We all have those moments where our mind draws a total blank, and suddenly we forget what we were supposed to be doing, how we wanted to reply, or even how to be a normal human being anymore. Sometimes it’s just a blip, but sometimes a brain fart happens at the worst possible time. Here, these Redditors share their most embarrassing “duh” moments.
1. You Just Got Served
I work at a busy restaurant, so I end up saying “corner” hundreds of times a night as I go back and forth around corners and doorways in the kitchen. One day, I was running food to a table, set it down gently, and in my sweetest customer service voice I said “Corner” while looking the customer right in the eye instead of “Here is your soup” or something like I usually do.
They looked confused, my brain tried to reset, and so naturally I said, “Thank you” as if that made it better. I ended up just backing away. It was a lost cause.
2. Pillow Talk
I was folding my freshly laundered bed linens while simultaneously putzing around the house. I don’t know what to tell you but somehow, I was folding a pillowcase, then the next moment, I couldn’t find it anywhere. And I looked everywhere throughout my very tiny home! It wasn’t in the folded pile, it wasn’t in the closet, it wasn’t in the bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen, where I puttered around while folding said laundry...
It still haunts me. I’m going to find that pillowcase even if it kills me. It definitely wasn’t in my hand, my other hand, trash, or fridge. My main suspects are the closet or within the fitted sheets, meaning I have to refold them. What’s funnier is there are two pillowcases of the same design and it’s making me even crazier thinking I imagined the other one. I was also searching for it holding the other one like it was a missing cat poster.
3.De-Caffeinated
Let a coffee machine run without a jug under it. Went to take a shower and had to clean up the mess afterward.
4. Our Daily Bread
I was a kitchen employee at Arby’s when I was 18. We used to have sub rolls that were foot-long, but the only subs we sold were six-inch. So you had to cut each roll in half before you used it. I was just zoned out one day, and I ended up humiliating myself so badly that my co-workers talked about it for years. I cut the sub roll in half, putting the knife back in the sub roll bag, and then tried to use the sub roll to cut the next sandwich. My manager saw it and almost died laughing.
5. Pour One out
The best employee brain fart I've seen was an employee doing dishes while a few of us talked to him. He was taking pans and dumping the leftover prepared food scraps into the garbage. Then he gets to the three coffee pots...I'm a pretty relaxed person, so I let it play out. He starts dumping pot one into the garbage, finishes, grabs pot number two, same.
Once he started with pot three, I just looked at him and said, "Matt, normally we pour coffee down the drain." He looks at me, looks at the coffee pot, continues to pour it into the garbage. Finally snaps out of it. We gave that guy heck for it until his last day.
6. Sun Salute
This is a while ago. I was working at McDonald's and worked in the morning. I’m not a morning person. My brain wakes up around 10 am and I think this was like 8 am. I handed this lady her large coffee and the sun shined bright in my eyes, and all I said was "Praise the sun." She looked at me all weird and drove off.
7. Who’s the Boss?
I was on the phone with my boss and she was getting really irritated about something, I don't even remember what. The combination of her irritation and my exhaustion made my brain misfire, and I ended the call with six words that haunt me to this day. I said, "Okay bye Mom, I love you!" I was so embarrassed, but she thought it was hilarious.
She then started calling me her adopted daughter after that. I mean, she is the same age as my mom so it's not too weird, but I certainly felt like a child around her instead of a colleague until she left the company. I miss her, though.
8. To Make An Omelette, You’ve Gotta Throw a Few Eggs in the Trash
I was trying to make some scrambled eggs. Basic prep: crack the eggs, put the eggs in a bowl, toss the shell. Me: crack the egg, put egg in the trash. I literally stood above the trash can, with the shell in my hands, processing what had just happened for about 30 seconds. I just had the faint feeling of "I messed up" and was wondering exactly how for way too long.
9. You Can’t Go Home
A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home, but instead of going to my current house, I drove to my old house. I haven't lived there in over five years. I pulled into the driveway and luckily I realized what I had done before I actually got out of the car.
10. Another One, Barista
One time my girlfriend got handed her drink at Starbucks, said thanks, went over to the bar to get cream or something, and immediately made our jaws hit the floor. She dropped her fresh drink straight into the trash can at the bar. Her mother and I just looked at her and started laughing. The barista saw what happened, and with an “it happens” attitude, agreed to replace the drink. It also helped that no one was in there except us. We still bring it up every now and then and all laugh, my girlfriend included.
11. This Story Is Garbage
Oh man, the other day I went to get a snack at the Sonic drive-thru. I grabbed a handful of trash to throw in the drive-thru trash can, threw out my tater tots, and drove all the way home with a pile of trash in my lap before I realized what I had done.
12. It Runs in the Family
My brother ordered nachos at a Mexican restaurant, grabbed a chip, and proceeded to watch himself dip it into his tea. After about two dips, he came back into reality, shook his head and went “what?” My mother is an EMT, and after a 24-hour shift she came home and tried to unlock the front door with her car keys button and did that for about five minutes.
13. It’s a Dog’s Life
I have a dog with fluffy white hair. Think poodle-ish. I was on the couch petting and talking to my dog for a good while when I see my wife come down the stairs. Trailing behind her was my dog. That's when I learned the truth. I had been petting a Costco fuzzy white blanket the whole time. I wish I could say it only happened once...
14. Brush Your Face and Shave Your Teeth
My brother used the washroom before bedtime and it was my turn to go now. I wanted to brush and we had just moved so everything was in a mess, so I couldn't find the toothpaste. I asked my brother where he kept it, and when I couldn't find it where he said it was, he came to check himself and handed me the shaving cream.
When I pointed it out, he said, "That's why it tasted odd. I just thought it was from a different brand from around here."
15. Drive-Thru Redo
My morning routine included drive-thru breakfast at McDonald’s back when they had the garbage can in the lane. Every morning I’d get my breakfast, pull up, and throw away yesterday’s old bag and random trash. One day, my superior intellect decided to just simplify the process and chuck the new breakfast in the trash. Realized it the moment after it mattered. Pulled around for try #2.
16. Forking Around
So I used to work in a thrift store, and one of my jobs was pricing donations and taking them out to the sales floor. This also involved quality controlling the donations, and I had a garbage can immediately to my left to throw out anything I didn't think was in good enough condition to sell. So one day, I'm at home, doing the dishes. I'm washing the silverware, and there's this one fork that has a spot on it that I just can't seem to get clean.
I'm scrubbing at it with the sponge for a good minute or so, the spot still won't come off. So eventually, my work brain took over and said, I guess this one's garbage, and so I just tossed it to my left, right where the garbage can usually is at work...Except I wasn't at work. The sound of the fork sliding across the tile floor instead of going into a garbage can snapped me back to reality.
So I realized "Oh yeah, I can't just throw stuff away like that at home." So I went and picked it up and kept scrubbing it until I got the spot off.
17. Do the Math
I was tutoring a student on geometry after I had finished cramming for a Calc test. About three-quarters of the way through the poor kid’s homework, I realized that I had not done any of the problems correctly. Rather, to the student's endless confusion, I had been integrating the circumference of the circle between the endpoints of the arc. Once I realized my mistake, I redid the work with him and reimbursed the session cost.
I've never seen someone so grateful to find out that they were doing their math right and that I was in whatever post-apocalyptic math-based dreamscape.
18. A Dog Eat Dog World
My dog eats in my room, which is across the house from the kitchen, and she gets a mix of wet and dry food that I mix up with a fork. So I get her wet food, get halfway to my room, realize I've forgotten the fork. Go back to the kitchen, get a fork, get halfway back to my room and realize I've forgotten the food.
Go back to the kitchen, set the fork down, forget entirely what I'm doing, go back to my room to a very sad and confused puppy. Pour her dry food into her bowl, go to the kitchen, leave the bowl on the counter and go turn on the TV. Walk back in 15 minutes later, see the bowl, fork, and food sitting on the counter, feel like a dunce and apologize to the puppy.
19. Carpool Cursing
I was riding passenger in my car with my wife driving. I was sort of brain dead after work while we were carpooling and we came to a stoplight. It turned green, but the car in front of us wasn't moving for a few seconds. I was trying to call the car a “mother-bleep” and then tell my wife to honk, but ended up saying "HONK MOTHER-BLEEP!"
Let me tell you, the look my wife had on her face before she realized I was being stupid was something unique. So now it has become a joke between us cause she started laughing her butt off once I realized what I had done moments later and I went "WAIT NO, THAT ISN'T WHAT I MEANT!"
20. Three Bottles of Beer on the Wall
One evening, I was playing Europa Universalis and I was pretty immersed in the gameplay. Suddenly I thought: I could grab a beer! So I paused the game and went to the fridge for one but there were none. Weird, I thought, I was almost sure I had at least three bottles there. So I returned to the computer and all three bottles stood unopened on my desk.
That was when I learned the depths of my own stupidity. Apparently, I had the same thought four times already but every time I got back to the computer, I forgot about the beer and went back to playing without remembering the incident.
21. The Call Is Coming From Inside the House
When I was in college, my parents and my brother were gone for the weekend on a trip, and I had an exam on Monday so I went home to study. After a couple hours of studying, I was hungry and went to see if there was anything in the fridge. I found some stuff, but wasn't sure if my mom was saving it for when they got back.
So, I decided to call her to confirm if it was okay to eat. I grabbed my phone and dialled my home phone number since that's what I would normally call. I then hear my home phone ring, so I put down my cell phone to pick it up. I say hello a couple of times, and don't hear anyone, so I hang up. At that point as I walk back over to my cell phone, I realize what had just happened.
22. This Is Where We Used to Live
This is the story of how I accidentally became a criminal. I was walking home from work, got to my door, and my key wasn't working. Our locks are bad, and that just kinda...happened sometimes. There was a loose windowpane in the bottom corner of the door window that could be removed from the outside, so you could unlock the door.
So I did that, unlocked it, walked upstairs and into the living room...to see two total strangers. Turns out, I'd just broken into the apartment I'd moved out of three months prior, and the new inhabitants were more than a little concerned. I explained in a panic, and fortunately they recognized my name from mail that had been shipped there in the intervening months, and were pretty cool about it.
I apologized profusely, told them about the loose windowpane and recommended that they keep the deadbolt on since you can't reach that through the loose windowpane, then got the heck out of dodge.
23. Cookies ‘n’ Clean
I scooped myself some cookies 'n' cream ice cream out of a half gallon container, put the ice cream scoop in the freezer, and put the half gallon container of ice cream, still about 3/4 full, into the dishwasher. Then ran it, and went to bed. When I woke up and went to unload the dishwasher, all of the ice cream had melted and drained out of the machine.
However, all of the cookie chunks had been flung about the inside and were baked onto all the other dishes and the walls of the dishwasher. I just soaked the dishes in the sink for a couple of hours and the cookie bits came right off in the next dishwasher cycle, but it took over a week of extra heavy usage to clear up the inside of the dishwasher.
Also, you know, I didn't get to eat the rest of that ice cream.
24. The Early Bird Gets the Scorn
I woke up and saw that the clock said 6. Work started at 5. I shot out of bed, threw on clothes, and sped to work. Something seemed off, but I was late, no time for that now. I walked in, past an area that wasn't running on my shift yet and thought to myself, "Hmm, wonder when they started that."
When I made it to my line, there was the day-shift person. The person I relieved every day when I showed up. She looked at me like I had two heads. It was 6 in the morning, I didn't have to work until 5 pm. I shamefully told the shift manager what happened, clocked back out, and went back to bed. I worked in that company for four years after that, and to my last day, my manager gave me heck about it.
25. No Exit
I drove to the wrong town. After my (now) wife and I got engaged, we needed to drive back to her hometown that day. We got on the road and were just driving and talking and happy. Then we looked around and realized we had driven to the wrong town. We noticed because we basically drove to the ocean.
Just never got off on our exit, and now we were a solid two hours from our destination. We ended up just getting a hotel room and staying there. We also went back for a night on the way to our honeymoon when we got married. It was kind of embarrassing to call her family and say we would be a day late because we missed an exit and didn’t notice for over an hour. I still don’t think they believe that it was an accident.
26. Wake-up Call
When I was about 14, my morning alarm buzzer went off. I slapped my hand blindly into the bedside table to hit the sleep button. No matter how many times I slapped, I couldn't seem to blindly find the alarm. I lazily craned my head over and noticed that the alarm wasn't on the bedside table. I was quite curious where it could have gone.
It was still beeping after all. I kinda just dangled out of my bed as I searched the floor and under my bed. I found the power cable and tracked it back into my covers…I pulled back the covers slowly, only to reveal the weirdest possible option: I had been cuddling it in my arms. To this day, I have no idea why I would have reached out and pulled my alarm clock off my bedside table to cuddle it in my sleep.
27. The Secret Ingredient
I was making Velveeta Shells and Cheese and had just finished boiling the macaroni shells. I had them strained out back in the pot ready to add the “cheese” packaged, which I had already cut open so I could just grab it and squeeze it right in. Turns out my brain apparently went so autopilot that I couldn't tell the difference between that and the bottle of dish soap I had near the “cheese” package.
Yep, I wound up soaping the shells up. Mind you, at the time this box of Velveeta shells was somewhat of a splurge for me when I was broke. I had a pretty unreasonably dramatic flip out on myself over it.
28. The Key to My Heart
I’m 16 years old and going on my first date. I have a 1978 F-150 car, which is notable only because it has these little triangle windows that can pivot next to the main window and it sat on large (35in) tires, which made looing into the cab from the ground a bit difficult. Anyway, I'm on my way to meet my love.
I stop for gas, go inside to pay, come back out and realize...I've locked my keys in the truck. I panic, but I know that it’s pretty easy to jimmy the triangular window open and unlock the door with some sturdy, thin-ish object. I shove my hands in my pockets and, what luck! I feel some metal in my pocket!
I yank it out and set to picking my window open. It doesn't take too long before victory and I throw open the door...only to see my keys are not in the ignition. Here's the thing I still cannot wrap my head around to this day…I picked the window open with my KEY. Now, I like to think I'm at least of average intelligence, so I choose to attribute this complete lack of brain to the power of 16-year-old lust.
29. A Mother’s Love
My girlfriend is usually the one who does the dishes, and she and I have a long-standing tradition of always touching each other’s butts. When she is doing dishes, I ALWAYS grab her butt and give her a hug from behind and grope her boob before I grab something from the fridge. It’s just a thing that started when I was grabbing something out of the fridge while she did the dishes.
She liked it, so I kept doing it, and that’s become tradition between her and I. Now I do it without even thinking when I see her doing the dishes. It was all fun and games until one awful day. It still haunts me. Well...My girlfriend and I visited my mom for a week, and my mom was doing the dishes. I wasn’t really paying attention to who was in the kitchen and I was grabbing a coke out of the fridge...
I didn’t realize it was my mom until it was too late and she looked mortified. Explaining that to my mom was... weird.
30. To-Don’t List
I live in a two-storey house, and one morning I sat at my computer in the study (upstairs) to start a day of work. I realised I had left the receiver bit of my Bluetooth mouse in my backpack, downstairs. Went downstairs, left the house, walked to the supermarket for some top-up shopping, came home, put the groceries away, went back upstairs, sat at my desk, and when I touched the mouse and the cursor didn't move, I realised I hadn't done the one thing I'd left my desk for.
31. Early to Bed, Early to Rise
I woke up three hours early for some reason and didn't check the clock but thought I was running late. Rushed through getting ready for work and hit the road. Think it's a bit darker than usual but it could just be grey clouds before the rain. Roads are bit emptier than I'm expecting, must be lucky today...
Finally pull up to work and start opening up the shop before anyone else gets in. Look over at the clock and realize I still have two hours to go before I even wake up. Almost went home but decided to stay and just take off three hours earlier than normal.
32. Smooth Criminal
I filled my car with gas and, when I got home, realized that I hadn’t paid. I went back to the station and told the clerk what I’d done. She thought she was missing a payment but the station was really busy at the time so she wasn't exactly sure. I paid for my stolen gas and went about my way. But that’s not the worst theft I’ve done. I also walked into the convenience store next to my work, grabbed a Gatorade out of the cooler, and walked out the door. I realized what I did when I got back to work. Went back and paid for that, too. In other words, I steal things.
33. Say Cheese
I bought a block of cheese for myself last weekend while my fiancé was away in Nashville. Put it in the fridge like a normal person. At some point I had to get something out of the "miscellaneous" drawer in the kitchen (you know, the one that holds pencils/rubber bands/menus). I didn't find what I was looking for in there, but I did find an unopened block of cheese.
No idea how I managed to put it there, nor do I remember ever taking it out of the fridge. But it had to be me, right?
34. The Girlfriend Experience
I was walking through town with my girlfriend at the time, looking at stalls and shops, and she was in my periphery, or so I thought...She had stopped to look at something else and a woman of roughly the same height and hair color was standing next to me. I checked my phone for time, gently caressed her shoulders and said, "Come on, it's time for us to head off."
And just walked away from this woman. I turned around a few meters later to see my girlfriend a luminescent shade of embarrassed and this entirely freaked out little old Asian woman.
35. Wayward Son
I used to fall asleep in class quite often, and normally my writing would trail off into something illegible and then I'd be out for the count for 10 to 15 minutes. One time, I woke up after an in-class power nap to find that my writing had trailed off and I'd written two chilling words: somehow, my paper read "my son" as clear as anything at the end of the sentence. I was 13 at the time and don't have any children.
36. Not Cool at All
I went to a high school in the early '90s where smoking in the bathrooms between classes was very, very common, even though it was punishable by an $80 fine. You were required to say "it's cool" when entering the bathroom, or kids would assume you were a teacher and put their cigarettes out. Not doing so could get your butt whooped.
Like most kids in my school, I became so used to it that it was second nature...I got a job in IT immediately after leaving high school, in a nice office building where I had to wear a tie. I'll never forget walking into the bathroom and loudly saying "it's cool," and the president of the company saying "what's cool?" with a confused look on his face.
I just stood there like a dope for a second, and then made up something about it being part of a song. I'm sure he thought I was a weirdo after that.
37. The Butt of the Joke
My husband and I had an inside joke. Whenever someone lost something, the other person always asked, "Have you checked inside your butt?" I was in a meeting at work in my conservative and traditional corporate office one day, and a co-worker said, "I can't find my pen." Without any thought or hesitation I quickly responded, "Have you checked inside your butt?"
As soon as I said it, I snapped back to reality and realized I was at work. As you can imagine, everyone went silent and stared at me as my face turned bright red.
38. Italian Horror
In college I had a fair number of all nighters and usually had the TV going to help keep me up and help with concentration. Once, a couple of weeks after submitting an essay for a political science class, I noticed the bone-headed message I sent to my professor. It went something like: "Attached is my water for Italian cooking."
My essay was completely fine and had nothing to do with Italy. I guess my brain just turned off as soon as I'd attached the paper and there must have been some cooking-related infomercial on TV while I sent it.
39. Catastrophic Mistake
I woke up early Monday morning in a bit of a panic because I had forgotten to buy cat food the day before. The cat must be starving. I hurry and get ready for work. I plan a detour to the store to buy the cat food. On the drive there, I'm planning my run into the store and I realize I don't know what aisle the food is in. How could I not remember what aisle the cat food is in? Then it hits me. I don't have a cat. I haven't had one for several years.
40. Slow Anna
We will say my name is "Anna." I worked in retail as a manager. I had a call on hold for me, and I hadn't had my caffeine yet. I picked up the phone and said "Thank you for An-ing, how may I hold you?" instead of "Thank you for holding, how may I help you?" Just pretended like nothing happened while (I thought) the customer was in complete silence or maybe didn't notice. I was so, so wrong. Turned out they had one of those laughs where you can't breathe right away.
41. Surprise Skinny Dip
When I was 10, my grandparents had a beach house in Biloxi, Mississippi. I know, why the heck there? Anyway, the condominium complex had a pool and my mother took me to the pool as the adults were going off gambling and whatnot. Mom and I arrive at the pool, and there’s a girl there, maybe 13 or 14. Me, being on the edge of full-blown adolescence, was locked on her.
So mom was talking about god knows what at the time, I’m just “uh huh, yeah mom” while watching this girl swim and loading her into my 10-year-old spank bank. I begin to take off my shirt, but I had gone full autopilot and did the absolute worst thing possible: I slid my swim trunks down as if I was about to get into a shower. Oh my god. I pull them back up because I think the girl had noticed, but mom didn’t.
I told my mother I had to take a wicked poo and went back to the condo to sweat out the embarrassment. So now I have this horrid memory to look back on every now and again, even into my late 20s. That’s nice.
42. Fur Baby
When I was a brand-new mom on maternity leave, but still trying to juggle law school and a newborn, my sister-in-law had an emergency and had to leave her Boston terrier with me. Even though he was a very well-behaved dog and had met the baby, we were still worried and kept them separated just in case.
One morning, after my husband left for work, I picked the baby up out of the bassinet and went downstairs to make coffee. My husband had forgotten something and promptly came right back in to find me at the counter, brewing coffee, rocking a black and white dog in one arm, while our son was still quietly chilling in his bassinet upstairs. He took the day off from work and I went back to sleep.
Sources: Reddit,
