Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Ecstatic_Account_744 t1_jce9yka wrote

Story time!

I used to be a truck driver. When returning across the border (am Canadian) I’d have to fax my paperwork to the customs broker to get my load cleared through customs. So I’d usually write down the phone and fax numbers to give to the person at the truck stop to fax it but obviously I’m lazy so I’d use the ditto marks to denote that only part of the number was different. Prefix numbers for one companies phone and fax are usually the same. So anywho, I hand it to the girl at a truck stop in Texas and she goes off and comes back and says it didn’t go through. I asked her to try again, she tries again and nothing. Then she says, “it’s probably because there aren’t enough numbers. The first four are just ones.” It took me a moment to wrap my head around the idea that she tried it twice without asking me if something was wrong with what I wrote down. Didn’t clarify, didn’t consider that those weren’t actually numbers, just went ahead and tried anyway. I wonder if she still works there.

3

thewingedshadow t1_jceypnd wrote

Truck driver here as well. The amount of literal stupidity we have to deal with is over the top. Now, not understanding the ditto marks is one thing, but I also had a dispatcher be angry at me because he thought I was able to cross a river on a ferry with max allowed weight of 5 tons, whereas I had a big rig and couldn't possibly go on that ferry. The only road I could take added about 1 hour to my route and he called me yelling at me why it takes me an hour for a 5 km stretch of road. I asked him if he sees a blue line on whatever map he's looking at. He said yes. I asked him if he knows what it means. He said a river. I asked him if he knew which button to press to turn my truck into a boat and he dropped the call and didn't speak to me again.

3