March 27 -- Do you ever feel like you need a deli ticket number thing..
11Outside your life?? I don’t know if it is because I am approachable, or if it is because I am a knowitall, or if it is because I am the one who generally has made any mistake you can, BUT… I always seem to be the person people ask “how to” do things… sometimes there is a queue of people… 
Are you one of those people?? Do people ask you questions? Do you normally have the answers? Are you like me and you wing it?
Best compliment from my husband recently was, “Because you have an engineering background” – to which I replied, “no, I am an English major!”, he responded “It is because you are a Redneck!!” (of which I am proud!!!)
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I’m asked questions all of the time, but no one ever pays any attention to my answers.
@Barney That is especially true in households with kids/teens/young adults… : )
@Barney
What was that?
I think you said something or other. Didn’t you?
/giphy "not paying attention"
@Barney But we all love purple here!! (except for those crazy few!)
@f00l Not paying attention is your norm.
@mikibell Loving purple – that’s a big reason why I keep coming back here.
@Barney
/giphy wha?
Sometimes. I try to avoid being comprehensible or effective, in order to manage this.
@f00l I would think you have valuable input for most situations!
My mother is regularly approached in stores by people who think she works there. It doesn’t matter what store it is, whether or not she’s wearing a coat or carrying a bag–people assume she works there. It is genuinely weird, especially when they get annoyed that she doesn’t work at whatever store it is. I’ve only met one other person to whom it happens often.
@mossygreen
It might be that she normally dresses more neatly than most of us slobs, or that she has an “alert, neutral, helpful, and intelligent” expression on her face, or something.
@mossygreen happens to me all the damn time.
I mentioned the last time… I was wearing flip flops, camo shorts, sunglasses, and a shirt with a unicorn puking and shitting rainbows. Yeah, I look like I work there, lol
@mossygreen Happens to me too… especially in the grocery store with little old ladies!! I don’t mind, I can reach the top shelf and they cannot. Doesn’t hurt me any to assist
But, yes, there are people who become disappointed that they did not find someone who works in the store.
I think it is because I am mostly congenial to other people. Don’t like people, but no reason for them to know that
@mossygreen me three.
@mikibell You must be my sister in the other room! Instead of old ladies asking for help, it’s usually tiny little Asian ladies asking me to reach something from the top shelf for them.
I have to ask if anyone who has wandered through their local Walmart produce section has noticed where some of the plastic produce bags dispensers placed? My local store has ALL dispensers for the large chilled produce section attached to the top edge of their display which is over six feet high. I’m 5’10" and I have to reach up over my head to snag one. Have no clue how the shorter humans or people in motorized scooters can possibly reach.
@mossygreen One my friend and I were bathing our dogs at a wash-your-dog-yourself pet store. We were wearing rubber aprons with the name of the pet store on the front. We were in side-by-side stalls and chatting when a woman came in and asked, “How much do you charge to bathe a dog?” I said $500, but my friend blew my cover when she laughed and said we didn’t work there - it was a self-serve setup and we were bathing our own dogs.
@mossygreen This makes me wonder . . . if I stood outside of a nice restaurant in a red, polyester tux jacket and someone threw me the keys of their car and said, “Please take care of my car,” could I drive it around without any legal consequence since the keys were given to me?
Doesn’t the title Mom open you up to all knowing to everyone except teens? Teens will ask just so they can tell you how wrong you are in my experience.
@speediedelivery hahhaha that reminds me of when my kids’ daycare did a “newspaper” and the headline was “Joey’s mom does it all”, because one of the questions was to him, what does your mommy do? His answer was: Everything
I was kinda concerned about the connotations of the article title, but heck… why not !
@speediedelivery You’ve heard about having the Third Eye? For moms, it’s the eyes in the back of our head that opens us up to the all-knowing/all-seeing powers of Mom.
people ask me stuff all the time.
invariably they are wearing police uniforms and the questions involve whether i have an alibi.
@no1 I have never been asked that question!!!
@no1
Well do you?
/giphy alibi
I’m the go-to person for family, friends, and coworkers when it comes to computer/tech issues or when they’re looking for shopping deals. (Can’t imagine why I’m on a discount web shopping site, huh?) I generally don’t mind but there are times when I really want to say, “I’m busy with my own life. Go away kid, you bother me.”
Sometimes I get into cycles where people ask me
“What the fuck are you doing”
Or
“Please tell me why you just did that please?”
Arranging to be asked these sorts of questions tends to help keep the volume of the other kind of more sensible questions under control.
@f00l What the fuck ARE you doing?
@Barney
/giphy "3 guesses"
@f00l Do you ever get the feeling that /giphy is becoming sentient?
@Barney
Yeah. Or that /giphy has managed to hook into the collective unconscious of everyone who ever did drugs or something.
As an IT support staff & keeper of tools, I get asked questions every day- also, I usually get advanced notice because I can hear the shoes hitting the tiles.
@dashcloud stupid carpet squares muffle their approach in our office!
@mikibell I’m just lucky because the kitchen is right by my office, and no one takes the long way which is all carpet.
@dashcloud it gets loud in our office, so I typically wear headsets… so it doesn’t reallly matter. Since I changed jobs, not that many people search me out… and since the advent of skype…
I once had two people ask me where certain items were located while I was shopping at Target which was strange since I wasn’t wearing a red shirt with a name tag . . . and I was pushing a cart full of my own shit. People are stupid.
Among my circle of friends, I’m The Wolf - as in Harvey Keitel’s character Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction because I know how to get shit done so yeah, I know where you’re coming from.
As an Engineer, Professor (adjunct) and a DBA that owns a computer consulting company (not bragging at all, just facts), this happens all the time. I have been told that I should send an invoice to everyone that wants free info or free labor. I have simply stopped going to parties and I cut people off and tell them I’ll call them back but never do. I just fell into the trap this past week and I’m kicking myself. I’m thinking of trying to find a nice cave to live in. I would never do what people do to me so I find it rude.
@bsci87 You know what I think is fair to say to people who ask for your expertise for free and during your personal time? Work was brutal this week and I’m off the clock now, let’s talk about non-work stuff. And then smile and suggest something fun to do or interesting to talk about. I’ve got photography skills and everyone asks me to make pictures of their kid’s christening, birthday party, piano recital, family gathering, etc. and that’s my standard answer. If said with the right tone and intent, I think it jars people into realizing that they are forcing you to talk shop during your off time.
I like how this occurs on tv shows. As far back as Gilligan’s professor, whenever there is a limited number of people, one person becomes the “go to to solve all.” The prof made cars and fixed radios. A few years ago on some zombie show a nuclear engineer basically did anything that group asked. Hubby and me joked that apparently nuclear engineering prepares you to fix radios too, or the eng and prof went to the same college where radio fixing was a required freshman course.