What is the dumbest thing someone has asked you while walking by?
Mine was yesterday. Two couples were walking by. There was the common what are you surveying questions. Then one of the gentlemen asked if I could take his picture... I was running the GPS rover.
They almost always ask about pictures with a rover. No idea why.
Thadd,
So did you take his picture?
My data collector has a camera.:-P
Best one I heard was during Survey USA day in 2011 (March 19, 2011) and sort of "news related" since that was shortly after the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan. I was set up doing static work on a BM on a high peak in the Portland area. Most of the questions from hikers were, are you measuring for radiation? or "are you measuring aftershocks?", "Air-quality", "how high are we", and "are you getting paid for this?" :-S
Q. What are you doing?
Me: Surveying.
Q. What are you surveying for?
Me: $18.50 an hour.
Q: What are you surveying for?
Me: The city is putting in an overhead invisible sanitary sewer line down this street.
😀
not really a question, but just unbelievable..
Me.. Standing waist deep in a garbage and rain filled ditch getting topo along a busy road..
Old man on sidewalk engages me to tell me he used to "survey", but us modern guys have it too easy !!
I just spread my arm out and invited him to join me on the easy job!
Q. What are you surveying for?
Me: We're thinking of putting in a water-slide amusement park.
There aren't nearly as many old men telling me how they used to survey in the WPA or the CCC as there where when I started in this business.
Not really a question, but it was funny:
I was retracing lots in a recorded subdivision for a court battle over access easements. I had been working most of the morning digging up monuments and tieing everything together. The landowner, who lived on the adjacent lot and was party to the suit, was watching me from his yard all day (the attorney I was working for warned me about this guy). When I started to pack up to leave, he came down the hill. He said "Well, I want you to know that whatever you found will never stand up in court because you obviously have no idea what you are doing." I asked him "how's that?" His reply - "Because I watched you all day and you never checked your magnetic declination once." I said "you're right. Got me on that one." I smiled and kept packing.
Oh, our side won the case.
i was operating a gps rover one morning that a snow squall kicked up. bout two inches are on the ground when a lady walks out and asks if i am measuring the depth of snow with 'that machine' hmmm? i told her 'no,just staking out runway six'
Adjoining Lady with more attitude than needed: "Can I help you?"
Me, just a syrupy sweet as can be: "No ma'am, been do this for close to thirty years, if I ain't got it yet, don't think a medical secretary's going to help"
I'd already talked to her husband, I'd have talked to her too if she wasn't so snotty about it.
> Adjoining Lady with more attitude than needed: "Can I help you?"
>
WHENEVER I get this question I always hand them whatever I'm holding, a rod, a shovel, a plumb bob. And tell them to hold it real still right there......
They never do. But they never bother me again.
I have heard most of the questions, either in person or through someone's story telling, but some of the answers are new to me. Several answers are gems. Thanks to all for a good chuckle or three.
SJ
> WHENEVER I get this question I always hand them whatever I'm holding, a rod, a shovel, a plumb bob. And tell them to hold it real still right there......
>
> They never do. But they never bother me again.
Ha ha...It always crossed my mind to say "well....can you swing a sledge"? But I never got the nerve.
One of the common ones around here "is this where the new 4 lane is going", followed by the usually "ha ha ha". One guy did this to me in a residental area, and I walked up close to him, looked right and left, and said in kind of a quiet voice "who told you, its suppose to be a secret".
During deformation surveys, I always get asked "Is it moving yet?". My answer is always the same, "Everything's moving."
Ditto Mescobar_rpls...
Q. What are you surveying?
Me: Overhead transparent sewer lines 😀
Me: (Selecting who is asking carefully)
"24 storey condo piggery with clear glass outside sewage line to check the health of the pigs"
TNAI