Dumbass of the Day

I had a "Dumbass of the Day" for yesterday that just has to be posted and added to my collection, especially since it was NOT from one of my family members this week.

First, let me say that I now work for an Environmental remediation firm. What that means is that we go in and right the wrongs that have been done or have happened in buildings and in the ground before they demo buildings or build new ones. We remove things like asbestos, lead based paint, mold, rodent shit, sometimes meth labs or stuff like scorpions and all kinds of other hazardous waste.

Always when we give a quote for removal, we ask the caller to send us the reports that are usually generated by various Environmental Consulting firms. In most cases, it is a giant asbestos reports several pages long that talks about what was tested, what was found and in how much quantity as well as having the square footage of the areas tested.

So yesterday I get a call from a guy from Travelers Insurance about the fact that he had gotten a quote from a place for $37,000. He wanted to get another quote and told me that he was not sure that it was correct. He also mentioned that he was not sure if these people even had a license and he told me he really did not care who did the work.

I saw this as an opening to get a potential $20-30,000 job. I proceeded to tell him about our company, that we have been in business 27 years with the same owner and are licensed to do this sort of work in 7 different states, hoping this would prove to be a great selling point for him. I then told him that before I turned anything over to our estimators, I would need to get the asbestos report.

The nice man proceeded to tell me that he could do better than that, he could even send me pictures of the property, the other quote etc. and I told him that would be great and gave him my email address and got his phone number, just in case for some reason I did not receive the report and pictures.

A few hours later when indeed I had not received the email, I called him. My email address actually has a hyphen in it and I was real suprised at what the man told me. "Well," he said, "I am having problems with the whole hyphen thing".

"What's the problem? I asked.

"I don't really know what that is you see. I was not very good at English. I was more of a math person." Being patient and understanding, I told him I could relate because I am most definitely more of and English person and not a math person at all.

So I proceeded to tell him it was a 'dash' and then led him step by step on his computer keyboard via phone, to just between the "0" and the "+/=" keys. Finally our conversation was over and we hung up.

Shortly afterwards, I received the email and there were lots of attachments to it. I opened the first two and found the Travelers reports that he had about the property. I then noticed the rest looked to be photos because they were all .jpg files, but that the asbestos report did not seem to be there.

Before calling the man, I decided I better open every attachment just to make sure that it was not there.

Sure as shit it was. He had actually taken a photo of the report (probably thinking I could read it from that) sitting on his desk! I kid you not, I was laughing so hard. So I emailed him and explained that he would need to scan the report to me. And I received nothing back. Finally I get another email from him, this time he photographed every single friggin page of the report.

Finally, I asked, "Can you fax it to me?", which I just received late this afternoon. Now, I really felt sorry for the poor guy, but I had to wonder to myself, is the man old? Or perhaps does not use the computer much? Maybe blonde?

I vote for the latter choice here. I guess I'd just feel better about calling him a dumbass. I don't really want to because I felt so bad.

It was funny and I just had to share. It was too good not too!

Peace out peeps!