reading comprehension

[cos]

I'm selling a Sun D1000 RAID, and posted it on craigslist. One of the people who responded wanted to come take a look at it today, and suggested he might be able to stop by Cambridge on his way home from work. The following email exchange ensued, presented mostly without comment (his emails in italics):

Anyway my schedule indicates I have time to see the D1000 after 5:30 PM.

Okay, sounds good. It turns out I will be home until about 7pm today,
so if you come here after 5:30 that should work.

I'll come have a look at the array at 7:00 PM. [...] I'll see you at 7:00 PM.

I may be heading out at 7, will you get here right at 7 or a little before?

do you get out of work earlier any other day? I prefer around 5:30 because at 7:00 PM is dinner time for me. do expect to get out of work earlier any other day of this week?

I don't have a 9-5 office job. Like I said earlier, "I will be home until about 7pm today, so if you come here after 5:30 that should work."

okay, I'll come around that time. I'll call when I am at Hampshire st. see you later.

At that point, it was 5:20pm, and I figured he was about to leave work, so I went and did other things. When do you expect he called?

Yup. 7:15pm.

I responded with, "I'm sorry, I said I'd be home until 7pm and then I'm leaving", and he apologized for having misunderstood my emails.

P.S. My new favorite fortune cookie message, received tonight at Mary Chung:
"You Are Not Illiterate"

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I think this guy must have read "I will be home until 7" as "I won't be home until 7", because, I mean, YOU must have gotten it wrong since who DOESN'T have a 9 - 5 job, right?

[nebel.livejournal.com]

Seriously, wtf? how do some people function in the world? Why can't stupidity hurt more often?

survival techniques from the corporate field...

[sexykneesocks.livejournal.com]

perhaps saying something like the following would be easier for him to understand.

"great, i will see you at 5:30 to look at the array."

short, sweet, and if he doesn't like the specific time you've provided, he will re-negotiate.

//////////
IMO, clearly he is living life through his planner. those i know stuck in the purgatory of outlook scheduling in corporate infernos generally need to be fed small pieces of information and given tasks in pieces... i find that when dealing with those who are perpetually over-committed, even if i have a dozen things i need to ask ... i only ask one per email/interaction. also, i don't run the questions in parallel, i never seem to get them answered unless in serial. this is vastly inefficient, however, less frustrating.

i think that in your email to him, you gave him too much to parse, so he took the last piece, combined it with his blighted worldview which must include an 8-6 job and a hellish commute... because last time i checked nobody who had a 9-5 job actually worked 9-5...

Re: survival techniques from the corporate field...

[cos]

You know, part of the oddness here is, he works at a college.

there's a saying...

[sexykneesocks.livejournal.com]

those who can't make it professionally, teach.

?

i am not 100% in agreement with such a saying, however here, it leaps to mind.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

See, my instinct would have been to write, "I will be home until about 7pm today, so anytime between 5:30 and 7 should work". (Emphasis is for mention, not use, but whatever. :-)

Love the fortune cookie!

[yix.livejournal.com]

Actually, this sounds very familiar. My friend works at a college in the Navajo nation and he told me about the strange language problems he had when he first got there. His prime example was the word "until." The use he described perfectly explains your lack of communication here. His example went like this. After his first week there, he was trying to pick up his paycheck, so he called and asked when the financial office was open. The woman said, "we're open until 1," so at 12:30 he shows up to pick up his paycheck. Repeat the same scenario two or three times before the woman explains that she has lunch from noon to 1 (sounding frustrated at my friends confusion). So what she meant was that they are open after 1.

My friend couldn't really explain why the word is used that way, but he said it was consistent and that he had given up on using the word entirely. He described other language problems stemming from two cultures who are using the same words to mean two different things. I can't remember the other examples, though.

You'll have to let me know if he's Navajo.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

The woman said, "we're open until 1," so at 12:30 he shows up to pick up his paycheck

compared to "we don't open until 1" or "we're not open until 1"

standard usage suggests (as much as 5-10 minutes of dictionaries found) that what the woman was saying mean they close at 1... "until" means generally "before" she left out a modifier. perhaps common usage does that now, but i've not seen it.

as we can see, the prior examples provides a great example of why i don't like words such as "until", "this", "next", and such, until (hah) you have calibrated with someone's versions.

when dealing with people on craigslist, managers, and other folx, i like to keep it simple "i will be here from 5:30 to 6:30. i am NOT available after 6:30."

saying "up until about 7" is incredibly vague. knowing the people we know - dangerous, i've had that mean "well, it was 6:30 and i figured you weren't coming", to even meaning that 6:00 was too late, and some thinking that 9:00 was spot on for arrival.

i picked up a phrase recently i like (from a tv show). i've used the concept before, but not with quite the impact of this: AIS - Ass In Seat. usage: AIS@1:30PM ; meaning: effectively, literally, you are in the car, ready to go (packed, fed, washed, relieved, zoom) at the indicated time. period, end of sentence.

AIS is really useful in that it's pretty tough to be vague, i think. it eliminates the "let's leave at 1:30" which means to some "walking out the door", which might entail packing, and a pleasant time spent chatting while getting the snacks together, locking up, and ... it's now 2:30. oops. also: "i'll pick you up at 1:30", which of course means that to some "i'll arrive at 1:30, and we'll figure out what to do from there... sorry, i'm still doing laundry, and i wanted a sit down lunch at , we can take off around 4 or 5, how's that?". nope. AIS@1:30 - i arrive, you are ready to go, zoom. snicker.

then there's meeting someone with trip time in between, 5, 15, 30, 60 minutes, doesn't matter. "when are you coming over" - "uh, 7" - and well, 7 is the arrival time? or is 7 the leaving time? or ... usually, for me, i'm good about the leaving times. vagaries of chance determine destination times ;) though often they are somewhat consistent. estimating duration is a bitch for me.

as for navajo, i was thinking that in some languages, computer and human, modifers and important key parts don't happen where they're useful for speakers of other language, most notably english (i think). one wonders where and what i learned early as sometimes i'll talk about something for a bit, without mentioning key things like nouns until the end :> sometimes modifiers/conditions... mmmm...

#

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Um, "in bed"?

[cos]

Amazing. We've stumbled into one of the few fortune cookies in existence that becomes less funny when you add "in bed". I hadn't thought of that!

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

You don't believe people who are able to use their brains aren't sexy? With the inclusion of ... in bed, it becomes more allusion as opposed to, well, literal.

[kiya]

That's a nice one.

My favorite fortune cookie is still "Lovers in triangle not on square", received when I was out with my then-fiance and my then-boyfriend. ;)

[cos]

That's the best situationally-aware fortune I've heard of in a while :)

My former context-free favorite was the one that said, "ignore previous fortune"

[sexykneesocks.livejournal.com]

my. i got the same one when out with mom, but talking about my then triangle, now dissolved. ... bizare.

[upsilon.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've seen the "illiterate" fortune before, actually.

Weirdest fortune I've ever encountered:

"Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice."

[superfinemind.livejournal.com]

Only good Paul Frank shirt I've ever seen was a monkey reading, with words in a circle around it: "If you are illiterate, you can't read this."

...What is a Sun D1000 RAID?

[cos]

If you follow the link you can see some pictures of a D1000. It's a pack of disks.

What's a Paul Frank shirt? Other than being a shirt that apparently may have a picture and message on it.

[superfinemind.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Okay. Daddy's looking at cameras lately, and a lot of the fancy ones from Canon are D(x)00.

Paul Frank is an artist who does motifs for (usually girls') clothing. Tshirts and pajamas and things like that. His style often looks, to me, like he draws using only MS Paint and its Circle/Oval tool, but maybe that's just me.

http://www.paulfrank.com/

...Not, afaik, related to Lisa Frank, who mostly does garish rainbow-hued stationery/school supplies with disgustingly cute motifs. (Twin golden retriever puppies was the least overcute motif, back when I was the right age for her to be popular.)