Fine example of Dumasaphobia

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t suffer from Dumasaphobia {dŭm’ăs-ə-fō’bē-ə} The Fear of Stupid People.  Over the years I have noted this continuing decline in our society that is a mix of lowered educational standards and technology making making the general populous lazy.  The craze of texting is also becoming a severe problem in getting people to spell simple words properly.  As well as all the near miss accidents I’ve avoided over the past few years.  Nothing like looking in the rear-view mirror at a stop light just to see someone eyes get really huge as they look up from their “smartphone” to stomp on the brake pedal prior to colliding with the rear end of my car.

Although, continually I’m told that I’m being overly hateful or cynical of the human population.  Yet here is a perfect example.  This is a payment stub I received today from a customer.  They couldn’t even do simple addition.

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If they can’t do this, I can’t possibly expect them to answer very simple questions like:

• What version of Windows or Mac are you using?
• When you click on the start menu, do you have 1 or 2 columns?  (which is frequently met with “What’s a column?”)
• What was the error message?

The list goes on.  Things that would normally help me, help the customer.  Now the best part is yet to come.  In 1 month they will get a bill for $5.00.  Call me up and complain to me that they made a 2 month payment and that I should check my records (and become angry with me because my records are wrong in their mind).  This will lead to my asking them for a copy of the canceled check for proof.  Once they have that then I have to show them their mathematical error.  Just so they can say “fine” in a huff and make the payment.  No thank you for finding the mistake, no I’m sorry for putting you through this trouble…