admit to being in such a calculator mood one maths lesson (as the maths was hard for us and we need a calculator) that in the process of things I did '1+1' on my calculator to find, in shock and worry, that the answer was 2. :surprise: I then realized that I had typed in 1+1 and that was why the number was so low.

The Bob is allowed a few foolish moments. :shy:

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Artman]

WTF? Did you ever hear from him again? He may have been consumed by the numbers in the end. Anyone else?

Haven't heard from him. He also did some other amusing things when he worked for us. One night I was working in the store with him and it was time for him to leave, but I had to stay a bit longer. On his way out he set the alarm, with me still in the store! As soon as I moved around, the motion detector picked up the movement and sounded the audio alarm and the silent alarm called the police! If you have ever been in the room with a burglar alarm going off, you will know it is DEAFENINGLY LOUD!

Needless to say, I was not happy about that.

 

[Gokul43201]

I remember having to teach a guy, an engineering student, how to add single digit numbers...on a calculator ! :surprise:

 

[Moonbear]

Gosh jimmy p, I didn't mean to kill your thread. I just didn't agree with the second one.

I've got one myself. My wife and I owned a small store. One of our employees thought that a 10% discount was always $1.00, no matter what the cost of the item (so a $5.00 item with a 10% discount should have been $4.50, he would sell it to them for $4.00! ) This averaged out Okay for us because if he sold a $20.00 item he would still only give $1.00 discount instead of $2.00, but he made a few customers happy and unhappy before we found out he was doing it. He left our employ and went on to college. Guess what he went for? ACCOUNTING!

He's probably the same person our dept hired as our last accountant. He didn't last long.

I used to love the old days of every item in the store having a price tag on it. It was fun to dig through a shelf to find the mismarked ones, that the cashier then had to honor.

I still occassionally get away with good prices on produce when some young cashier doesn't know what the item is and doesn't ask (I didn't think artichokes were so exotic, but to kids who only eat food that comes out of boxes and fast food wrappers, I guess it must be)...they usually just input the code for whatever the do know or what they guess it might be, which is cheaper (if they asked, I'd have told them what it was).

My cousin used to get away with free food at a particular fast food restaurant many years ago (we were still teenagers). They hired truly incompetent people who would just forget to actually ask for or take your money! I went with him once just to see this in action. We ordered our food, the cashier went and got the order, handed it to us, we waited a moment to give them a chance to ask for the money, they then said, "Thanks, have a nice day." We said thanks back, and walked off with the food (we didn't even walk that quickly, really gave the cashier every chance to realize their mistake, but if they didn't want the money, we weren't going to force it on them).

 

[BobG]

I remember having to teach a guy, an engineering student, how to add single digit numbers...on a calculator ! :surprise:

Huh! I need a calculator to figure out how high I can count on my fingers - let's see, that would be about 1,048,575 ... unless I let 0 equal 1,048,576 (who needs 0, anyway).

Ah, the power and glory of being able to count on your fingers in hexadecimal!

 

[jimmy p]

I must admit to being in such a calculator mood one maths lesson (as the maths was hard for us and we need a calculator) that in the process of things I did '1+1' on my calculator to find, in shock and worry, that the answer was 2. :surprise: I then realized that I had typed in 1+1 and that was why the number was so low.

The Bob is allowed a few foolish moments. :shy:

The Bob (2004 ©)

I have done such things like that before, staring in disbelief at the calculator when "2" appears, taunting you because of the simplicity of the answer.

 

[The Bob]

I have done such things like that before, staring in disbelief at the calculator when "2" appears, taunting you because of the simplicity of the answer.

I know. It is annoying.

The Bob (2004 ©)