Monday, December 18, 2006
Re: Verizon Post
TREV: I felt so bad for that guy. I hope those people get shamed. They still won't get it, though.
WORKING: The caller makes it very clear. I actually learned something. The supervisors on the other end are just stunned.
TREV: I've seen people write 2 cents as .02 cents a lot.
TREV: It's like a deep-rooted grammatical mistake, one that's made habitually. There's no way to fix it because they've always looked at it that way. Like saying eXetera, not et cetera, or IR-regardless.
TREV: Their calculations are fine, but it's their terminology that's the problem. If you mean .002 cents then you have to accept that it's .00002 dollars. He'd be able to explain it if he could write it down in front of them. They just don't get what he's saying.
WORKING: We are getting dumberer.
TREV: I wonder if our reliance on calculators has caused this.
WORKING: Sure. And the fact that "I don't get math" is now an acceptable dismissal of any responsibility to try and understand basic principles.
WORKING: We're lazy.
TREV: And now we've lost the CONCEPT!
WORKING: ?
TREV: It's hard to explain. I think that with anything, especially math, visualization is at least half of the key to understanding a problem. We're losing the conceptual part of math because we're lazy and just use the calculator. that's why it was always so important in school to show your work. Not because the teacher wanted to prove that you didn't use a calculator but because they wanted to see that you understood the concept of what you were doing.
WORKING: V. good point.
TREV: There was a conversation about what a quarter of an hour meant. Someone thought (insisted, actually) that it was 25 minutes.
WORKING: I bemoan the fact that people at shops these days can't count back change. They must be screwed during power outages.
TREV: I did it once as a kid at a garage sale. I was tallying up how much money I made and it was a phenomenal amount. My friend, skeptical, questioned it. I was counting in units of 60 cents. Like minutes. Every time I got to 60 cents, I assumed I had a dollar. I don't know what I was thinking. And now, counting video time code has totally screwed me up.
WORKING: I once sold a Gretzky rookie card for $1.75.
WORKING: It was meant to be $175.
WORKING: (still a good deal at $175 - this was 16 years ago and the edges on it were a little rough)
TREV: where, when and how the hell did you do that?
WORKING: I was working at my uncle's card store. I wasn't allowed to touch the cards under the glass after that.
WORKING: Luckily the kid's dad brought it back and said, “Er, I think you made a mistake.” Sure enough, I'd mistaken a scratch or a speck of dust for a decimal point.
TREV: Wow, what an honest guy!
WORKING: Wow, what a lucky girl!
posted by Working From Home Today
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