Honestly, I Still Have No Idea What The Number Is

I work for a small IT company that sometimes handles hardware. Our intern is good at heart but sometimes easily overwhelmed. He is communicating an eight-digit serial number from a piece of hardware to my coworker by speakerphone.

The intern starts out with the first part of the serial number.

Intern: “Hundred-and-ten.”

Coworker: “Huh?”

Intern: “Hundred-and-ten.”

There’s some muffled confusion and sighing from [Coworker].

Coworker: “Are you sure? Maybe you mean eleven-zero-one?”

By now, I can clearly see the confusion on the intern’s face, but he steadfastly carries on. 

Intern: “Okay, eleven-zero-one.”

Coworker: *Chuckles* “That’s not one hundred-and-ten is it?”

At this point, I could not help but interject with a jab, “Of course it is, you tool!”

After some silence and, I assume, rereading on the other end, my coworker admitted defeat and agreed. We got a good laugh out of it while he tried to defend himself by saying he’d expected the first part to be four digits.

And that is why you should always go digit for digit, folks, even if “one, one, zero, one” takes longer.