• c.r. (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    Imagine... as a montrealer I get more help talking broken english in paris than speaking french with my accent (or without the parisian's one).. it look like they worship USA, when I think I get a nice diner like 'mousse aux 3 saumon' or a 'bavette' (steak) cheaper than a trio at the mc'donald in paris. (I dont mind, keep it that way;) )

    Could qualify as a wtf I think? lol

    People from the region, 'provincial', are more friendly to their distant family over the atlantic tho

  • c.r. (unregistered) in reply to c.r.

    oops, should have quoted .. was a reply to :

    snoofle:
    Endo808:
    K&T:
    snoofle:
    Well, you know us Americans; if someone/thing doesn't understand us, we just speak slower and louder!

    Yes, and the French method would be to write the computer off as worthless and wax on about how Computers should know french.

    To be fair I'd write off some slow speaking, loud shouting american as worthless too. You'll find the french perfectly helpful if you talk to them like people instead of retards.

    Having been to both Montreal and Paris, I'd have to say that in Canada, I got more politeness by attempting (and failing) to speak French than trying to get by with English, whereas in Paris, I got far more politeness by just sticking with English than trying to speak French (I only know a few words).

    I guess it depends on the day and the place...

  • ... (unregistered) in reply to cak

    Who says they can't solve the problems? They are just intelligent enough to not go mucking around in another companies stuff without prior permission from management. Of course you don't seem to have enough intelligence to realize this. You are just another idiotic troll without the ability to use your brain.

  • (cs) in reply to zip
    zip:
    I can't wait for someone to explain how real developers don't need to have the common sense to check that a printer is on,

    Well, duh. Real programmers don't have the needed skills. "It's a hardware problem".

    LOLOLOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

  • (cs) in reply to K&T
    K&T:
    snoofle:
    Well, you know us Americans; if someone/thing doesn't understand us, we just speak slower and louder!

    Yes, and the French method would be to write the computer off as worthless and wax on about how Computers should know french.

    ...And the Russian one would be to put it in a re-education camp?

  • Dr_Legacy (unregistered) in reply to jonnyq
    jonnyq:
    Anon:
    To be fair, the keyboard language thing is a bit tricky. It's not something you expect to see suddenly change by itself. If the receptionist's keyboard was happily typing in English the day before, why would it suddenly be set to French?

    Exactly what I was thinking. I don't think there's a button in Windows you can accidentally press to change keyboard layout.

    if the windoze box has multiple languages installed/enabled, alt+shift will do the trick.

    captcha: appellatio .. is that French for eating an apple?

  • Boris (unregistered) in reply to jonnyq
    jonnyq:
    Anon:
    To be fair, the keyboard language thing is a bit tricky. It's not something you expect to see suddenly change by itself. If the receptionist's keyboard was happily typing in English the day before, why would it suddenly be set to French?

    Exactly what I was thinking. I don't think there's a button in Windows you can accidentally press to change keyboard layout.

    The rest were simple mistakes, but the keyboard layout thing is a WTF by itself. How did the keyboard layout get screwed up? Since I don't work here, I assume you have it set that way on purpose as it's not really something you can do by accident.

    Making a palette of quotation marks isn't the right thing to do, but it depends on how the question was presented. Also, since it's not my job (yet) I wouldn't touch the PC's settings (while turning on a printer is no big deal). After asking a couple questions, I might actually make a palette of quotation marks temporarily until I go tell the boss what really happened and explain what I think might be the real solution.

    But yeah, the rest are just silly.

    Alt+Shift

  • way2trivial (unregistered) in reply to iToad

    I'm deathly curious what such would make of me--
    I always eat whatever the error is happily- and consider such 'forced change' an opportunity to try something new that I didn't want to. I also make sure (at least when I'm paying) with the server that the price charged is always the cheaper of the two dishes...

    the only thing I ever really bounce food for is when they get it right, but cook it very wrong... (a rare steak that is brown throughout for example)

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    SomeCoder:
    Personally - I'd think, 'what an unfriendly, unhelpful person, I wouldn't want to work with him/her'.
    While I'd probably think: "Clever lad. If you touched it as a non-employee, you'd be risking liability for its breakage and any data loss."

    Frankly, the replies in this thread are truly worrying. You do not ever touch gear without being given explicit authority: either by its owner or an employment contract. No, being there for a job interview does not count.

    I don't know if I'm as paranoid as you but I definitely wouldn't flip the write-protect tab on some unknown floppy disk just because a receptionist told me she used to be able to save data on it.

  • Gavin (unregistered)

    Those with nothing to lose lie the most. They tend to be recently graduated students, especially those whose visas are about to expire. Many get away with it.

  • Chinaman (unregistered)

    You love me long time?

  • vind (unregistered)

    Ubunturd gave me a zillion problems. I never have problems with Windows. Therefore Linturd is crap that only masochists can enjoy for masochists.

  • Fixer (unregistered) in reply to BertBert

    Gee you lucked out with your family mate.

    My family doesn't assume that I broke something unless it explodes in my face as I'm working on it... and even then they would query me whether I did it or it happened on its own... and trust my answer.

    /Now if only they would follow my advice and backup every few months. :-)

  • js (unregistered) in reply to jonnyq
    jonnyq:
    I don't think there's a button in Windows you can accidentally press to change keyboard layout.

    Alt+Shift or something to that effect. (Can be disabled.) Besides, I think each window has its own keyboard layout setting by default.

    I have witnessed this numerous times. All you need is plug in a non-US keyboard and enable the corresponding layout. Yes, it's very easy to switch by accident. Then you also have a tiny blue square in the taskbar showing the current two-letter language code. This tiny blue square is also a control that enables you to change the keyboard language.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered) in reply to shepd

    oh, you made me think of a crazy story i read, i think it was "not always right"(.com): the interviewer insisted on calling his previous employer on the phone...which might have made sense, except he had told her he was self-employed. but she was too stupid to understand that, so she called his phone number, and talked to him on his cell phone, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER, he answered all of her questions, adding "and i'm STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU" to the end of EVERY SENTENCE, and she never did understand that she was asking him about him! she was just too bureaucratic to understand what "self-employed" means...

  • Edwardtrott (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

Leave a comment on “The Receptionist Test”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

« Return to Article