A customer at the hardware store insisted I was wrong about how many gallons of paint his shed needed.

He brought in a napkin sketch with measurements, and when I calculated it at about 3 gallons, he said, 'My gut says two, and my gut's never wrong.' He bought two gallons, then came back a week later furious that he ran out. Do you think you should always trust the employee's math, or is the customer's 'gut feeling' sometimes valid in these situations?

3 comments

3 Comments

brianl531mo ago

I read this article about the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who don't know much about a topic are the most confident in their wrong answers. This guy's 'gut feeling' is a perfect example, lmao. Unless you're a professional painter, you should probably trust the person whose job it is to do paint math all day.

sarah_hart22d ago

haha yeah brianl53 is spot on with that one. it reminds me of this time my buddy tried to fix his own car after watching one youtube video. he was so sure he knew what he was doing and ended up making it way worse. then he had to pay double to get it fixed by someone who actually does it every day. the Dunning-Kruger thing is real and it shows up in the weirdest places.

rileyb611mo agoTop Commenter

So his gut failed math class?