Stupid Customers

January 10, 2007

Investment bankers usually do quite a bit of work from home and outside normal hours, so the majority of calls we took were nightmarish dial-up issues. My personal favorite was when one older gentleman called because he was unable to dial-in to the network. I made several attempts to walk him through some simple instructions to no avail. Each time he would botch the password or just not listen to me and then power the notebook off without shutting down. I warned him not to do that, because he could corrupt the OS or cause a hardware failure, then tried again. Yet again, he botched the password, instead of re-entering it, he shut off the notebook again. Then he said, “Damn it! Now look what you have done to my laptop. It won’t even power up!” The person I was training over the phone was laughing so hard while I was on mute that he was crying.

Stupid Customers
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Stupid Students

January 8, 2007

Bad Metaphors from Stupid Student Essays…

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

She was as easy as the “TV Guide” crossword.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Every minute without you feels like 60 seconds.

The horizon swallowed the setting sun like a dog sucking an egg, but not quite.

Stupid Students
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Stupid Students

January 6, 2007

Bad Metaphors from Stupid Student Essays…

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

Stupid Students

Stupid Students

January 4, 2007

Bad Metaphors from Stupid Student Essays…

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

“Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.”

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Stupid Students