Originally Posted by
ATOBTTR
This happens even domestically within the US. Plenty of people don't understand how big states on the West Coast are or have a full grasp of US geography in general. Along the East Coast, you can drive through 5-6 states in one day. On the West Coast, you could do a full day's drive and not leave some states. But they think because there's only three states in the Continental US while there are 14 states on the Atlantic Ocean, things must be closer on the West Coast.
While we were living in Seattle, an extended family member was getting married in Los Angeles. Her parents (living in Michigan) asked if we'd be coming to the wedding since we were on the West Coast. I had to explain that just because we were on the West Coast didn't mean we were close and that the distance between Seattle and LA was equivalent to the distance between Detroit to Orlando, to put it in perspective for them. It's not "far" but it's not around the corner either.
Another example: when we got notice we would be moving from Ohio to Seattle, a family member living in Colorado remarked that it'd now be easy for us to come visit them in the Denver area. I had to point out to them that we were about as close to them living in Dayton, Ohio as we would be once we got to Seattle.
I used to get this a lot. I live a little bit north of Portland, OR and used to do on-site customer support for my company. My territory was "all of Washington that wasn't King or Pierce County (Seattle and Tacoma), and the northern 1/3 or Oregon". One day I was visiting a customer in Enterprise, Oregon - which is up in the top right corner. I identified a problem with their equipment that was going to require Engineering support to fix, so I called our Support Center in NJ, outside of Philadelphia. I created a ticket and headed home.
The next day, at about 2pm pacific time, I get a call from one of the engineers -
"Hey, are you still at this customer?"
Me: "No."
"We think we have identified a fix that can be achieved through a configuration change & we'd like you to try that before we put any engineering effort into it. Can you run back over there this afternoon?"
Me: "No."
"Why not? it would really help us out!"
Me: "It's too far."
"It says here that you work out of Washington - isn't that right next to Oregon? Could you go tomorrow then?
Me: "No."
"Oh, come on! Help me out here!"
Me: "It's 2:00pm. If I leave my house right this second, I will drive south on Interstate 5 for 30 minutes (if there is no traffic). I will turn left onto Interstate 84 and drive straight east for 4.5 hours (if there's no traffic in Portland). I will exit I-84 where it turns south in LaGrande onto Oregon highway 82 and continue east for another hour and 15 minutes. When I arrive at the customer site it will be approximately 8:15pm. If I go tomorrow, I would have at least 12.5 hours of roundtrip windshield time in addition to whatever time it takes me to "try" whatever it is you want me to try. Therefore, I will not be going back until you can provide me with a confirmed fix."
"I thought you were right next to Oregon?!?!?!?!"
Me: "I thought you had access to a map."
Funny part was that he called my boss after we hung up. The boss called me and we had a good laugh!