Stupid People, Stupid Rules Fascinate Me

Every once in awhile in this blog thingy, I like to highlight stupid people or stupid things, or stupid people following stupid rules.

I've got a couple more. Both are about how technology makes us jump through the dumbest hoops.

In Florida, a woman named Marci Robin was buying a Fiat 500X at a West Palm Beach, Florida dealership.

As we all know, when you buy a car, you have to sign a bunch of papers, and Robin was furiously signing away as she drew closer to driving away in her Fiat.

Then she came upon a weird one, to say the least. You know that one you see on line, where you have to check a box to demonstrate that "I Am Not A Robot."

She had to check the box as she was signing the papers. Yes, the real life, Marci Robin. Who by all accounts is not a robot. Who was sitting in that West Palm Beach Florida dealership. Right across from the sales associate who was feeding her the papers to sign, says Jalopnik.

Says Robin: "The sales guy was handing me paper after paper with a brief explanation of what each one was for, and he handed me that page - with literally nothing on it - and just matter-of-factly said, 'And this one is to ensure you're not a robot.'" 

Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik called the dealership and asked if this was all real. Yep. The dealership has to print out the papers to sign from a website, one that has the "I Am Not A Robot" reCAPTCHA security thingy to somehow prove the website visitor is not a robot.

When they print out the paperwork, the salesperson said. "It's not about us. In order to print the next one, you have to check that. So we print it out, and the customer checks that when we do."

It still sounds really strange. Torchinsky asked the salesperson if a robot came into the dealership with a Social Security number and a valid ID, would they sell that robot a car?

Yes. As the salesperson sort of explained. "You never know. They have that girl Alexa, and she can talk and make phone calls and stuff."

Meanwhile, a South Carolina teenager graduated from high school and his mom threw a party for him.  

Why not? Jacob Koscinski is a really smart kid. He graduated summa cum laude, so that means his grades were awesome. The mom, Cara Kosinski, ordered a cake from the local Publix Supermarket with the words "summa cum laude" on it.

When they got the cake back, it read, "Congrats Jacob! Summa  ---- Laude Class of 2018."

Yep, Publix censored that word, thinking of its "dirty", sexual connotation. Cara Kosinski shared a photo of the censored cake on Facebook. "I seriously couldn't make this crap up!!!!! Funny - not funny."

Jacob said he was humiliated because people were laughing at the censorship and he had to explain to  elderly relatives why other people were laughing.

When she ordered the cake, Koscinski took the time to write in the special instructions box of the online order that Summa Cum Laude was a Latin term for high academic honor and was not profane. It means "with the highest distinction," according to the Huffington Post, via the Washington Post. 

Publix explained that the online box where customers enter cake inscriptions is very temperamental.

The Washington Post said Public offered to make another cake, but Koscinski declined because Jacob only graduated once. The store refunded the $70 she spent on the cake and gave her a store gift card.

A Publix spokeswoman said the situation has been addressed, so the computer won't censor things that ought not to be censored or if it is, will be checked to make sure nothing stupid happens.

Teacher Loses Job Because Creepy Kid Stole Her Phone, Photos

This teacher was forced to resign because a student
swiped her phone, and distributed photos of her
he found in one of the phone's apps.  

Picture this scenario: A female high school teacher momentarily leaves her cell phone on a classroom desk to  deal with a brief issue.

A male high school student steals the phone and discovers the teacher had taken a couple of racy photos of herself, partly undressed, which were intended to turn her husband on around Valentine's Day.

Until the student swiped the phone, the only people who saw the photos were the teacher and her husband.

The teacher, named Leigh Anne Arthur had no intention of showing them to anyone else. She had simply forgotten to delete the photos.

The creepy high school boy decides it would be fun to spread the photos far and wide to his friends.

"He told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them," Arhur said, according to television station WSPA in Spartanburg, South Carolina. "Your day of reckoning is coming," he also said to the teacher.

So: In this scenario, who gets punished: The student, for stealing the phone and invading the teacher's privacy, or the teacher, for setting her phone down on a desk.

By the way, the 16 year old had to go through the trouble of opening the phone's apps to get at the pics, so it took a little effort It's not like Arhur left printouts of the photos on the desk for anyone who wandered by to see.

This is America, so of course the teacher gets punished. She was told by her school district to resign or get fired, so she resigned.

The school superintendent, David Eubanks, also said he figured Arhur was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I guess to school official's minds, there's nothing wrong with stealing the phone and invading privacy. Especially since it appears the student has gone unpunished.

The school district claims that the student will be punished, probably, and that Arthur was not where she should have been when she left her phone. (She says she had to attend to a problem in the hallway) and that she let students use her phone, which Arthur denies. And even if she did let them use her phone, does that give students the right to distribute her private photos far and wide?

We'll see if the teen actually gets punished.

This happened in small town South Carolina, and I kinda get how things sometimes work in small towns.  The kid is probably the offspring of some big fish in that small pond town, so the adults tread lightly.

The kid knows he can get away with anything because of this, so he does anything. I suspect that's why the stupid teen gave his little "day of reckoning" speech to the teacher.

Arthur was a rather popular teacher and at least 11,000 high school students, mostly in South Carolina, signed a petition asking that she be reinstated, says television station WLFF in Greenville, South Carolina.

But Arthur, understandably, isn't sure she wants to go back to her job teaching electrical engineering and computer programming in the school district.

Mostly because she doesn't want to work at a school where the students are running the show, and not the educators.

As for the 16 year old, Arthur is considering pressing charges, so maybe he'll get his "day of reckoning,"  too.

We can only hope.