Not always right

Is it just me, or are people getting stupider and stupider these days?

I work at a precious metals refinery. Like it sounds, we buy precious metals. So yesterday I got a phone call from a customer who asked me what we would pay for a triple band ring. That being rather vague, I had to ask some follow up questions:

Me: "What karat of ring is it?"

Him: "It's, uh...I don't know what karat it is."

Me: "Okay, well we can't give you a quote without that information, but just as an estimate if it was 14 kt it would be--"

Him: "No, it's not 14 kt. How much for a triple band ring?"

Me: "Again, I can't give you a quote without knowing what type of metal it is, but if you brought it in, we'd be able to give you an accurate estimate."

Him: "Okay, thanks anyway."

Ten minutes later he calls back.

H: "How much for a .11 karat ring?"

M: "I'm afraid there's no such thing as .11 karat."

H: "But I need to know how much it would be."

M: "And I'm still going to need to know what gold karat it is."

H: "It's not gold."

M: "So it's...silver?"

H: "Yeeaaahhh."

M: "Okay, well, an average silver band would weigh about 5 grams, which would give you about $4.00."

H: "That doesn't sound right. It's not that small. It's point 11 karats."

M: "Wait, you mean weight? As in, .11 carats?"

H: "Yeah."

M: "Okay, well, give me a minute."

At this point I assume that he has a small jeweler's scale and has weighed it in diamond weights--carats--because he couldn't figure out how to change the scale to grams or pennyweights. Not being all that familiar with carats since we don't do gemstones, I Googled the conversion factor. I was sure that something had gone wrong, however, when I saw the results of my search.

M: "Uh, sir, .11 carats turns out to be less than a thousandth of a gram."

H: "Okay."

M: "You can't have a ring that weighs less than a thousandth of a gram. It's physically impossible."

H: "That's what he said."

M: "That would mean your ring weighed less than 1/2,000th of a penny."

H: "I called the jeweler I bought it from and that's what he said."

M: "Oh, the stone in your ring weighs .11 carats! Unfortunately, we don't buy stones of any type, we'd only be able to buy the metal, and I'd need a weight on that to give you an accurate quote."

H: "It's point 11 carats!"

M: "Again, that is for your stone. We cannot buy the stone from you. The metal itself has an entirely different weight. Did the jeweler tell you a weight for the metal?"

H: [getting really angry] "No. Look, don't you have any point 11 carat rings around the shop that you could weigh up for me to see how much it would be?"

I had absolutely no words for this. Apparently this man believes that every ring in the world with a certain stone size has the same weight. And even if that were true, and assuming that we carried anything (being a refinery jewelry doesn't last long around here) why would we carry such a crappy ring? At this point, I decided to stop arguing with him.

M: "No. We don't. You'll just have to come in to get a quote on it."

H: "Fine. Goodbye."

20 minutes later, I'm working on another order, so my boss answers the phone. A few minutes later I hear my boss say "Sir, .11 is not a karat."