Ask the right question
A young couple moves into a condominium and they immediately decide to wallpaper the dining room. Realizing that their neighbor’s condo is a mirror image of their own, they thought they’d call him so as to save themselves a lot of trouble with a measuring tape.
“Hi! We’re your new next-door neighbors! By any chance have you wallpapered your dining room?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did, about a year and a half ago. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, we’d like to do the same for ours. How much wallpaper did you buy?”
“Fifteen rolls.”
“Thank you! You’ve saved us some trouble.”
“You’re welcome.”
So the couple goes to a high-end store and buys fifteen rolls of very expensive wallpaper. When they’re done working, they have four rolls left over. Irritated at having wasted their money that way, they called their neighbor back.
“Excuse me, but we bought fifteen rolls of wallpaper for our dining room, and we have four rolls left over!” they said, a little too testily.
Their neighbor responded, “Yeah, same thing happened to me.”