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As well as the serious side of our business we quite often get asked some (what we think) are silly questions here are a few examples
but first we feel you need a history lesson. George Bernard Shaw once said "The British and the Americans are two great peoples divided by a common language" It's this common language that causes lots of fun Pedestrian crossings (walkways) We in the UK have named our pedestrian crossing after animals there 3 types ( i wont go into detail here) but they are
Before and after every crossing in the UK for 5 meters there are "Zig-Zag" Lines painted on the side of the road these actually define the "No Parking" limits of the crossing however we are once again convinced there are Hundreds of people who think they are parking places for Smart cars Our road signs are just as bad if you are driving here you may occasionally see a red-bordered triangle with the words "Loose Chippings" written inside it THIS is not a direction sign to the village of loose chippings but a warning that the road has just been re-surfaced. Occasionally we have construction on our roads but do we put a sign up that says "construction"? do we hell instead we put up a red-bordered white triangle with what looks like to a foreign visitor a man putting up an umberella Again there hundereds of foreigners that think we can predict exactely where it will rain. Subway here actually means an Underground pedestrian crossing its not the entrance to a "tube" (Underground) station. Here is a small selection of the questions our drivers get asked.
I remember a couple of years ago I picked some people up from Heathrow and from the moment they got in the car all they could do was complain about how everything here was small compared to back home the conversation went something like this. "gee aren't your cars small? ours are twice as big" "The roads here are tiny my driveway is bigger" After about an hour of this i was starting to get a bit bored with it all then this happened "Driver whats that building over there?" My reply "Its a hospital" "Thats tiny the hospitals were I come from are ten times the size" My reply "I am not surprised thats a mental hospital". One of the most confusing things we have to deal with is the fact that most American cities only have one street called "such and such" so some people just refer to the name IE instead of saying "Liverpool St" they say "liverpool" the reason i mention this is because a couple of years back some passengers got into one of our cars and gave the driver the name of their hotel the driver said he wasnt sure where it was so the passenger said "its ok its on liverpool" they managed get 120 miles outside of London before anyone realised the mistake. Sometimes Just coming to the UK is enough to throw some peoples body clocks out of whack we collected some people from Gatwick took them to their hotel in London and they booked another journey for 05:30 the next morning. At around midnight that day we got a call from them demanding to know where their car was and why were we late?. Yup They forget to set their watches to UK time they thought it was 05:30 am... But I have to stress this silliness only happens on very very rare occasions but when it does ourselves and the passengers always seem to see the funny side of things and thats makes our job so much easier So welcome to England where we all talk funny drive on the wrong side of the road and its always raining. :). P.S. No-one in this office understands Cricket either.... |