Pulling out my hair

Good lord, who are they letting into Wheaton College these days? (And the bigger question: who are they letting out?) My boss hired someone from the old alma mater to replace me hoping for a repeat in my fantastic reasoning skills and technical savvy. Since she started on Monday, I have been receiving strange phone calls from her on Richard's cell phone which I had written down somewhere on my (her) desk. I gave her my phone number to direct any further questions to, so she called Richard's cell phone the next day with a couple more questions. Things like, "How do you put the toner into the printer?" and "Do you really have to fill in all of the blanks on the certified mail slip like the example you left me?" and a little conversation that went just like this:

Me: "I thought I gave you my cell phone number. I must be mistaken."

Replacement me: "Oh, no, you're not mistaken. You are actually quite fantastic in your reasoning skills and technical savvy. You could never make a mistake. You gave me your number, but I had already called this number and I do not like pushing buttons, so I called the number that required the pushing of the fewest buttons."

Me: "Ok, on with it then."

Replacement me: "I can't get this document to scan. I know you wrote out step-by-step instructions which I followed to the t, but I can't get it to work."

Me: "At which point exactly are you having trouble?"

Replacement me: "When I place the document on the scanner/copier feeder tray, nothing happens."

Me: "Did you follow all of the other instructions before and after that?"

Replacement: "No. I just put the papers on the tray and it's not doing anything. I think it should scan automatically when you do that."

Me: "So when you said you followed ALL of the instructions, you meant that you followed one of the instructions and decided that the machine did not work properly."

Replacement: "Yes..."

I hung up. (No, I sometimes wish I had the audacity to do so, but, alas, I gently encouraged her to pay attention and follow directions and that will get you far in life. blah, blah, blah.)

I had a few clues when I was training her last week that this would not go well. She asked if I minded if she walked around barefoot because shoes make her feet sweaty. Apparently the only reason she asked is that her last employer had very forcefully and unreasonably requested that she wear shoes while at work. To which I replied that I the socially acceptable thing to do while working in a professional office is to wear shoes, but I would not require it. And several times while I answered phone calls, documents that I specifically stated she should not touch until I told her what to do with them disappeared and got mailed.

I could never be a teacher. And I could never be a supervisor for people I was not able to hand pick with special attention to the amount of common sense that they have. Well, maybe I could. But I would shake people a lot and start laughing and crying in despair. People would think I was a lunatic.