Ring around the collar

[surgilator_68]

I was at a customers today who was asking what to do about the ring around the collar on her husbands shirt. I asked if she was using hot water and she was. Then I asked what she was using for detergent. She goes into the other room and hands me the bottle of Downy. I said this is Fabric Softener, what do you use for detergent.
She said this is what I use. It took everything I had in me to keep from laughing. I explained that Fabric Softener is not used for cleaning and won't clean anything. I suggested that she use Tide and put 1/4 cap of Downy in the dispenser. Next thing you know, she hands me a huge box of dryer sheets and asked what these are for. I told her that's for the dryer. One sheet per load.

We then went to the dishwasher because she wasn't getting clean dishes. Again I asked what she was using and she hands me the huge box of OxiClean. So I went over that with her too. It made for an exciting day.

 

[passatdoc]

LOL!!

 

[appnut]

Oh good grief Jason.  Where do thesee people find out how bass ackward the uses for the products they are attempting to use. 

 

[dirtybuck]

By Any Chance...

Was her name Rose Nylund? Nah, it couldn't have been...even Rose wasn't that dumb.

How old is this woman? I've seen both men and women do stupid things at the laundromat, but not knowing fabric softener and detergent do two totally different things for your laundry definitely takes the cake.

 

[arbilab]

No point explaining the distinction between hydrophilic and hydrophobic, eh?

"Well it was in a bottle in the laundry aisle......"

 

[iheartmaytag]

How funny!!

Now go hide the Drain-o because she is about to Douche.

 

[mrb627]

Young and Dumb?

She sounds like she falls into the young and dumb category. We suspect she cannot clean anything and her cooking probably isn't worth a damn either. Wonder how her Mother handled such things.

Malcolm

 

[mrboilwash]

Maybe just an illiterate ?

 

[washerboy]

True it is good for a chuckle, but I have  clients that are borderline on the IQ scale, they present as average but after you talk with them for a few minutes you realize something's not right. The lady could be borderline. I've had clients in the past pour bleach all over their color clothing thinking it would get them cleaner. There are still many people with limited reading skills that rely on package pictures to tell them what the product is/does. Doesn't Downey have a picture of a female face swaddling a towel? I guess one could figure girl with clean towel must mean the stuff in the bottle does that.

 

[mrb627]

Images

A Girl with her face buried in a towel could mean a lot of things... LOL!

Malcolm

 

[foraloysius]

I once talked to an American guy who said that his whites weren't really white. He said that he put the detergent in the thing in the centre of the machine. I told him that was where the softener should go, not the detergent. He told me I knew nothing about American washers....

 

[rp2813]

These are probably the same people who log onto "epinions" or other sites and give negative reviews to appliances that are perfectly capable of providing excellent results.

 

Just like a lot of educators do, you need to toss out the extremes at either end to get the real results.

 

[polkanut]

OMG, I've heard it all now!

 

[whirlcool]

Years ago I remember my sister asked my mother how to deal with ring around the collar. Her response? If your family knows how to bathe properly, it shouldn't be a problem!

Yes, they are out there! I recently had a phone call from a woman who was referred to me by a friend of hers who is one of my clients. She asked if she could go out of town for three days and leave her black lab in the house while she was gone. Is that ok, she asked? I just told her a black lab is a DOG not a CAT!

 

[ronhic]

Adult Literacy.....is my field

...and according to the last OECD study in which the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and most of Europe participated in, the US has approximately:

 

- 48% of its' WORKING AGE population who do NOT have sufficient literacy (reading, writing, comprehension and numeracy) with which to cope with the demands of modern day life....

 

Just take a moment to think about how BIG that problem is.....

 

We have a population of about 23 million in Australia, a working age population of about 13 million and about 45% of those have problems.....thats about 6.5 million people who are unable to cope....

 

...and 'cope' means:

 

- read a newspaper

- comprehend instructions

- add up and balance a statement

- assist their kids with home work

- use a computer

 

It also means that, whilst they may participate in the work force, they are at risk of losing their jobs because they can't keep pace with the demands that are placed on them to engage with technology, they can be a burdon on a firms OH&S because they can't read or understand signs and from a langauge perspective, they may not all understand English so there can be workplace disputes....

 

All of this drains the employer, removes employee confidence and ability and can manifest itself both socially as they can be excluded and in their children as research shows that poor literacy can actually be 'inherited'....

 

So my advice and mantra are to help everyone you see struggling with packaging and when someone says 'I've left my glasses at home', they may actually mean 'I can't read this'.

 

 

 

 

[thor]

When I was a teenger my youngest brother's hair started to look rather, well, greasy. We all thought he was making a statement of some kind, until a couple of weeks later my mother confronted him on the subject, and he said he'd noticed it too since he'd started to use the new shampoo. "What new shampoo?", my mother asked. "The one in the blue bottle", my brother replied. The new blue bottle wasn't shampoo, it was hair conditioner...

 

[whirlcool]

I saw a very strange advert on TV today for the first time. I didn't get a chance to catch the company promoting it but it went like this.

It shows a grungy looking 20 something sitting on a chair. His arms were both totally covered in tattoos. Then he said something like this.

"I have tattoos and opinions, my opinions are more REALER".

That was it. Nothing more.

Opinions? Any idea what that was about?

Are they saying that people with tattoos are less literate than those without them?