Introverts, how is your day?

[Pseudonym]

Been mild all week but sodding freezing today. Literally. And annoyingly, despite the weather saying there'll be snow, none for me since I live on the coast. I WANT SNOW!

[Van Buren Supernova]

For one thing, it's only funny if you've seen the rest of the show and are familiar with the many situations and characters that have come in and out of their lives. But that aside, it's just not that great.

 

Precisely. I think that is why I can't pinpoint a single episode to explain why I like it.

And it's very easy to dismiss the show as annoying when you only watch couple of episodes here and there.

 

 

Oh my god, I just came across a video that has my doppelganger in it. She's wrapped in a sheet with just her face poking out and... I swear that's my face. :O I won't post it, because it'll be like 'here, this is what I look like' but I'm more than a bit weirded out.

 

Oh dear, now you are accountable for everything she does..!

That is creepy. I saw doppelgangers before, it's amusing, but I probably freak out if I see mine.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I think I'd like meeting my double -- assuming she was basically a decent person, of course.  Wouldn't care to have someone running around robbing banks, claiming to be me!

 

It's theoretically possible that I have an actual twin somewhere (not necessarily identical).  That is the person I'd actually like to meet.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

My dad met his doppelgänger at a teachers' conference about 30 years ago. He introduced the family (the 4 of us) to the guy either that year or the next.

[Pseudonym]

You might be a twin?

 

Ha, did he really look just like your dad?

 

I have another doppelganger in the same city as me that I keep getting mistaken for, but I've never actually met her. I should ask for her name the next time it happens and look her up - but I'm wary, what if I look her up and think she's hideous?

[Van Buren Supernova]

Sweet fancy moses, I know exactly what you mean. That is what happens to me everytime I catch my reflection in public.

 

At home, I could at least prepare and brace myself. Lucky, no doppelganger. Been told that I look like who and who, but only look-alike, and they (who said those) are blind like bats.

[Carol the Dabbler]

You might be a twin?

 

I have another doppelganger in the same city as me that I keep getting mistaken for, but I've never actually met her. I should ask for her name the next time it happens and look her up - but I'm wary, what if I look her up and think she's hideous?

As I said, it's *theoretically* possible that I have a twin. My mother, who generally couldn't gain weight on a bet, gained 40 pounds while she was pregnant, and I only weighed 5 pounds 11 ounces -- which would apparently be more consistent with twins. And of course she was under full anesthesia for the delivery. So it's *possible* that either there was a mix-up or that the doctor was running a side business in black- market babies.

 

If people kept confusing me with another woman around here (which is where I was born), I'd sure want to meet her, just in case she really was my twin. But you're right, some people see a strong resemblance where others see no similarity at all. I guess we all focus on different things. So you might think that your "twin" looks nothing at all like you. Still -- aren't you curious?

[Pseudonym]

I am curious - I look so like this other girl I was once walking to work and a car pulled up alongside me. I thought 'great, some weirdo, here we go,' turned to look at the guy, who stared at me in befuddlement for a second and then said "Oh! Sorry, I thought you were my daughter." 

 

I'd had people insist I was in school with them, people tell me they saw me on the bus, someone was adamant I used to work with them. All very weird. 

 

I'm generally fairly confident in my appearance, but i hate having my photo taken because I'm so hyper aware of it I usually look completely awkward and messed up. It always knocks my confidence. So if I saw this girl, and thought she was ugly, that would a major knock. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Two people can look a lot alike, even if one is beautiful and one isn't.  I've seen that.

 

The electrician who wired our house kept looking familiar to me, but it took me a while to figure out why.  It was because she's a dead ringer for the hypothetical woman that Dustin Hoffman was trying to look like in Tootsie.  Please note that I'm NOT saying she looks like Dustin Hoffman (who is a perfectly nice-looking man, but pretty marginal as a woman).  I'm just saying that he was trying to look like her in Tootsie.  He was passable -- but it looks much better on her (very nice, in fact)!

 

I wouldn't have dared to tell her that, though, for fear that she'd take it the wrong way.

[Pseudonym]

Very true. Ha, no, I don't think anyone would take 'you look like a man in drag' as a compliment. :lol:

 

I wish there were more female tradespeople. I hate having men in my house, I'd feel much more comfortable with women or a mixed team. 

[J.P.]

But then the tradeswomen would have to go into houses of all kind of… men. This is even more uncomfortable.

[Pseudonym]

Seems to be mostly women, housewives etc who are able to be home in the day, letting in men though? Or is that me being scarily traditionalist? :O

[J.P.]

Could be. :P

[Pseudonym]

Mixed teams is definitely the best bet then.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

My dad's doppelgänger was pretty close to a dead ringer for looks. The big difference was height as the other guy was a couple of inches taller. My extended family would have been doing double takes if they saw the guy.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Seems to me that the main problem with mixed teams would be if it was mandatory, in which case we'd be right back to hiring people because of their gender rather than because of their abilities (and I hate that, even when it's me they're hiring).  Perhaps the all-round best solution would be teams, period.  Even if it happened to be two women, that'd be OK.  Our electrician had her adult daughter assisting her (which was a nice change from all the sweaty men with butt cracks*).

 

 

* to be fair, they were a small minority -- most of the guys were very presentable (and perspired only under appropriate conditions)

 

[Pseudonym]

Not mandatory, just more often. And teams are fine, but teams of men could go either way, much better or infinitely worse. 

[T.o.b.y]

Funny, I have never yet had a problem with workmen. Everyone any landlord of mine or of my parents' ever hired has been friendly, professional and trustworthy. Makes me nervous any time something breaks because some day our luck has to end.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Not mandatory, just more often.

 

If '"more often" is a legal requirement, then it's mandatory (just not all the time).  But if it happens naturally, yeah, then I'd be perfectly happy with mixed teams (assuming they're competent of course).  Some jobs really only take one person, though, in which case it'd be an unnecessary expense to hire a team.

 

Funny, I have never yet had a problem with workmen.

 

Me neither, actually, except for one nervous newbie that the plumbing company sent out (and even he was pleasant enough).  When I phoned the company a couple days later to say that we still had the problem, they sent a supervisor, who fixed it good and proper.  Next time we had occasion to call them, they sent the nervous newbie again, but this job was more straightforward, and he had obviously learned that sort of thing just fine.

[Pseudonym]

It's not the doing it wrong, it's more people being inappropriate, or the fear of them being. 

 

For example, I had someone out to spray my house for woodworm. I was on my own in the house with him, which always makes me uneasy. First thing he did when he walked in was ask me to make him a cup of tea, which as you all know irritates the life out of me. Then stood there 'chatting' for ages rather than getting on with his work - I managed to work from home for the morning but I still needed him to get done asap so I could go into the office. He sprayed upstairs, then asked for another cup of tea. I had asked earlier, to avoid an awkward silence, about the weirdest things he'd found in his job, meaning insect/pest wise, which he knew because he told me about some National Trust places he'd done. Then, on the second cup of tea, he told me a story about one of his colleagues moving a young woman's bed to spray under it and finding a box of sex toys, which he laid out on her bed in size order. I didn't find that particularly funny, I could just imagine how humiliated she must have been - too humiliated to complain I would imagine. 

Then he started on the personal questions. He liked sussing out people's lives from the photos they displayed, but he'd noticed I didn't have any photos around the house. Was I married? Was a seeing a young man? Or a young woman? Why wasn't I?

I didn't find him threatening, but he was there to spray the house for pests, not to stand around drinking tea and asking me personal questions, not to mention the unprofessional story about the sex toys. If I had happened to find him physically intimidating as well I would have been super uncomfortable. 

 

I've had plasterers in that I was uneasy around, but I had a male flatmate at the time so he mainly dealt with them. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Fortunately I don't recall ever needing to deal with anything worse than some moderate chit-chatters, and depending on my mood, I might even enjoy that.

[Pseudonym]

Pretty hard not to take something personally when you ask someone to go somewhere with you, they respond fairly enthusiastically, but then don't answer when you ask when they are free, and when you specify a night they are busy. 

[Artemis]

^ I know the feeling.  Who were you asking?

 

 

[Pseudonym]

Just one of my friends. I mean, I know she is busy, but I feel not offering a different day is a pretty clear indicator.

[Pseudonym]

Have any of you ever had a particularly fun new years eve? (As an adult.) It's one of those evenings that always gets hyped up and yet whenever I do make the effort to do something I always have a sh*tty time.