I work in a central reservation office of an airline. After more than 130,000 conversations --
I've made it through all the calls from adults who didn't know the difference between a.m. and p.m., from mothers of military recruits who didn't trust their little soldiers to get it right, ..., from the man who wanted to ride inside the kennel with his dog so he wouldn't have to pay for a seat, from the woman who wanted to know why she had to change clothes on our flight between Chicago and Washington (she was told she'd have to make a change between the two cities) ...
...a man not knowing how to spell the name of the town he was from, to another not recognizing the name as "Iowa" as being a state, to another who thought he had to apply for a foreign passport to fly to West Virginia. They are the enemy and they are everywhere.
In the history of the world there has never been as much communication and new things to learn as today. Yet, after I asked a woman from New York what city she wanted to go to in Arizona, she asked, "Oh... is it a big place?"
I talked to a woman in Denver who had never heard of Cincinnati, a man in Minneapolis who didn't know there was more than one city in the South ("wherever the South is"), ...a man in Dallas who tried to pay for his ticket by sticking quarters in the pay phone he was calling from.
..a man asked if we flew to exit 35 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Then a woman asked if we flew to area code 304.
...I was asked, "When an airplane comes in, does that mean it's arriving or departing?"
... I suffered a direct hit from a woman who wanted to fly to Hippopotamus, NY. After I assured her that there was no such city, she became irate and said it was a big city with a big airport. I asked if Hippopotamus was near Albany or Syracuse. It wasn't. Then I asked if it was near Buffalo. "Buffalo!" she said. "I knew it was a big animal!"
...
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/aagent.html
Needless to say, these people vote after watching the latest news on American Idol.