Your know YOUR RIGHT

[lorimeyers]

I work for a women's clothing and accessories importer/wholesale company that sells the most awful, tacky, polyester one-size-fits all kinda crap that no intelligent person would want to wear. We import from China and sell it through our Wholesale Site, I think it's a simple site design that's easy to navigate. We don't print a physical catalog, just the website.

The result of not having the paper catalog and relying on the website to be our only catalog is that it leads to a bunch of old, stupid Southern women who don't know how to use computers, trying to do just that. Think about the tacky, ugly, trashy crap we sell and the types of people who are running the retail stores that sell the crappy crap that we are Wholesaling to them--you'd be absolutely right in assuming that I am subjected to an unimaginable amount of uniquely and deep-rooted stupidity on a daily basis as far as customer interaction goes.

Well, the following story is of a conversation I had with a woman on the phone a few days ago:

This "lady" calls, she is on our wholesale site and is calling because she doesn't see any prices listed.

This is a completely normal customer service call that I get at least once a day because we do not want our wholesale pricing displayed freely for our wholesale customers' retail customers to stumble upon and see, it would be bad business for them if their customers saw their markup and for us if their business declined as a result. So we make it not at all hard, but so that you at least need to make an honest effort in registering a Login for our website by filling out a form to add your business to our customer database before you will then be logged in and able to see all the Wholesale pricing on the website. It's very simple, but not the case when it comes to women in their 50s who "don't do computers", and are also just plain lacking in the intelligence area.

So this women ever so annoyingly goes on to explain how she is a first time customer and blah blah--(I don't care how you cute you think they are or how you plan on selling them at your inbred smalltown flea market church, how you're at your daughter's house because you "don't do computers"--get to the point) Yeah, yeah, no pricing, I get it. Seemed like a typical question that would be followed by me giving her my usual, step-by-step explanation of the where to click on our website to get to the registration form that she needs to fill out to then log her in making pricing visible.

It's funny, because now I can't imagine my life before this conversation happened, and it was only a couple weeks ago that it went down. Little did I know, as I began to give her my spiel o n navigating our website what was coming for me--and how greatly it would change my life.

I am trying to tell this woman where, visually on her screen, to find the words "Log In" are to bring her to the form's page. I say,"It's on the very top of the page, the light pink menu bar, all the way over to the right, it says 'Log In', top-right of the page."

She can't find it. Long pauses. Mouth breathing in to the phone. I can hear the spit moving around in her mouth, probably foaming I decide. I picture it. While I am waiting for her to scan the page and eventually find it (because it IS there, top-right), I casually ask her what her e-mail address is--I knew it. @aol.com. All of them are. Idiots. I wait some more as she makes disgusting groaning noises into the receiver of the phone.

"All the way to the top right, on the pink bar." I say again, after for the fourth time confirming she is on OUR website. "TOP... RIGHT. I don't see anything about Log In..." I ask her if she sees the pink bar I am refering to, and she does, then she says, "Top, right--I see 'Home'--no 'Log In'. AH-HA! Now I know what's really going on. But I can't outright tell her why she isn't seeing Log In where she is looking because that would almost be cruel, right? How do I break this to her in the most polite way possible without making her feel stupid and embarrassed for confusing her right from her left. I mean, it's an honest mistake that everyone makes every now and again, usually realizing it seconds after its made, but still, at least the reason she wasn't seeing it wasn't because she was illiterate or something--right? How to break the news...

She keeps saying she doesn't see anything like that. I know, but how do I break this to her? I know! I start going along the title bar that the "Log In" is on the very far right of, I read each category out loud, from left to right, asking if she sees each one I read as I go. By doing this, even though she has her understanding of what is right and what is left confused, she still has to eventually wind up at the top right, where I have wanted her to be the whole time, and I don't have to outright say, "Oh! You're an idiot and confusing your left from your right!"So I start at the very top left on the menu bar, "So the bar from left to right should be HOME, right? Okay good, then CATALOG? Good. Then CUSTOMER SERVICE, SHOW SCHEDULE, ABOUT US, YOUR CART (EMPTY) and then there's a little space, then finally you should find where it says LOG IN, on the very top right of your screen now, right?"

For every other category heading I had just read from left to right out loud to her, she had confirmed with a, "Yes, see it." or "Okay, got that one." When I finally finished reading all of them except for one, the one at the far right, the top-right of the page, I took a deep breath and crossed my fingers, "And the last one should say, "Log In", and you're at the far right now... got it?" There was a long, long pause and a lot of mouth breathing on the line. I may have heard the sound of televangelism in the background, but I could have been imagining things. For a second I thought she got terribly embarrassed for mistaking her left from right and hung up but then she said something that would change my life forever: (MAKE SURE THAT WHEN YOU READ THIS QUOTATION FROM HER TO MAKE IT A THICK, WOMAN'S SOUTHERN ACCENT SAYING IT IN YOUR HEAD!)

"Ooohhhhhh... You meant YOUR right. I thought you meant to my right. I got it now girl. Ya'll have a blessed day. Bye now!"

I am very glad looking back on it that she decided to so abruptly end the conversation and hang up right after saying that, because I am not sure that I would have been able to hold in the, "NO FUCKING WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED!" that I yelled out directly after my brain took the twenty or so seconds after she said that, for it to sink in and take full effect. I think that the impact of my head hitting the desk--what would have occurred if I had to have been on the phone talking to her for another second after she said that--would have just knocked me out cold and put me out of my misery anyway, though.

Then I let it really sink in. What the fuck? MY right--is she picturing me, the person on the phone from the website she is staring at in her "compudah box", like... sitting directly across from her behind her monitor, on the other side of whatever table or desk her computer is at, with my own computer/monitor, like a fucking mirror image? Or is even stupider than being that stupid and just really, really just... stupid, in an unexplainable way that I've never come across before? We'll never know.

Just thought I would share.

[r2cagle]

You're not sitting on the other side of the screen??

How can you see what screen people are on?

OH.... and to

[BookBint]

Ow. My Brain. Ow.

[trunks2k]

If it makes you feel any better, my girlfriend has trouble telling her left from her right. She usually has to hold her hands up to see which hand makes an "L" to figure it out. It's a pain in the butt when it comes to getting/receiving directions from her.

Me: "Ok, take a left at this intersection"
Her: "Ummm..... ok" *starts turning right*
Me: "No, take a left!"
Her: "Oh sorry"

I've now taken to saying "see that *insert car going the same direction as us* up ahead? Follow him"

[Whiskey]

She usually has to hold her hands up to see which hand makes an "L" to figure it out.

Your girlfriend is a genius. I have to hold both hands parallel and see which one "writes" automatically. That one is my right hand. YAY!

[Stormraven]

We had a friend like that - she's a dancer, and often does just that - holding up her hands to see which makes an 'L'.

[kzc]

If it makes you feel any better, my girlfriend has trouble telling her left from her right. She usually has to hold her hands up to see which hand makes an "L" to figure it out.

I've known people who do the same thing, but I've never really understood how that helps. If you hold your hands palms up you'll get the wrong result. And I don't see how remembering to hold your hands palms down instead of up is easier than just remembering which side is left and which right.

[trunks2k]

I've known people who do the same thing, but I've never really understood how that helps. If you hold your hands palms up you'll get the wrong result. And I don't see how remembering to hold your hands palms down instead of up is easier than just remembering which side is left and which right.

She holds her hands up in front of her face with her palms facing outward (like she's trying to stop someone), and thumbs pointing towards each other. The left hand makes an L.

[ExRetailDrone]

I sometimes get my left and right confused as well when I'm giving directions, especially when I was still in retail and I was trying to explain to someone how to get to a certain area of the store. I always felt very dumb when I had to correct myself (which would be within a few seconds of saying the wrong way), but... this woman... just... wow.

Her thinking you were behind her monitor (or whatever it was she was imagining) reminds me when I was a kid and I thought that little people lived in the radio and that's how the music came through. But by the same token I was in the single-digit ages and thinking like that is ok when one is that young.

My brain hurts.

[Magpie]

If it makes you feel any better, my girlfriend has trouble telling her left from her right. She usually has to hold her hands up to see which hand makes an "L" to figure it out. It's a pain in the butt when it comes to getting/receiving directions from her.

Me: "Ok, take a left at this intersection"
Her: "Ummm..... ok" *starts turning right*
Me: "No, take a left!"
Her: "Oh sorry"

Ok, I don't have any trouble remembering which side to hold out. The trouble is that you need to be the sort of person who has a good enough spatial sense to be able to tell which one is an "L" - they're the same shape, one is just flipped around. (Yes, I pushed a pull door once. I thought it was a pull door, but the sign said "push". I haven't had much luck with my campaign to ban signs that can be read through the door.) I find that it looks more like an "L" to me with my right hand: I'm right handed, therefore that's the hand I use when I finger-spell.

I also don't have trouble when driving. Left is turning across traffic, right is a small turn. But aside from that, left and right are EVIL. After all, every time you turn around they change!

[bsaana]

If I ever forget, I can just look at the top of my hands. Broke the right one playing high school football, and had to have 3 screws put in the bone, and then a year later they were removed....

Thank God I have yet to have one of those direction impaired people call in for support.

[DemoDiva]

My husband always gives me a hard time about having trouble differentiating left from right! I do the "L" trick sometimes, the "Which hand do I write with?" trick others. Most of the time, I just pick one and endure the, "NO, LEFT! Jeez, you really have problems with that, don't you?"

I always just associated it with my childhood dyslexia -- it's nice to know I'm not the only grown up in the world who has trouble with left and right! Now, how about reading those damn analogue clocks?

[tuck319]

We had a friend like that - she's a dancer, and often does just that - holding up her hands to see which makes an 'L'.

My wife teaches dance, and after spending years with her back to the mirrors doing steps in "mirror image" of the students, she cannot get or give directions.

If we're going somewhere for the first time, I make notes off the map for her to read to me as we progress. Far easier than trying to communicate direction accurately.

[TexasT]

I had a professor who had trouble telling left and right apart. She used her class ring or wedding ring to tell.

[KellyHabersham]

I have to admit that I'm one of those who are "directionally challenged", which is one of the reason why I don't drive, and makes it frustrating for me when I get asked questions such as "Is Macy's at the east or west end of the mall?", or "Is your church on the north or south side of "X street"?