The WalMart IQ test

Did you know that WalMart gives prospective employees an IQ test?  Yup, because if you have an IQ you can’t work at WalMart.  

Sorry, I know that’s not a nice thing to write.  I’m venting today because of an extremely frustrating experience I had at my neighborhood Super WalMart. An abbreviated list of the highlights include several incorrectly programmed price tags, an inoperable debt card machine and a cashier with the apparent brain power of small reptile.  Accentuating the reptilian motif was her periodic Komodo dragon tongue action that drove both Jean and me to distraction. 

It took so long to get through the check out line, that my son Jack remarked that he thought he would miss high school.

It’s amazing what a person will put up with to buy cheaply made foreign goods.

Rules of the Jungle, Part 1

It has taken me most of my life to realize that there are some certain immutable laws of nature.  For the benefit of posterity, I have started jotting them down. Here’s the first two, perhaps you have some that you would like to share too.

1) Dunkin Donuts Coffee Cup Code:  This is a strictly enforced provision of the national building code and appears to apply to all construction workers.  It goes something like this:  Thou shall drink only Dunkin Donut’s coffee served in a Styrofoam cup and upon completion of thy beverage thou shall dispose of thus specified cup by arbitrarily throwing it on the ground of the construction site.  Optionally, any half drank coffee cup may be left in the framing of the new home construction to ensure that the future home owners will be greeted with a God awful rotting odor emanating from somewhere inside one of the walls of their lovely, new home.

2) The Law of Red Traffic Lights:  The number of red lights observed by a motorist is proportional to how hurried a state the driver is in.  A rushed, panic driver already late for an important business meeting will experience the maximum number of possible red light stops.  If no traffic lights are present along the route, a slow-pokey, elderly Volvo driver from Maine will mysteriously appear in front of the rushed driver.  I believe this is an universal truth from the Creator to shows us all that he has a little time on his hands. My iPod Corollary:  If Lee  would like just one red light so he could safely select select a different playlist on his iPod, he will hit only green lights.

New Math and the World Bank

Last week I attended a professional seminar on building and sustaining innovative teams.  Present at the course were over one hundred folks from all walks of industry, academia and government.  To illustrate how seemingly straight forward problems can be analyzed in unexpected ways, one of the course speakers asked the audience to solve the following problem:

A business man purchases a horse for $60 and later that same day sells it for $70.  The next morning he buys the same horse back for $80 and sells it later that same day for $90.  How much profit, if any, did the business man make in total?

Immediately I was sure that correct answer was $20 in profit.

However four other individuals at my table were convinced that no profit was made.  A fifth person that initially agreed with me was quickly swayed by the other four that zero was the correct answer.

Unconvinced, I asked them to explain their reasoning.  ”It is obvious”, the man sitting to my immediate left confidently stated, “the business man loses his first $10 profit when he buys the horse back the following morning and only by selling it again at the end of the second day does he break even.”   

Undeterred, I tried to reason with my table mates that the fact that it was the same horse was inconsequential.  Instead, I argued, imagine that it were two separate horses, one sold for a $10 profit on day one, and another sold for an additional $10 profit on day two. 

They weren’t buying it.  ”Clearly”, the same man informed me, “the fact that the horse is the same is a critical piece of information that we must include in the analysis”.  The others nodded in agreement and I could see in their eyes that they were starting to view me as the table dunce, so I just stopped trying to argue with them.

The speaker called the audience back to the presentation and asked for answers from the crowd.  After collecting responses that varied from losing $10 to making $20, the speaker quickly demonstrated that the correct answer, was indeed $20.  ”In fact”, he pointed out, “the best way to see this is to ignore the fact that it is the same horse!”

As I looked around at the sheepish expressions from the others at my table, I realized from his name tag that the man to immediate left was from a little institution known as the World Bank.

Now I understand why we’re in such a terrible financial mess.

Startling revelations

One way to show my children that they’re always in my thoughts is to quietly watch them mesmerized by a suspenseful movie.  Then right at the scariest part, I sneak up behind them and give a little poke in the ribs with my index finger as I say “How’s the movie going?” 

As they accelerate upward towards Mach 3, I always get a response that sounds like the simultaneous exclamation of “Dad!” and “Argh!”.

For the rest of the movie, it’s cute to watch them track my every movement out of the corner of their little eyes.

On the other hand, I have learned to never, ever, startle my wife, Jean.  Especially if she has as cup of coffee in her hands.  That is, unless, you want to see a caffeinated reenactment of Old Faithful up close and personal.

Speaking of which, Jean rode along with her sister Amy as she went out to run a few errands recently.   Amy’s favorite sport is NASCAR, so if she breaks the land speed record while running errands, no big deal.  She also has the hair-trigger reactions of a squirrel.  On the other hand, Jean is a very, vocally active, safety conscious passenger, if you get my drift.

Somewhere along their route, Jean spots a pedestrian on the verge of entering an up ahead intersection. Perhaps this fellow hasn’t spotted the blur that is Amy’s vehicle or maybe he’s a thrill seeker trying to catch the sonic boom of her acceleration.  Either way, Jean feels compel to inform her sister of the situation through the relaxed scream of “Incoming pedestrian!”

Micro seconds later, a startled Amy has slammed on brakes and the vehicle has begun de-accelerating at several Gs resulting in a corresponding chain reaction of panicked drivers behind them.  No collisions occurred, but many travel mugs of coffee were probably spilt in this socially shared startling experience.

Breaking news….

It’s amazes me what passes for “breaking news” these days. 

It wasn’t that long ago that when the networks broke in on regularly scheduled programming, the news carried national importance.  Now it seems anytime there’s a car chase, it’s breaking news on the national cable news stations.  One can almost envison the following “breaking news” scenario:

A breaking news screen comes across the TV followed by aerial footage of a multilane highway with smooth flowing traffic except for one pulled over automobile.

Newscaster voice over:  “You are presently viewing the live video footage of a disabled vehicle on the interstate Route 90 from our local affliate’s Skycopter.  At this point in time, we have no clear indication of why the vehicle is pulled off into the emergency lane, though some passing motorists have told our affiliate that the rear driver side tire appears to be flat.”

Sky camera zooms in on the vehicle and shows the flat tire.  Suddenly an individual exits from driver’s side and walks to the back of the vehicle.

Newscaster:  “It appears as someone, perhaps the driver - we don’t know for sure, has left the vehicle and is now walking to the back of the car. 

Sky camera shows the trunk door opening up and the individual reaching into it.  The person pulls out some tools and goes over to the flat tire, bends over and appears to be setting up some small equipment.

Newscaster: “At this point in time, it is still unclear if there are other occupants in the vehicle.”

More live video footage showing the person apparently struggling to properly set up equipment to jack up the vehicle.

Newscaster:  “We have, Bill Jones, one of our affliates on the line.  Bill, can you provide some insight?”

A small square photograph of Bill Jones shows up in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Bill:  “What I can tell you is the following:  We do not believe that Triple A has been notified.  Our sources there confirm that they have no record of a call for assistance from any vehicle in this vicinity.”

Newscaster:  “Very interesting.”

Bill:  “We can also confirm that at least one tire is flat and…”

Newscaster (breaking in): “Bill, I’m sorry but we are now seeing the departure of another person, apparently a male, from the vehicle.  This person appears to be walking towards the brush growing on the side of the highway.    He is entering into the brush area….”

Video shows partially obscure and shaded man in the bushes.

Newscaster: “At this point, we are not sure if this second individual is related to the first.  Bill, does it look like he is trying to flee the vehicle?”

Bill:  “I believe he’s urinating.  Though it is hard to tell through the foliage.”

Camera zooms in on second occupant, but no detail can be seen.

The Cable Guy

For years, Verizon has been our phone service provider, but recently we decided to switch to the digital phone service offered by our cable company.  Why?  Because, like all monopolies our existing cable service is excellent and the prices just can’t be beat. 

Well, actually there is a little more to it than that.  Verizon had recently sold all their telecom assets in New Hampshire to a small and debt bloated telecom utility in North Carolina.  So, no fiber optic cable for us.  Plus with the introductory deal from our local cable company, we would get a free year of HBO and a smidgen cheaper phone bill.

The cable technician was scheduled to install the service last Saturday and early that afternoon I received a frantic phone call from him.  Apparently our address was not in the database of his GPS.  I didn’t consider it much of a problem once I realized he was on a major route that lead directly by our neighborhood.   I suggested that he enter a nearby established cross street into the GPS as his destination.  Once he passed it, I informed him that our street would be next on the right.

Strangely, this turned out to be a difficult concept for him to grasp.  Soon, it was clear that he was accustomed of being directed everywhere by his GPS, so the idea of not completely relying on it was little out of his concept space.  Become over reliant on technology and it gets hard to think for yourself.

I decided to get radical in my approach with him.  It took some cajoling, but I convinced him to try the ancient tactic of writing down dictated directions and then following them with the GPS off.  The tricky part, I explained was that he would actually need to read street signs and decide by himself the appropriate places to turn.  He agreed but there was a a nervous tone in his voice, so I promised that I would stay by the phone in case of trouble.

Several minutes later, he called me back when he was less than half mile from my house and I talked him through the last few turns.  He had a big, proud grin on his face as he walked up to our front door and I found myself wondering how in the heck I could let this guy install phone service in my home.  

The Idiot’s Guide to Dummies

I was in an upscale bookstore the other day searching for a good cappuccino when I stumbled into an aisle full of those ubiquitous “for dummies” and “Idiot’s guide” books. One particular book entitled “Pregnancy for dummies” stood out and I immediately realized, “Yes, of course, that’s exactly what’s wrong with this country - Too many pregnancies by dummies!”

My second thought was that the authors must be running low on subject material.  After a simpleminded overview of the procreation process what’s left to write? “The Idiot’s Guide to Toiletry?”

I remember when these self help books first appeared. They focused on the basics of how to use a personal computer or on simplifying the mysteries of Microsoft Windows for the uninitiated. It was a book purchased for your mother after you saw her trance-like in front of her new computer screen and waving a mouse through the air like a wand. Now they seem to cover everything from stock trading (I’m not sure that’s something we need dummies doing) to beekeeping (Chapter One: Don’t use killer bees).

Clearly the idiots will not be denied their glory.

Well with all the recent talk of a recession, maybe an “Unemployment for Dummies” would be timely. But here’s my hint for the unemployed: Don’t waste your money on a book for morons.

Open Wide

I had a dental appointment last week. The goal of this early morning visit was to generate an amazingly large sum of money for my dentist. In exchange for the capital infusion, I was to have a slightly cracked molar repaired with a new ceramic crown.

When I reached the office, I was greeted by a dental assistant who was clearly a card carrying, board certified member of the morning person club. Skipping down the hallway, she energetically inquired if I was ready for my little procedure. “I guess you could say, anytime cold hard steel and high rpm blades meet human flesh I’m often ready, but seldom titillated”, I replied wishing for caffeine or something stronger.

After being seated in the torture chair, my mouth was x-rayed to confirm the on-going presence of teeth in my head and to start the cash generation process. Successful dental x-raying involves placing a piece of hard, multi-folded cardboard into one side of the mouth in order to create maximum discomfort to the surrounding gum tissue when bitten down on. It’s also a good way to remove residual cream cheese and bagel bits from the site. If you are unfortunate with dentistry, as I am apt to be on occasion, the cardboard leaves small ulcerations that eventually develop into canker sores. Otherwise, you just get a pleasant dose of ionizing radiation.

The next step, and most critical from an insurance justification standpoint, was to visually document the offending molar through use of a small fiber optic camera.  Of particular difficulty this morning was the small matter of my tongue. You see in spite of my best efforts, I just couldn’t get it sufficiently away from the area of interest to allow the camera to be maneuvered over the inside of the tooth. I vainly exercised every conceivable tongue muscle until an embarrassing case of fatigue sets in.

Perhaps if I was a chattier person, a real talker, or one of those annoying folks who just doesn’t know how to shut up, I would have had the endurance and flexibility required to complete the task. Not a problem for little Ms. Sunshine however. Lickety split, she cheerily forced a mega wad of gauze under my recalcitrant tongue, unnaturally pinning it against the other side of my mouth. Thus, a wonderful color photograph of my cracked tooth was obtained while I fought to breath through a microscopic gap that formed between the roof of my mouth, her latex gloved hand, the fiber optic camera, two pounds of gauze, and my very tired tongue.

Next on the agenda was the novocaine injection. Unfortunately, I am not easily affected by the drug. In other words, it takes a high dosing amount to provide a sufficient level of localized anesthetic effect. So that means a bigger needle in more places. The needle of choice for me is about the size of a caulk gun. And from the expression on the face of the dentist as he forced the novocaine into my gum, cheek and tongue, it’s about as easy to use.

Within minutes, numbness arrived and I lost whatever remaining amount of control I had over my tongue. It floundered in my mouth like a beached whale on shore. Answering a simple question like: “Do you promise to pay the balance of your bill today?” struggled out of my mouth as “I ah wanna no painy pleas zub”.

Finally the drilling was ready to begin. Now, I have one simple requirement for anyone using power tools inside my mouth: I want their complete and undivided attention. But as the procedure began, Ms. Sunshine couldn’t wait to start rambling on about a bizarre dream involving horseback riding, technicolor pastures, and the apparent manhandling of small farm animals.

At this point it occurred to me that the words “dental” and “devil” have many common letters.

In spite of this distraction, my dentist admirably focused on drilling out my molar. At the end of the day, that is probably why I pay him the big bucks. Inspired by his example, I resolved to focus on the high pitch whine of the drill blade as it ground tooth into dust.

Hypothesis 101

On my iGoogle home page, I have a quotes of the day section. Occasionally, a quote comes along that resonates with me. Like today when I read the following quote attributed to Thomas H. Huxley:

“The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

So often the beauty of the hypothesis comes from inside. It is my hypothesis, my idea, my insight and that is what makes it beautiful. Being able to discard that hypothesis in light of an ugly fact can be difficult to do and accept. It is the reality that I have overlooked something, miscalculated or come up short. Instinctly I want to challenge the validity of this “ugly fact”. Ultimately, however, the quicker the acceptance of incompleteness of my present hypothesis, the sooner I am to get closer to a better hypothesis and hopefully closer to true discovery and understanding.

Guinness World Book of Weirdos

There is a wide world of interesting folks out there and it seems a lot of them want to be in the record books. With that in mind, my son has compiled his top 5 weirdest Guinness World Records.  I’ve add the commentary. 

1.  A German man drags a van a distance of 300 feet via two hooks inserted into the skin of his back.   Here’s a hypothetical: You’re trying to sell your home and this guy is your neighbor.  The real estate agent bring prospective buyers by when this guy is outside, bare-back, hooks protruding from his skin, dragging his van down the driveway.  Guess what the buyers will remember about the house tour.  
2. A Chinese man pulls a car forward more than thirty feet using ropes attached to his lower eyelids.  With billions of men on this planet, it’s probably inevitable that a certain subset will enjoy dragging vehicles around via cables connected to their flesh.  I say, let’s see how far they go with the hooks attached to their testicles.  My guess is not too far.
3. A Turkish construction worker squirts milk over nine feet from his eye.  I believe his next feat will involve corned beef hash.
4. For nearly fifty years a Frenchman has lived on a diet of metal and glass. I don’t know about you, but if I get even a tiny bit of aluminum foil in my mouth it is just ZING right up to my brain.
5. An American woman can pop her eyeballs almost half an inch beyond her eye sockets.  I wouldn’t recommend showing this off on a first date unless she’s out with the french guy.  But in that case, where would they go? Perhaps an electrical supply outlet, where she could pop her eyes out every time he ate a light bulb.