How hard is it to find a building? For some, very hard

[allniter]

This just goes to show how dumb some customers can be.

I had a lady who was having trouble finding one of our branch offices while driving in her car. So she calls us to ask where it is:

Me: Superman in a business suit
RC: Retarded customer


RC: Hi, I'm just driving by you now but can't seem to find which building you're in.

SD: (thinking this should'nt be too hard) Ok well where exactly are you right now maam?

RC: I'm on "___" avenue just by a dunkin donuts.

Me: Ok, well you're on the right street and it sounds like you're close by. Now can you see any numbers of the buildings nearby you?

RC: Umm, I see one here that says 529... and this one over here is 535.

Now our building number is 533, and the buildings whose numbers she read out, border us on both sides. There is NO building 531. I bet you can see where this is going.

Me: Ok so taking those two out, we're left with....?

RC: Well yeah there's just one building in between them two, but I don't see no number on it. So how can I tell if it's yours?



It turns out she was actually parked right across the street from our branch, in front of the same building she was looking for, but unable to figure out that if the building on the left has too low a number, and the building on the right has too high a number, then the middle must be what she's searching for. Apparently the fact that the building had no number posted indicates to her that it must be some sort of mystical type building that must only exist as a trap for her to step inside.

Luckily I wasn't at this particular branch so I never had to deal with her.
But seriously, how do these people pass their driver's tests in order to drive???? (the ones that drive legally for some reason I mean)

[marasbaras]

Sexual favors, perhaps?

What an idiot. I think EVERYONE should be required to spend at least a month at a paperboy/papergirl when they're in their pre-teens. It'll teach you all about house numbers.

[Bramble]

She HAD to have paid someone off to get a license..... or maybe she used an identical twin!

[Becks]

I don't see how failing to grasp the obvious means that she doesn't deserve to have a DL.

[ArcticChicken]

Actually, I can almost see where she was coming from. See, a few years back I did some canvassing work for a political campaign, and, while the majority of the streets followed the traditional numbering methods, come decided they wanted to be radical and edgy. My particular favorite was a street with the houses numbered 102, 103, 107, 59, 112, and 32. On one side. I never made it to the other side.

[powerboy]

I don't see how failing to grasp the obvious means that she doesn't deserve to have a DL.

Seriously. There are times, when I cannot find an address. I guess I should cut up my DL, as I wont be needing it *End sarcasm*

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

What I'd love to say to her.

"Well Ma'am, I'd love to help you get to us. Ok now stay on the phone while I'm walking you through this. First thing is to look at the front door of the building across the streed from where you are currently standing. Now do not take your eyes off of it or it'll vanish. Start walking across the road. The magic of the building will protect you from the cars and will make them stop. Yes I'm sure it's alright, we haven't lost anyone doing this yet.

My, what a lovely bone shattering thump and the lovely squishing noises of the other cars running over you again and again makes a nice counterpoint. Now when you re-incarnate, don't forget to ask for a little more brains than you got this time and please feel free to look us up in your next life."

M

[tamezin]

But seriously, how do these people pass their driver's tests in order to drive???? (the ones that drive legally for some reason I mean)

I don't believe you actually have to be able to follow road directions in order to pass the driving exam. You only have to be able to follow the rules of the road. Good thing, or I would be in serious trouble.

Being directionally challenged can be very frustrating.

I don't consider myself stupid. I finished college with great grades, but I can get lost in a square room with one door.

[smileyeagle1021]

she isn't as bad as my grandma on my father's side... you can't make this stuff up, we visited her in sacramento a long time ago (i was like 9) and we met her at the zoo and she remembered where she parked as "on a street parked behind a white truck"...

[Ironclad Alibi]

The OP reminded me of a story about one person who couldn't find a certain hotel. The hotel was near a complex interstate interchange. They pulled into a gas station and asked how they could get to the hotel. The attendent told them they could see it right over there. They replied that they had been looking at for the past half hour as they drove around the area, but could not figure out how to actually get there.

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

At the craft store where I used to work, corporate, in their infinite wisdom, decided to list our address as XXX Highway Number. Okay, except that we were in a shopping center & no one driving on that highway would ever find us.

So we were accustomed to bewildered and/or pissed customers calling to find out where we were. We usually told them the name of the shopping center & that was enough. Sometimes they were new to town & had to be told where to find the shopping center. Some were more directionally-challenged (like myself) and had to be given landmarks. All of that is find, blame it on corporate.

Except for this one call. Woman is calling from a payphone & she knows that she's in the right section of the highway but she can't find us. Clerk tries to pin down where she is, to give directions.

"Okay, can you see B's gas station?" (thinking, perhaps she's at the shopping center across the street)
"You can? Okay, just go across.."
"You've already been there & we're not there?"
"Ma'am, what store is on your right?"
"The Subway? Okay, ma'am, face the parking lot. We're two storefronts to your right."

We waited to see who had called from the payphone so close to us but I think that she decided to get lunch before coming in to shop.

[Alpha Strike]

Ugh. My girlfriend is, to put it nicely, "directionaly challenged." She's never known how to read a map and the one time I tried to show her, she got "stuck" on how to tell the difference between the 4 cardinal directions, decided it was too difficult to learn and gave up.

She loves MapQuest but wooo to her if the directions aren't perfect or she has to make a deviation. She's actually made calls in the past to me explaining that she's made some random wrong turn to some random place that I've never been and expects that I can figure out how to get her where she needs to go.

[Shards]

Ugh. My girlfriend is, to put it nicely, "directionaly challenged." She's never known how to read a map and the one time I tried to show her, she got "stuck" on how to tell the difference between the 4 cardinal directions, decided it was too difficult to learn and gave up.

She loves MapQuest but wooo to her if the directions aren't perfect or she has to make a deviation. She's actually made calls in the past to me explaining that she's made some random wrong turn to some random place that I've never been and expects that I can figure out how to get her where she needs to go.

My mother does this.

[background] My father comes from money, my mother recently inherited a small fortune she never knew her family had. I choose to work for my money, instead of taking the impressive sums of cash I'm often offered from family. I don't deny Christmas and birthday money, but otherwise if I have cash it's because I worked for it, end of story. Anyway, my parents decided to buy a summer home a few years ago several states south of our primary house. [/background]

My mother will call me or my dad, while we are studying and working up in good old PA, because she got lost down in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and she thinks we can help her.

The truly horrible part is that we can usually figure out how to get her back to the second house over the phone more effectively than she can in the flesh...

[Dips]

My friend, who I call the Fairy Gordmother (because she's godmother to my daughter) owns a comic/fantasy store on a major downtown intersection. The building has a HUGE two-story Wyland mural of sperm whales on it. When she gives directions, she tells people to go downtown and ends with "We are in the building with the whales." Just about everyone from that city remembers that mural and knows where it is.

However, more than once, she has had someone place a second call for directions from the sidewalk outside...

"OK. I'm at the whales. Now what do I do?"

[ShetenshiSenshi]

Ugh. My girlfriend is, to put it nicely, "directionaly challenged." She's never known how to read a map and the one time I tried to show her, she got "stuck" on how to tell the difference between the 4 cardinal directions, decided it was too difficult to learn and gave up.

She loves MapQuest but wooo to her if the directions aren't perfect or she has to make a deviation. She's actually made calls in the past to me explaining that she's made some random wrong turn to some random place that I've never been and expects that I can figure out how to get her where she needs to go.

OMG! That sounds just like me! I can't read a map, all the lines and different colors just confuse me, and I'm horrible with directions from anything but good old Mapquest. My major problem is I have my own comfort zone where I like to drive. I won't use busy roads or roads with fast speed limits. It drives everyone I know nuts.