Roy, omg, do i have a story for you, re: horrible knives.
a friend once invited me over to dinner, as her daughter was auditioning for a special cooking/restaurant-ing high school program, which required her to prep a meal for 4 & photograph all the steps for a presentation. i'm in the living room chatting with my friend, when i hear this loud clacking noise... sure enough, the kiddo is hacking away at an asian pear, which was supposed to be thinly sliced & fanned out as garnish at the side of a salad, using a crappy ol steak knife. i almost passed out. at this point, we embarked on basic knife safety skills & selection 101, switching the steak knife out for the chefs knife, and the hacking for smooth even slices. the only things available were horrible cheap dull-as-fillibustering SERRATED knives (as in, yes, everything from the chefs to the utility was serrated) in a cheapo set.
after this example of my apparent knowledge, the kiddo asks me if her mom's insistance that (sit down here, people) plain canola-blend cooking oil would sub fine for extra-virgin olive oil in 2 different recipies she was using was a good idea.
my look of horror must have been eloquent enough, because after that, we got to bust out the tiny bottle of evoo that got sent with a gift basket that xmas.
needless to say, my friend doesn't care much for cooking. i offered to take the kiddo for boot camp cooking at my house whenever she wanted.