Or they are actually accurately describing their actual experiences, and you have the "sexism" thing so deeply programmed into your grey matter that you simply automatically think everything anyone says is 'sexist"... even if it is merely "hello".



Much like the time another Sgt (of very dark skin) and I were discussing the attitude of some officers that their commission not only makes them automatically correct 100% of the time, but that it also makes them morally, spiritually, and intellectually superior to all enlisted persons without exception.

The Hispanic corporal in the office, coming in on the end of the conversation and not seeing with whom I was conversing, began a tirade accusing me of racist comments. She did have the grace to blush when the other Sgt leaned out and read her the riot act about assumptions and jumping to contusions (as that is often the result of incorrect accusations of misconduct).


Please switch your outrage function from "always on" to "activate only on actual evidence".

"No," she says, we won't need the TomTom, "I know the way."

Approaching a T intersection - only options to turn left or right - I ask "Left or right?" Answer: "Straight ahead" Me: "We can only go left or right - which is it?" Her: "Straight ahead." Me (with increasing urgency): "We can't go straight ahead - do we go LEFT or RIGHT?" Her: "Straight ahead"
Mentally tossing a coin, I turned right. Me: "Is this the right way?" Her: "Yes, that's what I said, straight ahead."

And she thought I was being unreasonable to stop and plug in the TomTom.

At least the TomTom/Garmin comes with the useful On/Off button ... :oh:

On some of my European forays I drive a merc sprinter towing a trailer and the total length is longer than an average bus (40ft). As my trailer reversing skills are not the best, the ability to turn round and go back is limited to roundabouts or motorway junctions which on the peages can be 30 miles or more.
The sprinter has an elderly garmin built in and the sound is relayed over loud speakers in the cab but it has never been updated in 12 years so it doesn't know the latest roads etc. It has a male voice.
I now have an up to date Tom Tom which uses a female voice. The garmin invariably starts all the arguments and on long journeys its a source of amusement listening to the pair of them arguing. Sometimes I select foreign languages such as German or French to listen to the arguments and so as to hone my linguistic skills. One of the funny commands both of them agree on, and that amuses me , is when I drive from Paris to Barcelona area and they both say "Drive 610 miles and then turn left" and then they seem to go to sleep for the two days the journey takes me ( at 55 mph it's a long trip and I take my time as well ) The Irish female voice on the Tom Tom is quite nice when its all going ok but gets a bit of a strop and adopts attitude when you deviate from 'her' route. The garmin directions will turn you into a ploughed field if you let it and loses signal very easily in cities. They all do that but it's the recovery that is so slow from high rise buildings in cities and tunnels on the garmin but the Tom Tom is quite rapid.
Her indoors is a reasonable driver but in terms of directions marginally useless but my youngest daughter is a stellar navigator and seems to have a mentally inbuilt compass.
Dave

5aday ... I can relate to that ... Mrs CS will self admit that "navigation" is not a skill she has ... We're as my daughter (24) is first class with map, compass, gps etc and can hold a mental picture of the route being taken ... at least I contributed something in the DNA :ok:

My mother was hopeless at navigation - she had no sense of direction at all but despite this, she always insisted upon doing the navigation herself from the LHS.

I remember when I was but a child and we were returning to Yorkshire from a holiday in Scotland and travelling along the A66 from Penrith towards the A1 at Scotch Corner. The junction was a roundabout in those days and, as always, had a long queue of traffic. Having waited for well over an hour in the traffic jam, we finally reached the roundabout. "Thank the Lord for that" said my father - and then my mother directed him left off the roundabout to head up the A1 North!

Her excuse at the subsequent heated debrief in the next one hour queue of traffic back to the roundabout was, "we always go home up the A1 north".

I blame my father for listening to her.

Then there's the stubborn reluctance to accept fact....

A friend of mine insists she once drove from Salisbury to Leicester University in an hour and a half. Now that's 148 miles, requiring an average speed of 98.7 mph. Autoroute reckons on about 2hr 20 min.

"Surely mean two and a half hours?"
"Are you calling me a liar?"

:rolleyes:

Even an impatient driver like her, who once claimed that it was 'impossible' to drive at 30 mph on a road where she'd been pinched for doing 40 mph, couldn't possibly manage a 99 mph average for 90 min in an diseasel Vauxhall Astra estate on the A303/A34/M40/A43/M1.....:\

German SatNavs are indeed something else! A few years ago, a car a colleague and I once hired at Hamburg airport had one of those, with a female voice. It was quite polite initially "In dreihundert Metern, biegen Sie bitte rechts ab", but became more insistent until eventually screeching "JETZT RECHT!!" like some whip-wielding, leather-clad Brunhilde in a Hamburg dungeon (I would imagine...:eek:). I half expected "You haff been a very naughty boy - now ve must punish you!" to come next, but instead there was a pause, followed by rather a pouting "Wiederberechnung" in one of those "You've always got to know best" voices....

langleybaston, a pragmatic approach should be after 50 yrs

mrs K has a left / right issue but thank god there mr. GPS

About Nav's:

Navigator's gag amuses plane-spotters as fighter jet races through Snowdonia | Mail Online

could be a girl?

Re the left-handed, right-handed skills. My bro is left-handed and only has to do a journey once to be able to remember it. I'm right-handed and can do a journey ten times and still have trouble remembering all the turns. I don't have any trouble navigating from a map, or from following a list of a route.

I have this theory it's something to do with spatial awareness - he knows where he is in the landscape context. Turn me round twice, and I am lost.

Mrs Ascot with mother in law navigating was told to turn left at next roundabout and dutifully did so. 'Not that left dear, the next one'.

Boss on check ride with crusty old nav was given top of climb checks without being asked. Nav was told in no uncertain terms not to give anything without being asked. Entering the hold, 'drift nav'. 'Five' came back the reply. - Morale of story; never fall out with your nav.

Ask partner if she wants to drive or navigate every time.
If she picks drive, then choose a route that's easy to direct so has minimal interruptions to her conversation.
If navigate, then memorise the route. She will happily chat for the whole trip, and of course you are never interrupting her!

This, of course, presumes you can actually navigate!

Exascot ... M-in-L Nav ... That's a whole different area of pain :uhoh:

Thing, I presume you found it when it was the only car left in the car park?

Talking about foreign voices, I remembered my friends daughter (then 12) was learning Chinese and Spanish at school. I got asked to take here somewhere when her dad was working so I changed the voice to Chinese. Mandarin.

After a couple of chuckles she started to tell me what it was saying. I gave up.

Now this is one nav all of us need to aviod contact with.

Belgian woman, 67, picking up her friend from railway station ends up in Zagreb 900 miles away after satnav disaster | Mail Online

Clicker ... So much for Mental DR then :E

Most definitely was not - buggered his career for a while too.

My sister in law was due to take her mother to the local hospital (no more than 1/2 mile up the road) for a check up - she ended up at Salisbury - some 40 miles away, apparently the name of the hospital was similar & it was all Tom Tom's fault, yeah right.... :ooh:

Why? Was the pilot the Sqn Cdr or some other wheel, or what?

Seemed pretty harmless to me....:hmm:

And as for , all the female navigators with whom I've ever worked have been very good. 'Stupid' would probably have been lucky indeed if the back seater had actually been female.

I worked with him when he was on the OEU as a Flt Lt and when I bumped into him again a couple of years later, was surprised he hadn't been picked up in rank. His reply was to relate that incident - and that's why he hadn't been.

Haven't seen him for a while so no idea as to his latest status.

The girls did a lot better than the chaps (on average) in their nav aptitude tests apparently; and much worse than the chaps (on average) for pilot. :{

How completely ridiculous. Perhaps someone thinks that image brought the RAF's professionalism into disrepute. What has the Force become?