More Einsteins...

On the seventh night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Seven flavors of popcorn,
Six chocolate fondue dipped biscottis,
FIVE SLICES OF HAM,
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.


So I have had the benefit of meeting many people in my life that I can pretty much guarantee I'd beat out if we were ever going head to head for a technical job. Granted, I'm a pretty technical person. I can hook up a home theater, I can program the clock on just about anything, I can setup a bluetooth earpiece to work with a mobile phone. (Two phones actually, you're welcome Schnoozle.) However, it's my personal opinion that just about anyone with a high school education should be able to do those things too. I have lots of these stories, but here's two about people I've encountered that were a few potatoes short of a Latke .


It was this past Tuesday, at the grocery store. I wanted to get some movies from the redbox to watch over the holidays. As I'm browsing the choices, the Einstein standing near me, watching me intently says "That's a pretty good deal, $1 a night" Of course I agreed, it is a good deal. Then he ruined what could have been a perfectly painless encounter. He said "So what do they do, just beam the movie to your television?" No joke, those were his actual words. Being a pretty technical person, I was absolutely frozen with awe at the thought of that. So as I stood under the Gigantic sign that said Redbox DVD rental machine, I decided to be polite and said, "no, the machine just spits out the dvd you choose." "Oh, ok." he answered. That seemed to sufficiently satisfy his curiosity and he walked away. Maybe he had to get back to his job of designing exercise room signs, I don't know. Unfortunately for me, I started thinking about it and it made my brain hurt...Beam it to your TV? What? Let's just imagine that was even possible. (Without the use of an addressable set top box...just to clarify for the other techies out there that want to argue.) Let's say that by using advanced GPS, there was some super high tech way for the machine to take your address and the location of the tv you want to watch the movie on and "beam it there"...why on earth would you drive all the way to a store to use a giant vending machine to do it. Ugh.

Here's a classic- About 10 years ago, in my days working at Wegmans (Greatest grocery store ever) I was the guy that was called over when the cashier or customer had an issue. One day I got to observe this priceless moment. The store had just installed new credit card reader machines and a lady asked for help using it. My co-worker said, "No problem" and pointed to the payment choice buttons on the screen and said, "Just tell it how you are gonna pay." The woman held her credit card up, put her face right up to the card reader and said very clearly, "I'll be using my Mastercard". She then stepped back and watched the card reader, waiting for something to happen. We both looked with disbelief and tried to hold back the laughter. My co-worker was able to keep it together long enough to say, "What I meant was, press the button that corresponds to your method of payment, then swipe your card."

There's two more signs you can make Mr. Engvall.