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...

[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.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Um, "in bed"?

[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. ;)

[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?