"So what do you do for sports?"

[tahnan]

Oh. Dear. Lord.

A few months ago, I asked, "What's the question that you get in your line of work/play/being that everyone asks and it's well-intentioned but you hate it anyway?" I didn't even think to ask, "What's the worst question someone could ask you?"

For instance,

• So what's the best language--English?


• How 'bout that one with all the clicks, you know, [click][click][click][click][click]?


• I used to read the World Book Encyclopedia when I was younger, and it seems like it all goes back to Latin.

I want to be clear that I like my wife's family. But I can't be nearly so positive about her mother's sister's choice of husbands. I went out there with the full intention of being social, but I swear to god, call me New England Ivy League liberal blue-state elitist if you like, but I could feel my IQ dropping just being in the room with him.

Comments

[quantumkitty.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

How about "I say 'like' all the time, and I know that's wrong"?

Or how about (I heard this from my Latin professor all the time) "Construction X in English is really Construction Y in Latin"?

[jadelennox]

Hello, you Georgia, Tech School ... well, can't argue with the other two.

Here, have an icon of a kitten.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Georgia? I've lived less than half my life in Georgia: seven as a child, five in high school. As opposed to seven years in Massachusetts, four in Rhode Island, which is nearly as much. (Plus some time other varying states.)

And tech school? I suppose, but I did attend an Ivy League as an undergrad, and I'm now teaching at one, so I suspect I still qualify.

And anyway, Quantumkitty already gave me an icon of a kitten.

[jadelennox]

Yeah, but my kittens are cuter.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

There's really nothing I can say to this that won't end up as a perhaps-unjustifiably-broad generalization about your in-laws' state of residence.

Well, except 'I'm so sorry.' :)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

In fact, the relevant aunt and uncle are from Arkansas. If only she'd married Bill Clinton!

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

There is a language with clicks?

[jmjoyce.livejournal.com]

Yeah, some African languages have tongue-clicks. If you've ever seen the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, it's the language the bushman speaks. I believe it's called !Kung. (The ! is a click, I think.)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I think !Kung was his name? Xhosa has clicks--in fact, that initial "X" is a click.

[mildmannered.livejournal.com]

aaaaagh

[prog.livejournal.com]

I find this delightful. WAIT DON'T THE GERMANS HAVE A WORD FOR THAT! WHATS WITH THE GERMANS ANYWAY HA HA

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

I loathe this... I see it coming in a mere 24 hours... "What do you do?" "Oh you work on computers, oh can you fix my virus-ridden XP machine.."

I wonder if doctors get harassed into making on the spot medical diagnosis at their family gatherings?

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

They totally do. In fact, sometimes I do that to my dad. *hides head in shame*

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

Shame on you. ;-) Although according to my partner (who is a nurse) she always gets asked for advice at her family gatherings... And random strangers also ask her for advice. Things like that make me want to switch to being a park ranger.

[colorwheel.livejournal.com]

then they would ask you about bison or camping. i have an old bf who was a park ranger. :)

[dtm]

I heard a joke about that once.

A doctor and a lawyer met at some social gathering.

"Say, Bob," says the doctor, "I'm always getting asked for medical advice at these things, but you seem to be able to avoid having people ask you about their legal problems. What's your secret?"

"Oh, if anyone asks for advice, I give it, but then afterwards send them a bill at my standard rate. Word gets around."

Two days later the doctor received a bill in the mail.

[siderea]

There was a wonderful comment on slashdot concerning the commentor's experience with exactly this problem. A relative of his who works for Merry Maids or the equivalent cornered him at a family party and started asking for his help with her computer. He turned to her and said, "Hey, this is what I do for a living! I don't ask you over to my place and then ask you to clean my kitchen." She, paused, thought about this, and allowed as how it's true.

And now she comes over to his place twice a month and cleans is. And he provides her with all the tech support she wants.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

That's fairly awesome. :)

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

Well, since I'm trying to go back to school, I could possibly leverage my siblings teaching experience, into helping me pass Statistics 2. ;-) I fix their PC, and they ensure that I don't flunk out of Northeastern.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

My worst questions are the followup questions to "So, what do you do?" When I say, "I'm a programmer; I write software," there are folks who follow up with "Really? So what exactly do you do?" or "How does that work?"

What I am supposed to say to that? "I sit down at my computer and type?" Give them a CS 101 course? Luckily, I can usually dodge the issue by telling folks that it's classified.

[dtm]

It could be worse. They'll introduce you to someone who puts together basic flash stuff in Macromedia Director, assuming that you're in the same field.

Or even worse, they'll introduce you to someone who does actually do the same thing you do, but doesn't care about it at all.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Having already submitted "Do you juggle chainsaws?" from my former vocation (and current avocation), I'll take this opportunity to rail about one I get surprisingly often as an Apple engineer: "How come [product X] sucks so much?"

There are 2 possible scenarios here: either I had nothing to do with product X (likely), in which case why the hell are you asking me, or I did contribute to product X, in which case the question amounts to "why are you incompetent?"

[probably-lost.livejournal.com]

Getting asked for advice is almost a relief. I get a lot of, "Ohhhh. I hated math."

[dtm]

Yeah, I remember how an affiliation with math could spontaneously elicit self-criticism. ("I never could get X", where "X" ranges from "algebra" to "diff eqs")

Now I only get that if I look young enough that people think a follow up to "What do you do?" is "What did you get your degree in?"

Which, frankly, isn't that often any more.