We've all met Dumb plenty of times before. Most of us have met Dumber, too. But Dumbest? Oh, now that's a rare sight indeed. Dumbest puts their two siblings to shame. These poor souls know that all too well. Mere moments in the presence of the world's biggest idiots sent them running to the internet to vent—and we are here for it!
1. Enough To Write A Book
My constantly inebriated neighbor came up with the brilliant idea that he could collect the leaves in the gravel parking lot with his snowblower! It went so much worse than I even expected. He duct-taped a plastic garbage bag over the discharge chute, and off he went. It actually inflated the bag for a few moments...until the stones started flying.
He broke three windows on his garage door and splattered a bunch of cars in the lot. I lost my britches laughing. I could write a book on all the stupid things I saw him do.
2. The Chicken Of The Sea Strikes Again
I have this friend who is basically nice but very dumb and often says things that make me cringe hard. Here is a sample convo: Me: I made my son mussels marinara for dinner. Him: Ewwww, seafood. It makes me gag. Me: Hey, the kid likes it. Tonight I'm going to make pasta salad. What would be a good ingredient to toss in? Him: How about tuna?
Me: I thought you didn't like seafood. Him: Tuna isn't seafood. Me: WHAT?!? Him: It comes in a can. How can it be seafood? Me: It's literally called tuna fish, dude. FISH means SEAFOOD. (At this point, it must be noted that he is a department manager in a grocery store, which boggles my mind) Him: Oh. Well, maybe you're right. He is just another dupe, taken in by the Chicken of the Sea propaganda campaign.
3. A Strange Electrical Problem
My dad had a neighbor when he was young who played his radio loudly all day, even when he wasn't home or was gone on vacation. But he didn't realize my dad is an evil genius. Every time he left the house and his radio was still on, my dad would go and trip the circuit breaker to his condo. One day, he sees my dad, who was an electrical engineer, and asked him why his breaker kept tripping.
Was it faulty wiring? No, my dad explained, the loud radio was probably just putting too much strain on the circuit when left on all the time. My dad suggested he should try turning it down or off when he wasn't home, and see if that fixed it. So, the man tried it, and surprise surprise, the circuit breaker stopped tripping! He was very thankful to my dad for helping him with that annoying electrical issue.
4. The Fine Print
The overhead fan in our bedroom uses one of those compact halogen light bulbs. Six years ago, the bulb burned out and got really dim, just barely a glow. I bought a replacement bulb, but when I put that one in it was also barely lighting up so I realized the unit was bad. The fan still worked GREAT, it literally is the best fan I’ve ever had because it moves a ton of air and is super quiet.
The fan had also been a gift when we moved into our house. The unit cost over $400 so I didn’t really want to replace it even though our bedroom doesn’t get much natural light so it is pretty dark. So since then, over the years my wife and I have had to make do with no overhead light. We open the windows during the day, and at night use a combination of bedside lamps and the bathroom light.
It’s never really as good at lighting as an overhead light so I keep some flashlights up there for when we are cleaning or looking for something, etc. After six years of living in the dark, this winter I just decided I would replace the darn thing. But before I did, I decided to try one last time with another bulb because, however unlikely, it’s possible BOTH bulbs I had tried were bad. This is when I finally came to the worst realization.
I’m up there installing the new bulb, grab the remote (the fan has a remote), and as I’m turning the light on, I realize: The goddarn thing is dimmable. For six freaking years, we lived with the inconvenience of no overhead light, and the whole time it was just because the darn thing was set to “dim.”
5. No Laughing Matter
On April 1st this year, I got a group text from my wife Sarah’s side of the family stating there was an emergency family meeting happening that night over dinner at my mother-in-law Barb’s house. I immediately had April Fools spidey senses starting to tingle, but we haven't all got together since Christmas so I overlooked it and said my wife and I were in.
We were the last to arrive and it was pretty somber when we walked in. We all sat down at the table and my wife’s brother Tim informed the family that his wife Ashley had been having an affair and they are divorcing. The affair was with a long-time close family friend, Chris, who lived a block away. Chris' wife Jen had caught them when she came home early one day last week and broke the news to my brother-in-law.
Both families have been friends for years. Like I said, they live less than a block from each other, they each have been married for 15+ years, and they have four kids right around the same age. Honestly, I have always thought both of them were picture-perfect families. Heck all four of them and their kids were at our house two weeks ago for a BBQ.
Anyways, after airing a lot of dirty laundry and their plans to divorce, talking about how it could affect future family functions, and opening it up to the group for any questions...there was silence. Then I screwed up so colossally I can’t believe it. I broke the silence with laughter and a slow clap. I said this was the best April Fool’s gag I've ever seen, but I wasn't falling for it.
I told Ashley and especially Tim they need to consider going into theater, since their performances were top-notch and their tears seemed genuine. Being the newest member of the family (my wife and I married six months ago) this was probably not the best thing to say in hindsight. I probably should not have said anything. Everyone in the room looked horrified.
My mother-in-law, who had been crying the entire time, lost all composure. She left the room in hysterics and did not return before we left. Tim just shook his head, and his cheating wife actually let out a brief chuckle before calling me out for being an idiot for thinking this was a ruse, then she berated me for being so insensitive.
The rest of the family sat in silence shaking their heads as my wife lectured me for trying to make a joke out of a serious situation. I am still dumbfounded at my idiocy. Note to self: Not a joke.
6. Child’s Play
My wife is working out of town for a couple weeks. Sometime over the weekend, I noticed my son playing with this little silicone cup that kind of looked like a tulip. I asked him what it did and he proceeded to show me its versatility. Over the next few days, it helped the Paw Patrol save the town, it was a treasure chest holding tiny pebbles guarded by pirates, and a force field protecting a space ship.
It came with us to the park, grocery shopping, and even out to dinner one night. I loved that it had its own little satchel and assumed it just went with a playset. Fast forward to this morning and as we’re getting ready for school, Alexa reminds us that it’s show and tell today at school. So my son grabs his little silicone cup and off to school he goes.
I pick him up after school and his teacher asks to speak with me. My son looks happy so I figure he’s not in trouble, or if he is in trouble he did something cheeky that he’s proud of. When I found out what happened that day, I went bright red. Our conversation went something like this. Teacher: “Ben’s show and tell was...interesting.”
Me: “Yeah! It’s cool right? We’ve been playing with that thing for days.” Teacher: “Uh, Mr. Scott, do you know what that is?” I start to panic—oh God, it’s not a toy... Teacher: “...that is a, uh, menstrual cup.” I get confused. Teacher notes my confusion: “It’s um, used to collect menstrual blood...” I’m still confused. Teacher: “It uh, goes inside, and uh...collects blood.”
Me: “It just...stays in there?” She nods. Me: “Are you sure? I don’t think that would, uh, fit...too, uh...comfortably...there.” Teacher: “Oh, it folds in half then springs open inside....” Now we’re both clearly uncomfortable. Me: “Alright then...so where do I get a replacement, because my wife will probably not be too pleased when she returns home and will not want to continue using this one.”
My wife laughed SO HARD when I told her. My son is none the wiser and is having a tea party with the cup right now.
7. The Heart Wants What It Wants
We are going to call my boyfriend in this Jeff. So, I've been dating Jeff for four years. I have known him since high school, but I didn't realize he was a fool until this incident. This incident happened two years ago and we were two years into our relationship. We moved into an apartment and everything was just going great…so far. Until all of a sudden, he revealed his true self to me.
After work one day, I stopped by the store to get some stuff for dinner. I had gotten very little sleep the night before, and I had accidentally locked my keys in my car. They had fallen out of my purse, or I thought I put them in my purse, I honestly don't know how I did it. I am surprised I even got to the store. My car windows were up completely, so there was no way of somehow jamming something in there to unlock it.
However, I remembered I had a spare key at the apartment, so I called Jeff to stop by the apartment on his way home from work and bring me the spare key for my car to unlock it. He was about to get off anyways, and by the time I was done shopping, he'd be off work and almost at the apartment. I thought it was going to be so simple, but it all went so wrong.
Me: hey, I accidentally locked myself out of the car, can you bring me my spare car key? Jeff:......how did you even do that? Me: I honestly don't remember, something involving my purse, can you bring me my car key please? I'll get you pop tarts. Jeff: just unlock your car. Me:....I can't, my keys are locked in the car. Jeff: no you can unlock it, just stick your hand through the window and unlock it.
Me: no I can't, my window is up. Jeff: get a coat hanger. Me: I can't, my window is COMPLETELY up, there is absolutely no way I can get anything through my window. Jeff: yes you can just stick your hand through the window and unlock it! I honestly couldn't believe I was actually having this conversation. Me: listen to me very carefully.......My window is completely rolled up, meaning there is no way for me to put my hand through the window and unlock it, there is no way to put a coat hanger through the window because the window, all the windows, are COMPLETELY rolled up!!!
Jeff: well I don't know what you want me to do about it. Me: BRING. ME. MY. SPARE. CAR. KEY. Jeff: WHY?! I honestly thought he was messing with me, but he really sounded aggravated and like I wasn't understanding him at all Me: I will tell you later, please bring me my spare car key from the apartment please. Jeff: Ok fine I don't see why you need it.
I hung up, because DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. I go inside and get my shopping done, I see his car pull into the store’s parking lot and I head outside to meet him. That’s when I get an idea. He hands me my spare key. Me: come here Jeff Jeff: Oooo am I going to get a kiss?! ......no Me: look into my car Jeff. Jeff looks into my car Me: do you see my keys in there Jeff. Jeff: yes? Me: try to get them out Jeff.
Jeff tries to open my car door. It is locked. Jeff: I can't it's locked. Me: try to get them out without my spare car key. Jeff then proceeds to look for a window cracking. There is none. Jeff: I can't there isn't a way to stick my hand or anything in there to unlock. At this point, I am staring at Jeff. He doesn't understand why I am staring at him.
I handed him my keys and told him to show me how to get the car keys out now. His response made me want to hit myself in the head. He then unlocked the door, rolled down my window, locked the car, shut the door, and then reached his arm through the OPEN window and unlocked it. Jeff: see like that, unlock it like that! At this point, I had such a massive headache from him not understanding why it was literally impossible for me to do any of that.
I just put the groceries into my car, I got into my car and I drove home. That night at home, he asked if I was mad at him. Me:.....I wouldn't say mad.......more like.....frustrated....annoyed.....tired......baffled. Jeff: well I can understand, especially if you couldn't simply unlock your door like I showed you today. Two weeks later, we decided go to the downtown area for our date night. Before heading downtown, we had to get gas. I was waiting in his car when he rolled down his window and unlocked it from the outside by sticking his arm through THE OPEN WINDOW
Jeff: seeee like that, next time your keys are locked in your car, unlock it like that. I really thought about just getting out of the car and beating him with the bag of candy he bought me from the gas station, but I don't believe he would understand why I was beating him. He later brought it up to my mom at dinner and she also tried to explain to him why his idea wouldn't work AT ALL, but he was determined to make sense of it, when he couldn't because the WINDOW WAS ROLLED UP.
That was two years ago, I am still very much dating him to the point we are engaged now. I love him deeply, he is a good man. He just happens to be an idiot.
8. I Do Not Want This Woman Taking Care Of Me
Some background info: This woman I know, Shelley, is a 37-year-old with an RN degree in the Philippines. We work at an assisted living home. She was hired in November, but called out for three months before finally showing up. Which is when my company made a stunning realization. She was now heavily pregnant, something no one knew about.
Beyond that, she’s awful at her job. These are some of the things she’s done: A resident was prescribed a sublingual medication, because they were unable to swallow. Shelley nearly gave the medication with applesauce. For anyone who doesn’t know, sublingual means it needs to be absorbed under the tongue. Which you are taught very thoroughly in our certification classes.
A swallowed dosage means the resident could have received a way higher dosage or a much much lower one. A medication error like that could mean extreme pain or worse. Also, some medications need to be refrigerated. We have three fridges that are all labeled with very large signs. She put the medication in the specimen fridge, where we had urine samples.
She then left it there for days without telling anyone, and did not give it to the resident like she was supposed to. And that wasn’t even the worst. A resident of mine had pancreatic cancer. She and I were talking about the female resident’s state when Shelley asked if the resident was lying about her condition. Given that we had a doctor’s diagnosis and scans to prove it, I said no.
She said, “But only men have a pancreas, how can she have that cancer?” She was thinking of the prostate, a completely different thing. Another one: A resident has Fentanyl patches that are to be changed every 72 hours. Shelley had been throwing the used patches in the regular trash cans. Fentanyl patches come with express warnings to avoid dumping them in the trash.
If a dog, kid, or bunny were to come across it, they will die if they chew on it or even stick it on themselves. It’s written all over the box, on our documentation sheet, and even on a sign in the residents’ room. We have a lot of dogs in the facility and disoriented individuals, and trashes are often left unattended. Last but certainly not least…
A resident has four eye drops that are required to be given over the course of 20-45 minutes to ensure their effectiveness. The resident has a camera in her room to ensure this time elapses. The family came in very upset this last week, because Shelley kept going into her room for one eye drop, and never going back to administer the others at any point.
When she was confronted by the family and the Director, she said she did go back in for the eye drops. Despite nonstop video showing that she never went back in and the resident never left. She still insists that she went back in and that the video is “lying.”
9. Brothers In Arms
I lived in a fraternity, and Jim was my roommate. To be fair, Jim is brilliant with anything related to computers. To be equally fair, Jim is brilliant with absolutely nothing else. Jim has decided that the five desktop computers he has somehow fit under his twin bed are no longer sufficient. Jim decides to custom-build a monstrosity of a computer to replace the desktops.
While I was gone at class, Jim has decided that there is not enough space in our room for the ogre he is building, so he moves MY bed out into the hallway. Jim is gone at the computer store when I get back and see this. But I got my revenge. I return the favor by moving my bed back in and his bed out to the front yard. A fraternity brother is taking a nap on it when Jim returns and pitches a fit.
He keeps tripping the circuit breaker. His computer is drawing way more current than it was designed for. Jim tries to solve this problem by placing a gas generator precariously on the window sill and plugging into that. This works until a variety of bugs and one very confused squirrel attempt to make our room their new home. I tell Jim the generator has got to go, which of course results in him pitching a new fit. Then he does something truly idiotic.
Jim has hired an electrician to install a new circuit for our room for his computer. It is winter, and the average temperature outside is in the negatives. Our room requires no heater. The computer is so large and energy-intensive that if we DON'T open up the window with the snow outside, the room turns into a sauna. Our fraternity rents our internet from the university.
I'm on door duty. The IT guy knocks on the door. He tells me that he thinks there is either an error or a hardware malfunction, as it shows our single house is consuming a substantial portion of the entire university's bandwidth. I show him to the router box. He confirms that there is no error. Our house is indeed consuming a large amount of data.
He tells me I have 72 hours to solve this problem or the university will both throttle our speed way down and put a cap on overall data. I head straight to Jim. He is trying to argue that the billion files he is downloading are encrypted, so IT has no idea what the data is. It takes a while for Jim to understand that IT doesn't care what he is downloading, but that if he continues this behavior there will be NO internet for him or anyone else in the house.
Jim now works for NASA.
Pexels
10. Get A Move On
I had a problem with a neighbor who drove over my lawn with his ATVs and damaged the grass/shrubs. He said he'd pay for damage, but that never happened and he kept doing it. So, I put my huge trailer across their tracks to block their path. They went around it. I put up two other barriers that they also drove around. It took a while, but I finally got my revenge.
I found this huge branch that had fallen in the woods between our properties and dragged it across to cover the third path they were making across my yard. But, the branch got caught on a cable. What is a cable doing over the lawn instead of properly buried? So, I called the cable company to have it buried. They said I was the only registered client on that box and to disconnect it.
So, I did. After the weekend, my neighbor came by totally angry at me for disconnecting his cable. He yelled he was going to call 9-1-1 on me. So, I left. I got a call from the officers. They asked if I disconnected the cable because of the ATV issue. It was interesting because I wasn't even going to mention the ATV issue, but my neighbor already did.
So long story short, the neighbor got a warning ticket for trespassing and admitted to looting cable. I took an offer on my house that very day and moved.
11. All The Help In The Neighborhood
My neighbor is an overweight middle-aged woman who seems to have a bad knee only when my kids are outside in the summer. It quickly got weird. If they are playing in my fenced in backyard, she'll pretend to fall down so they can help her up. I went from, "Kids, you should help her, that's what neighbors do!" to "She fell AGAIN? It seems like she only falls when you guys are playing. She doesn't fall when I'm working in the garden" to "If she falls again, come get me."
When I started saying that, she seemed to be able to get up pretty quickly. I had to go over there in August and tell her that I can't have my kids helping her get up anymore, they are seven and eight years old and they can't give her medical aid. I get that she is probably lonely, but three or four times a week, I'd hear her yell, "Kids, Kids! help me up, I fell AGAIN."
12. Tea Time
This was probably one of the stupidest people I've ever met. He was a 26-year-old male and turned up an hour and a half late the first day for work. He was brought in by his mom, which I thought was kinda odd for a grown man. I let that slide…but then things just got worse. It was a small roadside cafe/eatery, so I thought I'd get him started on small duties to ease him into the way of the place.
I asked him to put new toilet paper in the toilets. A minute or so later, I hear him yelling "HEEEYYYYY, it won't fit on the toilet roll holder!" I'm like what? That's a pretty simple thing. He calls out again so I tell him to bring it to me so I can show him. That’s when I realize he's carrying a roll of paper towel; it's almost three times the length of the toilet paper holder.
I say, "That is paper towel." “No it's not" "Yes, it is! Have you ever seen toilet paper that big in your life?" "Uh...no" "Right, furthermore, and probably more perplexing—can you not see that this massive roll couldn't possibly fit on this small bar?” "Yeah, I thought that was odd." Oh boy, well, the day goes on and after the kitchen is pretty much closed except for pre-cooked baked goods, I get him to give a general clean and ask to make sure he wipes down all the benches.
I leave him to it as I assume he's doing fine. I found out my mistake far too late. One of the other staff comes and says we've run out of toilet paper, and I'm like what? That's not possible. Sure enough, all the packs are torn open and empty except for the rolls on the holders. At this stage I realize there can only be one culprit, and call the guy over.
“Did you do something with the toilet paper?" WHAT IS WITH THIS GUY AND TOILET PAPER? "Yes, I used it to wipe down the benches in the kitchen" "You used EIGHT rolls of toilet paper to wipe down the benches in the kitchen?! WHY are you using toilet paper to wipe down benches?" "I don't like using the dishcloth" "WHO taught you to wipe down benches with toilet paper? Have you ever seen anyone wipe down benches with toilet paper?"
"The cloth was dirty and I didn't want to clean it out." By this stage I'm thinking, day's nearly over, just let it go and I'm sure it will work out fine...yeah, you know what's coming. He strikes again, and this time, it's beyond moronic. So I've got him on serving customers pastries and the like because all you have to do is take it out of the glass bay, put it on a plate, and give it to them.
He doesn't even have to ring it up, just pop on plate and give. Well, one of the customers’ orders three scones with jam and cream. He's behind the counter doing his thing and I have a little peek and see, yes, he's cut them in half and managed to put jam and cream on them. About a minute later, the customer brings the scones back up to the counter.
"There's something really hard in these scones, I bit down and it was like crunching on a rock or something" Of course I'm puzzled "Oh, I'm really sorry about that—" when the guy cuts in: "It's probably just the seeds in the jam." There's something about the way he says this that makes my alarm bells ring. "Show me what you put on these scones."
I start marching toward the prep bench, and sitting on the bench is the bowl of whipped cream…and next to it, in a plastic bag, is a broken glass jar that contains the jam. This idiot is feeding the customer broken glass. "I didn't think it would be a big deal." "Are you insane?!" I grab the plate of mostly uneaten glass-infused scones.
"How is anyone supposed to eat this?” To my utter—utter—amazement, he proceeds to EAT THEM, in front of me, all the while crunching on glass and flinching every time he does. I’m paralyzed dumbfounded. When he finishes eating them he says, "Do you think I should go to the hospital?" I could only reply: "You're fired.” I will never forget this until my last day.
13. Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks
I work a pet grooming shop, and a client just called for the price of a bath and nails. I ask what kind of dog. She says, "I don't know what it is now, but when it grows up, it's going to be a black Lab." I was dumbfounded, literally. I ask her how old it was. She said it was three months, so I'm thinking maybe 20 pounds max, so I tell her maybe $20-$25.
I swear to God, the lady brings "Red" in, and he is a POMERANIAN, a POM. I said, sorry but this is a Pomeranian, and she tells me, "Well, I know it's going to be a black Lab because I have papers at home." I pulled up pictures of Labs and Poms on the computer and I still think she believes it's going to be a black Lab. I'm going home to drink.
14. The Theory Of Everything
I may have married an idiot. He initially doesn't strike you as one, because he had a very successful career working for a government alphabet agency. However, some of the things he believes…Once this man gets a notion in his head you cannot remove it with dynamite. If his mother or his teacher Sister Mary Godzilla told him something 50+ years ago, then that was Revealed Truth and could not be changed.
Sister MG told him men have one less rib than women. It has to be that way because God took Adam's Rib to make Eve. I had to show him side-by-side images of male and female skeletons in a medical encyclopedia and make him count the ribs before he believed that Sister may have been mistaken. Sister also told him that plate tectonics was "only a theory, and since theory means guess there wasn't any truth to it."
You know how South America and Africa look like they would fit together like puzzle pieces? Sister told him that was just a coincidence. God made the world the way it was and the bits didn't go floating around like ducks on a pond. "Theory equals guess" also shot down the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, and a bunch of other science things that didn't agree with the Bible.
However, he seems to have come up with a whole bunch of stuff all on his own: There can't be a volcano under Yellowstone Park because they wouldn't be dumb enough to put a national park on top of a volcano. When you burn a candle only the wick burns. The wax just runs down the side of the candle holder. He had no explanation as to what happens to the wax in a jar candle.
Meat is not the muscle tissue of animals, but something else called the flesh. He did not explain where the muscles go if meat is this mysterious "flesh." Meat also only comes from mammals. Beef is meat and pork is meat, but chicken and turkey are not meat. Nor is fish. Cows just spontaneously start giving milk when they reach adulthood.
Having a calf every year to start the process has nothing to do with it. On the other hand, hens must lay with roosters before they can lay eggs. That the "clear" button on the oven stops the timer. It does not—it turns off the oven and that is all it does. I have made him start the timer and then punch the clear button. See? The timer is still going.
He still tries to use the clear button to turn it off. We've only had this oven for 20 years. The microwave and the toaster oven are basically the same appliance. And since you can put plastic things in the microwave, you can use them in the toaster oven as well. He only did this twice though, since I really yelled at him the second time.
He does seem to have grasped "no metal in the microwave" though, so I guess this is a plus. Sometimes he has to figure things out for himself. My dad would say "You can tell 'em and tell 'em, but some folks have just gotta pee on the electric fence for themselves." Take the top rack of the dishwasher, for instance. The section on the right-hand side is about half an inch wider than all of the other sections.
That makes this the ideal section for cups because they just fit. I told him this. I had him put a cup in the right-hand section and see that it just fits. I then had him put a cup in another section where it did plainly did not fit. About a week later, he came to me and said "I figured out that the right-hand section is wider than the others so that's where we should put the cups."
And this evening's idiocy: Chopped is the same as sliced. He was going to a church picnic and had volunteered to bring sliced tomatoes and lettuce and onions for the hamburgers. He asked me to chop all of these things for him. Not slice—chop. I had to explain the difference. That the volume of a medium-sized bowl is exactly the same as that of a smaller bowl.
This is a long-standing confusion, actually. I cannot tell you how many times I explained that to save cabinet space, you put small bowls inside medium bowls which go inside large bowls. You do not try to stack a medium-sized bowl on top of a small bowl. This man who can pack a moving truck tighter than Marilyn Monroe's girdle simply cannot grasp this simple concept. Or maybe instead of a concept, it's just a theory.
15. The Tank Destroyer
So just over a year ago I switched jobs and went to work for a guy (Bob) who is running a new/used aquarium shop. The shop was built onto his house, so as a result I've become pretty close with his family, including his 15-year-old stepson, who is the stupidest person I've ever met. For the first couple of months, I thought he was just a bit quirky and clumsy, but as I've come to know him more, I've discovered that he is an idiot of the highest order.
Now, I've known some dumb teenagers in my time. Heck, I used to be one. But this kid is just on another level. Just in the year that I've known him: He licked a lit match because he thought fire would taste like a Flamin' Hot Cheeto. He cannot climb a flight of stairs without tripping up them. This is a multiple-times-a-day occurrence. And it gets worse.
He once dropped a bowl of cereal and milk, and rather than clean the mess with a towel, he soaked up the spill with his sock. A sock that was still on his foot. He then put on his shoes, went out to catch the bus, and went to school with a soaking wet milk-sock. He went to the school nurse that day because he was convinced that his foot was bleeding and soaking through his sock.
He's failing gym class. I have no idea how one fails gym class. He has broken more than 20 aquariums in the last year. When we buy used tanks, they need to be washed and leak-tested before we resell them. The boy sometimes does this to help out, but his method is mind-blowingly stupid. He can't understand that when you wrap the hose around an aquarium, you can't just yank it free.
Once, Bob was selling an older fairly-good-condition Cadillac that had been sitting in his driveway for a while. The day before the buyer came to pick it up, the stepson was mowing the yard and scraped the handle of the mower along the entire length of one side of the car. Oh, and he likes to use "Jew" as an insult. When I called him out on it, his reply made my blood run cold.
I discovered that he thought that Jewish people didn't actually exist. He thought that they were an imaginary race of people that everyone pretended to hate. He played lacrosse on his school's team this summer, and got benched all season because he told the coach that he didn't need to run laps or go to practice. This is probably why he's failing gym class.
One day, he left in the morning like normal to go catch the bus. Three hours later, he came back saying that he missed the bus, and he needed to be driven to school. The problem? It was Labor Day. There was no school. He stood at the bus stop for three hours on a day when there was no school. He also eats absolutely everything in sight.
If you leave food unattended for more than 10 seconds, it's gone. Bob went to Taco Bell and got food for the four of us. The stepson was left alone with it and ate his, mine, Bob's, and half of his mom's food before he realized that it probably wasn't all for him. When he found out that I'm a chile-head, he bragged for a week about how he loved super spicy food too.
He then tried a glob of my Exhorresco hot sauce(after I warned him repeatedly not to) and spent the next two hours crying and blaming me. It keeps getting worse. We've been gradually remodeling the house when we're not working in the store. His bedroom was the first room we finished. He managed to put a hole in the wall on the first day he moved in.
Bob told him to wash the truck one day earlier this year. He thought he'd be helpful and wash out the fuel tank as well. With water. His parents signed him up for tutoring to help with his grades. Turns out, all the tutoring in the world won't help your grades if you never turn in your homework. He was under the impression that homework was optional. Also, he routinely falls asleep in class.
He thought that fish were just very active plants. Yes, really. He managed to tip over and dump the contents of the trash can he was taking out to the roadside to be picked up. Rather than pick up the mess, he just kicked it around and spread it out across the yard, in hopes that it would be less noticeable if the mess was less concentrated.
16. Hunk Of Burning Love
This is the story about my good friend Skip, who is a loveable idiot through and through. Skip had a major crush on a girl who I will call Sally. Sally was that girl who had all the right things. Great hair, amazing personality, and she loved it when guys were super creative when they would ask her out on dates. The more creative, the more you had her attention.
It was getting close to Valentines’ day, and time for the dance we called the Sweethearts’ Ball. Skip desperately wanting to ask Sally to the dance, but couldn’t come up with a creative enough way to ask her. Myself and our friend were popping off suggestions while at lunch. Me: Dude, you could always send her some roses. Friend 1: No dude, send her a bag of M&Ms and say, it would be so sweet if you would go to the Sweethearts’ with me.
Friend 2: Dude NO, you should toilet paper her car and say, It would wipe me out if you went to the Sweethearts with me. This is where the problem starts. Friend 3: Dude, that’s stupid, why not just pour a heart shape on her lawn with gasoline and light it on fire and say my heart would go up in flames if you went to the Sweethearts’ dance with me. Skip, listening to all of this, had his mind clamp around one thing that was mentioned.
I’m sure at this point some of you have already figured out the one he chose to do. This was all on a Friday. None of us were present when Skip asked her. However, we did see the horrific aftermath. Here are the events that followed. Monday: Sally avoided Skip. Like, He’s a capital-P Psycho avoided him. Tuesday: Skip is now starting to behave strangely. He’s very nervous and looking over his shoulder.
Wednesday: Skip’s name is called over the intercom system before classes start. About 10 minutes later, the principal’s office calls in me and a couple of friends. We are told to sit outside the office, and we hear a loud conversation inside. Me: Dude, what the heck did Skip do? Friend 1: Don’t know. I’m not sure how we are involved here. Friend 2: He did something stupid I’m sure. Only we had no idea how bad it was.
Me: Dude, do you think he did the toilet paper thing? Friend 2: No, this is something bigger. Friend 1: Our names had to be dropped some time dude. Me: It's kind of freaking me out. About this time Sally walks into the office with a smirk on her face. She says, “Have they told him yet?” All of us are totally confused, Friend 1: Told him what?
That’s when the door opens. My blood ran cold at the sight. Skip comes out, handcuffed. Crying his eyes out, repeating over and over again, “Sorry, sorry, I am so sorry!!” It was then that Sally walks up to him…and gives him a huge hug. Sally: Oh by the way, YES!!! I will go to the Sweethearts’ Ball with you. Our jaws just drop. We are all thinking, what just happened?
They uncuff him, and he has the same look as us. The fire marshal then walks out laughing. Fire Marshal: It was all her idea, I couldn’t refuse my little girl. However, if you ever set fire to my lawn again, I’ll kick your butt. You will come and fix it. And you three (he looks at us), stop putting ideas into his head. He will clearly do anything you guys tell him to.
That was the day we found out that Sally’s father was the fire marshal in our county. He and the sheriff gave him a tongue lashing for setting fire to his front yard, with a heart shape burning in the grass and a sign by the front door saying, MY HEART WILL GO UP IN FLAMES IF YOU WENT TO THE SWEETHEARTS’ WITH ME! It was a really good dance, we all had a ton of fun.
Skip and Sally have been happily married for 23 years now.
17. Lost In Translation
My family, including my idiot sister, were out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. The waitress, who was Asian, came up to us and asked us what we would like to order, in English. My sister looks shocked and doesn’t even wait for the waitress to leave as she loudly proclaims, “I understood everything she said!” My family looks on at her in utter disbelief as my mom explains to her that’s because she spoke in English.
18. Round And Round In Circles
My dad and I were downstairs in the living room where the landline was kept. The landline rang and my mom (5’ tall, chubby Asian lady) comes barreling down the stairs at top speed. The phone stops ringing. She goes back upstairs. A minute later, the same thing: phone rings, she bolts down the stairs, phone stops, she goes back upstairs, this time audibly annoyed by the mystery caller.
After this happens for the third time in 10 minutes, we ask her what the heck was going on. Turns out she was unknowingly calling the landline from her new cell phone. Then, upon hearing the phone ring, she was hanging up her cell and running downstairs to grab the phone. We haven’t been able to figure out why she dialed the landline number in the first place. She didn’t have an answer for that one.
19. Speaking In Tongues
Austrian here. My sister used to take in couch surfers from all across the world. Most were lovely fellas with interesting stories to tell. But one time, we hit the jackpot. We got a set of four American stereotypes. The ones that I used to think were only real in movies. One of them was an air-headed cheerleader who was one heck a pain in the behind.
Since they're not relevant to the story, I won't go into detail about how rude and obnoxious this girl behaved during the days leading up to the event, but let me tell you, at this point, even her friends were done with her. Anyway, it's New Year's Eve and the couch surfers decide to stay with us instead of going out into the city. My sister and I go about our New Year's celebration the same way we always do.
We’re having fondue, dancing to "The Blue Danube" and watching Dinner for One. Midnight comes and goes and within less than five minutes, the cheerleader takes her laptop to the other room to video call her parents, leaving the door open. The words that came out of her mouth made my jaw drop. She starts complaining loudly about how my sister and I are "embarrassing."
She also talks about how "that Austrian food we had suuuucked" (as much as I would love to claim fondue for our cuisine, the French would likely be opposed), how "the mountains looked fake" and whatnot. My sister and I were in the living room with the others, perfectly able to hear every single word while her friends turned red as tomatoes and started giving us apologetic looks.
Cue her return, marching into the living room with the carefree attitude. Her friend: “Uhmm...we heard you. All of us." Her: "Sooo whaaat? I was talking Americaaaaan." My sister and I just looked at each other and started laughing so hard, it took us a few minutes to calm down. She had been talking to us every single day in English, but somehow that was different in her world.
Her friends apologized profusely, but the cheerleader did not because she just couldn't believe (even when we told her) that, yes, we do understand "American."
20. Just Call Me Mrs. Clean
So Lisa was one of my best friends growing up. More due to proximity, as she was the nearest neighbor my age. Sweet and funny, Lisa was also not the brightest bulb. When she was born, she had blonde hair. Naturally, it darkened with age. Lisa hated that, so she tried Sun-In. Her hair turned tangerine blonde. She hated that even more. So I suggested she bleach her hair, as in hair dye. It went so, so badly.
I probably should have been more specific, in retrospect. In any case. Lisa was excited. She said she was going to do it that night and go super blonde. I was relieved and excited for her, as I thought I was about to finally hear the end of the seemingly never-ending hair saga. I went over to her house the next day. There were tears in Lisa’s eyes, as her mom was cutting off her hair in uneven clumps.
Bright blonde bits were strewn across the floor like some weird, broken halo. My mind was racing, struggling to figure out what led us here. Did she use too much dye? Leave it on too long? Forgot to wash out the Sun-In and some weird reaction occurred...? I asked her if she was okay and what happened. Her answer stunned me into silence.
Through a mix of what was now streams of snot and those kind of tears you only get from ugly crying, she said, “I did what you said. I used bleach. And now my hair is ruined!!!” While Lisa glared at me balefully, the pit of my stomach dropped from a mix of guilt and fear. Guilt that I’d apparently destroyed my best friend’s hair and fear that Lisa couldn’t handle this existential hair crisis, as she was already super self-conscious about her looks.
As she continued to glare at me from under patches of hair that increasingly looked like a three-year-old’s efforts of cutting Barbie’s hair, I struggled with what to say. Finally, I stammered and mumbled in front of her mom, ‘“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think this would happen..”’ Now, they were both glaring at me. Great. There was a long pause as my mind raced about what could have gone wrong.
I bleached my hair all the time and it never looked like this. What could have gone wrong...? Was it the brand...? After what seemed like hours of watching Lisa in absolute misery and just wanting to hug away my best friend’s tears, I asked “Lisa, I’m just sooo sorry." Maybe it was the brand or something? What brand did you use?” “Clorox,” Lisa replied. Yes, she used household bleach.
21. It Does What It Says On The Tin
So, I didn't know this person very well, but was assured by friends she was exactly your typical description of a bimbo. I soon found out how stupid she really was. One night I got to meet her. We were going to eat some fast food before going out, and she joined us for the meal. I must explain, that in French, French fries are "patates frites" (fried potatoes) but that we usually only call them "frites" (fried/fries).
So we were all eating our burgers, fries, or poutine when she ponders: "I really wonder what fries are made of? Flour?"
22. I’m Not Spam, I Just Act That Way
This woman works in HR. Why is it that no matter where I work, HR is the most clueless person in the company? I work at a privately owned company of ~300 people. Everything the owner’s kids need—phones, computers, etc.—are billed to the company, and are technically company property, so it isn't uncommon for someone at the company to have a phone or computer that was once used by the owner’s kid in some way.
In this situation, the owner’s college-age kid wanted a new computer, so the six-month-old computer the kid had been using previously got returned to the company. There was no need for it in the company, so the next action is for HR to try to sell it at a discount to any employee who wants it. I'm paraphrasing but this was essentially the content of the company-wide email from HR:
"Does anyone have a college-age child who wants to Netflix and chill? If so send your kid my contact information. I have a nice computer in my office for that." Obviously, this lady didn't know what "Netflix and chill" means. She was so embarrassed once someone finally told her about it that she didn't leave her office for a week. But it got so much worse.
The day after a company-wide meeting on not opening spam emails and reporting suspicious behavior, she sent an email with the subject "Look what you did!!!" to the entire company, in reference to the donation we made to a charity when we paid a dollar each for a special jeans day. Tons of people reported the email to IT thinking she got hacked.
At like 11 o'clock last night, she sent out an email to everyone in the office with the subject "OMG, Jason?!" because she was in a meeting way earlier that day where a JSON file was talked about for like a minute. JSON is a file format that programmers use, and for some reason she read up on it and emailed a bunch of us in her confusion.
No one in the office is named Jason. I just talked to our CTO and several people have already verbally asked him if it's a spam email or just this lady being herself.
23. Employee Of The Month
I worked with a clueless guy. Nicest guy, few eggs short of a flock. He was consistently late for meetings. Like, 20 minutes late for client-facing discussions. We eventually figured out the ridiculous reason. It was that when the (British) project manager said “half-past-ten” or “half-nine,” he understood it as 10:50 or 8:50. He would interrupt to say, "Hey, you guys started without me!"
He was denied our health insurance bonus ($250 gift card if you get a physical and are deemed healthy), because he was a smoker. "I'm not a smoker," he said...with a pack in his hand! This led to a discussion about how smoking wasn't bad for your health. If it was, it wouldn't be allowed! Our company dealt with a lot of asthma clients.
He would miss, on average, about four workdays a month. One time, we called to see where he was. His response boggled my mind. "Oh, I forgot it was a workday." It was Tuesday. He had been at work the day before. He once locked himself out of the office nine times in a week. He worked four days that week. His back hurt, so he took his wallet out of his pocket, which had his card key in it, so he was locked out after a smoke break.
This happened, on average, more than twice a day. For a week. He was a diabetic and went into a diabetic coma on the way to work one day. He was hospitalized for a week, and thankfully recovered. We asked why he hadn't taken his insulin; he said "Well Big Pharma is just trying to keep you sick, you know?" We work at a pharma company.
I was hired later, so I was salaried and he was hourly. I was mad that he got paid about $400 a week more for taking on-calls, which is something I had to do anyway. He was mad that I could, according to him, "leave early and still get paid." He managed to talk himself into salary, and out of $400 every third week for doing the same amount of work.
He was a sovereign citizen and believed that accepting a social security number made you “government property,” and tried to not get a birth certificate or social security number for his children. I asked him how having an SSN had negatively affected his life, and he couldn't identify much besides "Well the government owns you!" At the time, he hadn't been fired because we were short-staffed.
He was actually OK at his job, aside from the reliability issues. Eventually, he was let go when we got our staffing situation figured out. I eventually moved on to another role, and he asked me to pull some strings at my company, and get him a job referral. I told him that, unfortunately, we weren't hiring, because I absolutely didn't want to vouch for a guy who was late so often he had to check in with the office manager when he did show up.
He also fell for an iTunes gift card tax scam to the tune of $5,000. His wife was a tax accountant and he didn't think to consult her. If he received an email with an attachment, he would print the attachment, scan it, and then email from the all-in-one printer. This, of course, removed the attachment from context and removed all the info attached to the email.
If a document was super-urgent and he was worried someone might not get it, he would print out a copy and put it on the person's keyboard. He did this a few times. It had the worst possible outcomes. He did this once when the affected party was on maternity leave for 12 weeks, and for me, when I was in Europe on business for three weeks.
He printed something out and put it on my desk instead of forwarding me the email..."to be sure I got it quickly."
Shutterstock
24. It’s A Dog’s Life
My next-door neighbors have two pitbulls. They are super cute and are giant teddy bears…well, that is until you try to come on my porch or their porch and they don’t know you. If that's the case, they will stand there barking their heads off but ultimately they do nothing. All bark no bite so to speak. So I was outside getting ready to start shoveling snow.
My husband was gathering the garbage to take out and then he would be out to help. So I was shoveling what I could while waiting for him. The dogs were out on their porch for a bit and I was talking to them. Saying their names “Duke” and “Princess.” Some guy who does not live in the neighborhood was out for a walk, I guess. He stopped and asked me why I called them that.
I said it's their names. He said, “Yes, but why did you name them that?” I explained that they are not my dogs, and that they are my neighbors’ dogs. That I just know their names from speaking to my neighbors. At that point, I started trying to look busy while cursing my husband under my breath for taking so long. I am nervous about talking to strangers generally.
I glanced up and the man is still standing there just looking at the dogs. I said, “They just bark, they can't get out and even if they did, they are harmless. You’re fine.” The man said, “Well this is just so ridiculous.” He pauses and I try to ignore. After a few seconds he said, “Who the heck would name a pit bull Princess?” I sighed and said, “Why not?”
At this point, I was thinking he was going to be one of those pit bull-hating people who found it stupid that anyone would give it a nice name. But what he actually said still haunts me. This grown man looked at me and said, “But Princess is a girl’s name.” I was confused and said, “Yeah....she's a girl.” Then, again, this full-grown man looked at me and laughed.
Not a quick haha kind of laugh. Like a 30 or 40 second long laugh, then said: "Pit bulls can't be girls." I just said “Um what?” He repeated this. I said, “How do you think pitbull puppies get made? This man told me breeds weren't made. Two random dogs had babies and their breed was assigned depending on things like gender, muscle mass, and other physical and personality characteristics.
Pit bulls, Dobermans, Rottweilers, Labs, retrievers, and some others are always boy dogs. Pomeranians, Poodles, Yorkies, and other small dogs were females. This man seemed to be older than me so I'm guessing 50s. He seemed sober and put together…but this man thinks a bunch of breeds are only male and another bunch are female.
I then ask him to explain cross breeds like Labradoodles and Puggles. He looked at me like my hair was on fire. At that point, I quit. I went inside and told my husband a crazy man is outside and we should just stay in for a bit.
25. An Exotic Education
Frank was a senior in high school and was assigned to do a report on an animal local to our area. The area being a small town in Canada in Ontario that borders with Buffalo, NY. Fast forward two weeks when the reports were returned to the class. He was sad to see he received a grade of F. He said that he put a lot of effort into it and couldn't understand why he got such a bad grade.
I asked him to see his report to see if I could figure out what may have happened. What animal local to Southern Ontario did he choose to do his report on? A friggin giraffe! I was laughing and confused about how he could pick a giraffe as a local animal when I got his answer. He had seen one just the other day while driving! Realizing where the story was going, I stifled laughter as I explained to him that yes he saw a giraffe, but it was at the small local zoo.
15 years later and I still don't think he realizes why he failed that project. Frank was the kind of guy who would try to save a fish from drowning.
Unsplash
26. Does Not Compute
I had helped this woman, my sort-of friend, set up a computer about two weeks earlier. I was naturally surprised when she called stating her computer wasn’t working. I thought about it, trying to figure out what may have gone wrong in my installation. I asked a few questions just to get a general sense of what happened. After a lot of question-asking, I decide to just go over and take a look.
When I arrive, she opens the door. Her: You need to fix my computer. Me: That’s what I’m here for. Her: You ruined it so it’s all your fault. Me: Ok? I go over to the desk where I had set the computer up. I instantly notice what’s wrong. The actual tower is missing. Confused, I look around. Me: Where did the tower go? Her: The what? Me: The big box that was sitting down here?
Her: OH, I threw that away. It took up too much space. At first, I was confused that she had thrown the actual computer away. All she had was the monitor, mouse, and keyboard (which were not plugged in). I simply let out a chuckle and explained to her that without the “box,” her computer wouldn’t work. It took a while to convince her, since her (also idiot) brother had messed up her understanding of technology.
Luckily, the tower was still sitting outside her kitchen, and after cleaning it up a bit, it was up and running. I returned home shortly.
27. A Misplaced Sense Of Anger
I own about eight acres of land. The house next to me has a right of way drive that goes through it. A couple bought the house about 10 years ago. One day, they were down near the mailboxes planting some plants. I went down and very nicely told them that what they had done was fine but in the future, before they do anything on my property, they need to ask me first.
He argued with me that they had rights to all of the property on 35 inches of each side of the right of way. I explained to him that this just wasn't true. They haven't spoken to me since and won't even return my wave when I wave at them. If they want to be mad at someone, it is the agent who sold them the house, not me.
28. A Need For Speed
So I went to high school with this guy, Greg. Our school was very tiny, only 120 people including staff, and this particular guy’s antics would spread across the school at near light-speed. We all eagerly awaited the inevitable “GOD DAMMIT GREG” from day to day. He would habitually lean on the back two legs of his chair, despite falling violently almost every single time he did it.
He got his phone taken away nearly two-dozen times in a four week span IN THE SAME CLASS. He sat directly in front of the teacher and never tried to hide his phone, or even put it on silent. He once meowed at a teacher for an entire class period. Yes. Meowed. Like a cat. He was baffled as to why he was kicked out of said class. That wasn’t even the most clueless thing.
Not once. Not twice. But THREE TIMES, Greg put a Cup-o-Noodles in the microwave without water in it. He started a fire each time, the smell was indescribable, and he got the student lounge taken away from all of us. Thanks, Greg, thanks a lot bud. But here’s the main event. Greg, by no laws of god or man, should ever have been allowed behind the wheel of a vehicle any larger or faster than a Big Wheel.
I can’t even count the number of accidents he had, big and small, and it’s a miracle he made it to 17 years old. He’s still kicking now, don’t worry. Naturally, his parents bought him a shiny new sports car; what every teenaged dingus deserves! One morning, on his way to school, Greg came frighteningly close to ending a fellow student, who was riding on his scooter, ON THE SIDEWALK.
He didn’t even realize he’d hit him, and kept driving. Thankfully, the kid wasn’t badly hurt at all and nothing lengthy came out of it. Unfortunately, this was something of a regular occurrence for Greg. The second he got in his car, every other student was in immediate danger, and a couple more minor accidents happened. Greg. Should. Not. Drive. You should know where this is going.
Now I mentioned our school was small, and that meant most of us had very close relationships with our absolutely amazing teachers. Even Greg. We could speak very openly and frankly with them, and they would do the same in turn. So I’m walking back in from lunch one day, and I see Greg speaking with one of our teachers, and it looks very intense. I hadn’t seen him at lunch, and apparently he was in some deep trouble. As I get closer, I can hear the conversation
Teacher: Greg, if you don’t pull your head out of your butt, you’re going to kill one of these kids, or yourself. At the very least you’ll lose your license. Get it together. Greg: I’m a good driver, though! I swear! T: I’m sure you are buddy, but if you can’t stop dicking around long enough to look in the rear-view, or god forbid, out of the WINDSHIELD, bad stuff is going to happen. You’re lucky it hasn’t yet. I’m just asking that you pay attention. Can you do that for me? Just open your eyes a little wider or something?
G: Yes sir...I’m sorry, I know.. T: Alright, now go get yourself some lunch, buddy, I’ll tell your next period why you’re late coming back. You’re smarter than they give you credit for, Greg, you just have to prove it. Scooter Kid is sitting 10 feet away barely stifling laughter. Greg slowly mopes his way out the front door. I wait a minute and approach the teacher to try and get some more details out of him. Then came another huge twist.
Before I can reach the teacher, the front door bursts open and another student comes in screaming “GREG ALMOST RAN ME OVER JUST NOW, SOMEONE NEEDS TO TAKE HIS CAR AWAY” At most, two minutes had elapsed since the end of Greg’s conversation with the teacher. I have never seen a man leap into action so fast, and with so much anger.
This teacher was a former officer in the late 80s. He did not mess round. Greg’s head was about to roll. By the time I got outside it was mostly over, but apparently Mr. Teacher man stopped Greg from leaving the parking lot, pulled him from the car, put him in some kind of arm-bar, and was currently pouring vinegar in his ear with words I only wish I could remember.
It was incredible. While I agree that a teacher should never touch a student like that, I think this case might be something of an exception. Greg was seriously going to kill someone someday. Not much changed for the rest of Greg’s high school career. He drove a little slower, for sure. He had perfect attendance, somehow, graduated just before I did, and I didn’t hear much about him after that. Until maybe a year ago, a Facebook post pops up.
Greg....sweet, simple, lethal behind the wheel Greg, is now a licensed airplane pilot. He flies all the time. Keep an eye on the skies, friends, especially if you’re on a scooter.
29. Some People Shouldn’t Play With Fire
I'm a welder, and these are stories about someone back when I was still in welding school. Let’s say his name was Mike. Despite having the mental capacity of a zooplankton, he somehow made it through the first part of welding school, but he left in a blaze of glory. This was the first day of the Welding and Cutting fundamentals class, the first class of the program.
We were all told specifically to wear flame resistant jeans and leather work boots because we were going to be working with sparks and bits of sharp metal. Mike shows up in basketball shorts and sneakers. The instructor just sent him home and told him to come back next class with proper gear, not a huge deal. The next day when he walked in the room, I almost burst out laughing.
He shows up in jeans and cowboy boots. A lot of welders wear pull on boots, but cowboy boots were a bit of a stretch. The instructor just kind of rolled his eyes and said it was ok. Fast forward a bit, and we are doing an introduction to using a plasma cutter. The instructor tells Mike that he needs to make sure he pulls his jeans over his boots, and not have his jeans tucked into his boots, as they were at the time.
Mike does, but as soon as we break up to go to the different booths and practice, he tucks his jeans back into his boots again. He said and I quote, “Screw that, it looks cool this way.” Those of you who are welders can see where this is going. Let me explain, a plasma cutter shoots a stream of sparks straight downward, and once in a while, a blob of molten metal will fall down onto the floor.
To clarify, you aren't supposed to stand with your feet right in the blast zone of the sparks, you're supposed to step back a bit so the sparks and stuff land in front of you. A few minutes in, I hear screaming. It’s coming from Mike’s booth, and I turn to see him hopping across the shop trying to yank his boot off and screaming all kinds of profanities.
A blob of molten steel had fallen down inside his boot and was now burning his foot. He gets his boot off and runs outside to the sink, and I can hear him running his foot under the water. The instructor hands Mike the first aid kit and says, "Remember when I said you need to pull your jeans over your boots? That wouldn't have happened if you had listened."
Then we’re onto the first day of MIG plate welding. Mike is in my class again, lucky me. Did I mention that in addition to being as dense as a pile of rocks, this guy was also a complete douche-nozzle? Anyway, for those of you who don't know, a MIG welder has two knobs on the front of it, one that controls the voltage, and another that controls the speed the welding wire feeds out of.
You need to set both of them properly depending on the thickness of the metal you're welding, and what position you're welding in. Mike was completely incapable of understanding this. His response was the definition of stupid. He would just crank both settings up all the way all the time. Understandably, the welds he made were awful, and he couldn't understand why.
The instructor figured out what was going on and set the knobs properly for him. The instructor left, and within a few minutes, Mike’s welds sounded terrible again. MIG welding with incorrect settings makes a very distinctive noise. The instructor went over to see what was going on, and Mike had turned both knobs all the way up again.
This repeated several more times over the course of the class. Every time the instructor told Mike not to touch the knobs, and he kept doing it anyway for who knows what reason. Partway through the Stick Plate Welding class, we were practicing working in the 4g welding position, which is overhead. Imagine the joint between the wall and the ceiling.
As you can imagine, working in this position means your hands have a lot of sparks and bits of molten metal falling down on them, and stick welding produces more sparks and spatter than other welding types. Mike was having trouble doing this, and he said that he was having trouble controlling the rod as he was welding, and that's why his welds were bad.
So, for some reason, he decided to do something incredibly dangerous. He decided to take off his gloves and weld with bare hands so he could have better control of the rod. Mike struck an arc, and very quickly realized that his hands were being absolutely destroyed by the heat and sparks and spatter coming down on them. Why he thought that would be a good idea, I have no clue.
On at least 25 occasions I can think of, Mike has tried to weld with his welding helmet either flipped up on top of his head, or off his head completely. Several of them resulted in him seriously burning his eyes. I was honestly surprised this idiot could still see at the end of welding school. But when it came to Mike, he saved the worst for last.
This is when Mike lit himself on fire. The pants and jackets welders wear are made from cotton, and are treated with a chemical that makes them fire resistant. This doesn't mean that they will not burn, just that they will self-extinguish when the heat source is moved away. So here's what happened. Mike comes in, puts on his jacket, and starts to weld.
After a minute or two, I hear a huge commotion across the welding lab, and I look to see Mike running frantically around screaming with his chest and the arms of his jacket engulfed in flames. I think you remember stop drop and roll? Well, Mike tried the vastly inferior scream, jump around, and try to hit the flames to extinguish them.
The instructor told Mike to stand still, and blasted him up and down with a fire extinguisher. I'm pretty sure Mike had to go to the ER to get treatment for burns all over his upper body. We later learned what really happened, and I was shocked. See, Mike had kept his welding jacket in his car next to a jerry can full of gasoline. The jerry can fell over on the way to class, and some of the gas spilled out and got all over his welding jacket.
He wore it when he welded, and a spark hit the gas and set the whole jacket on fire. When asked what the actual heck he was thinking, Mike said that he thought it wouldn't matter because that jacket was fire resistant. It is, but not when it's freaking soaked in gasoline.
30. Nothing That I Need, And Everything I Don’t
This is a story about a woman I had the displeasure of knowing. Apart from going camping alone and using her phone as a flashlight, this is one of the stupidest things she's ever done. This happened about four years ago. She was thinking about buying a laptop because she wanted to use a computer wirelessly instead of her desktop PC.
She asked me for my opinion about what to get. I'm not an expert when it comes to PCs and laptops but I have a good understanding of them. I'd been friends with her for about three years at this point and I knew that she wasn't the smartest knife in the drawer, so part of me was dreading this. But on the other hand, I wanted to see how this would play out. It was more bizarre than I could have prepared for.
HER: "I'm thinking about buying a wireless computer. What do you think I should get?" ME: "Wireless computer? Oh, like a laptop?" HER: "Yeah, a laptop. But it has to be wireless."
ME: (trying to make sure I was on the same page as her) "You can use a laptop wirelessly but it still needs to be plugged in to charge." HER: "Plugged in? I'm buying a WIRELESS laptop." (she said "wireless" loudly and slowly as if I didn't understand the word).
ME: (giving up on trying to understand what she was getting at, knowing from past experience that it's like talking to a brick wall) "Um, ok then. What do you want to use it for? And what's your budget?"
HER: "I want to use the internet, play video games and do some video editing so it needs to work fast. I can only afford about $300." (Australian $). ME: "You'd be hard-pressed to get a new laptop that does all that for under $900. You might find a used one for that price but I doubt it would be much good. My laptop cost $4,000 and it does everything I need it to."
HER: "Can I just have yours then?" ME: "What? No, sorry." This conversation went on for well over 30 minutes with her debating to me about the price and not understanding why I don't just give her mine because "that's what good friends do." She ended up leaving, saying she'd "figure it out herself." A few days later I got a call from her that made me want to scream.
ME: "Hey, What's up?" HER: "I bought a wireless laptop yesterday and it's stopped working. How do I fix this?" ME: "What have you been doing on it? Have you downloaded something you shouldn't? What's on the screen now?" HER: "It's black on the screen. I turned it on when I got home and set it up. It was working fine last night but when I went to check on it this morning it wouldn't turn on."
ME: "Ok, don't panic. Bring it to my place and I'll have a look at it. Bring the box too." She lived two blocks away so she was over 10 minutes later. She only had the laptop with her but no charger. I had a feeling that it was just out of batteries but I tried turning it on just in case. Nothing. ME: "Where's everything else it came with?" HER: "This is all that was in the box."
ME: "Where's the box?" HER: "I didn't think I needed the box so I threw it out."
ME: "Please tell me you kept the charger? Bin collection was last night!" HER: "What charger? I bought a wireless laptop." ME: "Wireless doesn't mean cordless. It just means that if it's charged you can use it without the charger until the battery goes flat." HER: "What are you talking about? The man at the store said it was wireless." ME: (internally face palming) "It's the same as your phone. If you don't charge it, it goes flat, which is what's happened here. You need to charge it."
HER: (not listening to reason) "I'll just buy a new battery. This one's probably broken. Do you have a spare battery?" ME: "A new battery? Do you know what a computer battery looks like? They don't just sell them cheap at the store like remote control batteries. They're expensive." HER: ....(gives a blank stare). ME: "You needed that box. It has the charger, the instructions, and the warranty information."
HER: "But I didn't need the box. I only needed the laptop. This is supposed to be WIRELESS!" (saying 'wireless' by emphasizing every syllable). At this point, I gave up trying to explain it to her and she never asked me about computers after that and I still don't understand where her logic was coming from. I wonder if she ever got a charger? Who knows.
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31. Doing A Double Take
Let me start by saying my mom is a generally nice and fairly smart person. She is, however, not very good at slightly more complicated biology (anything over common knowledge) as her job just had nothing to do with it. My dad, however, studied medicine for a while and both my sister and I were taking biology classes in high school.
Anyway, my mom has been donating blood for decades and she instilled in my sister and me the desire to start donating as soon as we could as well. In my country, you can sign up to become a blood donor at 18, and the first time you go they just take a little blood to do some testing. It's only the second time that you actually donate blood.
Because it would be my first time to actually donate blood, my mom and I went together. Meanwhile, my sister stayed at home with my dad. My parents divorced when I was six because they just didn't fit together. They were still on speaking terms and relatively friendly with each other, however. There was never any betrayal going on, just plain not-getting-along.
So when we got to the blood donation center, we got handed a questionnaire with the important data for the doctor on it, including your blood type. I have 0-, both my parents have 0+, something my mom knew but I didn't. The donation went well and we headed back to my dad's place to pick up my sister. My mom was nice and happy the whole time. And then something changed.
As soon as we walked into the living room where both my dad and my sister were chilling on the couch, she suddenly said to my dad: “Explain this! Our son has 0- blood and I don't! How is that possible!!" She was very clearly implying that somehow my dad cheated on her and that's why my blood was different than hers and my dad's.
She wasn't screaming mad or anything, but all three of us just stared at her until my dad said, ''Well if something happened there, YOU'RE the one to know!" After my mom put 2 and 2 together we just laughed, and later on I explained to her how genetics work.
32. Here For A Bad Time, Not A Long Time
A few years back, one of my husband's fraternity brothers, Chad, stayed with us for a long weekend so he could attend some reunion-type thing. Since hubby and I had a long-standing family obligation on Friday night, Chad was left to his own devices in the house. I knew this wouldn't end well, but I was expecting get the dog high-type antics. It went worse than I could have ever imagined.
Chad went in the freezer for some ice cream, or maybe he was just being nosy. Anyhow, he saw some unlabeled tablets in a blister pack and decided they were drugs. Why? Who knows what goes on in the mind of a Chad. Hubby and I aren't the types to have anything stronger than Advil in the house. Regardless, he popped a couple. After an hour or so of nothing happening, he decided to take four more.
When we got home, Chad informed us that we'd better ask for a refund because those pills in the freezer were duds! What pills? The ones in our freezer? That's cheese curdling enzymes called rennet. I'd been going through a phase of learning to make my own cheese. Rennet is a necessary ingredient that comes in that form and is best stored in the freezer.
It absolutely will not make you high. In that quantity, it will cause severe gastric distress best not observed in nature. I will never forget the sounds that came from the bathroom all Saturday. Don't take mystery pills from the freezer, Chad. They're not all gonna be party favors.
33. Love A Man In Uniform
This guy named Neil is a bass drum in our marching band. In addition to his former band felonies (always being late to rehearsal, not knowing how time signatures work, dropping his drum on a daily basis), Neil has committed a new and worse offense. After 12 hard years of constant fundraising, our band finally bought new uniforms to replace our old ones from the 90s.
These were not cheap. Each uniform came with a cost of about $1,000, not including the price for hats, gloves, and shoes. Because of the new uniforms, our band director drilled into us the no eating in uniform rule, a simple enough rule to follow especially if we heard it dozens of times a day. Our last competition of the year was in a large football stadium, and due to some timing issues we wouldn’t be allowed to take our uniforms off between our performance and when we had to leave.
Therefore, we would all have to wait an hour or so until we could get back to the bus and eat the dinners we had packed. Neil had a different, much more destructive idea. Apparently he had shoved money in his uniform before performing and used it to purchase a large serving of barbecue chicken wings. He then proceeded to eat them in uniform, and was completely clueless to the giant orange stain going down the entirety of the front of his white uniform until my band director saw and freaked out.
Needless to say, it was a fun time and he was extremely confused as to what he did wrong. Hopefully the dry cleaners can fix it, or our band is down a $1,000 uniform.
34. Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Oh the stories I have. I think my husband could be the king of all idiots. One of my favorites is when he wanted to remove his back hair but no one was around to help. He is not a hairy person at all but when he gets something in his head he can’t stop thinking about it. His great idea was to get Nair body hair remover, spread it on the bathroom floor and lay in it.
I can picture all 6’4” 300+lbs of him doing Nair angels in our bathroom. He gets in the shower and rinses it off and then goes about his day. Went to a work appointment, worked out at the gym, then picked up the kids from school. While walking out, our son asked a question that made him stop in his tracks. He asked why he had a bald spot in the back of his head.
Oh my God. He got Nair in his hair and had a perfect bald shaped 3 on the back of his head. After a few more days more hair fell out and it was a perfect 8.
35. The Long Curve Of History
My now ex-wife was something else. On one of our first dates, we decided to watch a movie and have dinner at my place. We decided to watch American History X. She picked it, for what it’s worth. So, anyone who has seen the movie knows the scene where Edward Norton starts screaming at his mom’s Jewish boyfriend. Well, we get to this scene and my ex-wife pauses the movie.
I kid you not, she says, “So these angry bald guys and these Jewish people...They have an issue with each other?" She thought WWII was just a movie she watched in the eighth grade.
36. I Volunteer As Tribute
I teach high school at an alternative program for kids who are removed from the traditional school setting for various problems. One year, we got a ridiculous kid, Ivan, who came to us because someone dared him to bring pot to school. He did, got caught, and was sent to our program. Later that semester, we had a group come in teach us about our bodies.
They would come every day for a week for about an hour each time. Each day brought new hilarity. One day, Ivan explains that the best way to decide if a girl has an STD is to stick his finger in his ear, get earwax, and then shove it up her you-know-what. “If she jumps, she’s got something.” No amount of explanation could convince him that he was disgustingly wrong.
Another day, he asked with all seriousness, “What happens if I pee inside a girl?” Probably the best moment was on the last day. The presenters would bring in a wooden demonstrator (called “Woody”) for students to practice condom skills. Ivan was not paying attention this day. No high school student ever wants to be the first one to put the condom on the Woody, so the presenters asked Ivan if he would be willing to demonstrate.
Without any hesitation, he agreed, stood up, and began to unzip his pants. Ivan had assumed he would be the Woody and apparently had no problem with this scenario in a room full of people.
37. Live Together And Learn
Back in the 90s I lived with an idiot named John. He was a great guy, but I ended up having to establish some unique house rules because of him. The first was “no baking citrus fruit.” One day I came home and could smell something burning. I looked at the oven and it was set to 450F. I looked inside. In the oven was a cookie sheet. On this cookie sheet were several whole lemons and limes that had swollen to the size of grapefruits.
I called to John, who was lounging on the sofa, and asked in confusion, "Why is there citrus fruit in the oven?" This was the response: "I was watching Martha Stewart make potpourri and I decided that I wanted to make it." Now, Martha had apparently sliced up the fruit, laid it out on the cookie sheet, and put it in the oven at the lowest temp to slowly dry out.
John had attempted this, grown impatient, and raised the temperature. The resultant caramelized, burned discs ended up discarded. For attempt number two, he had placed them in the oven whole. Had I not interfered, his plan had been to slice them up once they were hot. When I explained that the process was meant to dry the fruit, not cook it, he removed them from the oven in defeat. The fruit had swollen as the juices inside heated up. I watched as John proceeded to spear the fruit with a fork, spraying searing hot acid all over himself.
The next rule was “don’t use Pledge on the floor.” I arrived home starving one day and proceeded to prepare a snack of cheese and crackers on a plate. I then attempted to carry this plate into the living room. Attempt. We lived in an apartment with parquet floors. We had no area rugs. I am not, by nature, a clumsy person, so imagine my surprise when I completely wiped out between the sofa and coffee table.
While I was lying there, covered in broken crackers, I couldn't 't help but notice the distinct smell of lemon furniture polish. This was odd, because there was no wood furniture in the room. John arrived home a while later and I was compelled to ask, "Um... Did you pledge the floor?" He grinned and informed me that since it makes furniture so shiny, it would be perfect for the wood floor.
The third rule was “no hiding coffee in the furniture.” Never, in the entire time we lived together, did I ever see John consume coffee that didn't come in a paper cup. We didn't own a coffee maker of any kind. Because of this, I found it odd when I could smell rancid coffee in the living room. I looked around for an abandoned cup but couldn't find anything. Finally the mystery of the smell got too much and I decided go hunting.
There was an empty ceramic vase on the coffee table, and for some inexplicable reason, It was full of whole coffee beans. I took it to the kitchen and then went back to my TV show. Why can I still smell coffee? I start examining the sofa. All along the piped edge of the back cushions, I found a row of individual beans. I confronted him later that evening.
He told me that he found old beans in the back of the fridge and thought they'd smell good. He also said that he'd debated putting them in the VENTS but couldn't find a way to make them stay.
38. I Know You Better Than You Know Yourself
I was preparing for my baby shower. My friend, who can be a little stupid, asked who would be there. Upon, hearing my two-year-old nephew would be there, she said “I haven’t seen him since your wedding five years ago.” Me: “He’s two. You have never met him.” Her: “Yes, I did at your wedding, he was the ring bearer.” Me: “My wedding was five years ago, he’s two.”
Her: “He was your ring bearer.” Me: “That was my cousin.” Her: “No, it was your nephew.” Me “I only have one nephew and he wasn’t born when I got married. The ring bearer was my cousin.” Her “Your other nephew then.” Me: “I only have one.” I bust out a picture of my cousin, saying, “this boy, who is my cousin.” Her: “ No, that’s your nephew the ring bearer.”
I don’t remember what finally convinced her but this went on for another five minutes.
39. A Whale Of A Story
I went to college in Central NY where my school was situated on the banks of Lake Ontario. For those not from the US, it’s one of the Great Lakes and is between the US and Canada. As for the “great” part, it’s huge—approximately 50 miles between the countries at its widest. Thus standing at the bank where my school is, you cannot see the other side.
My mother and my aunt drove me to campus on move in day. Having never been to the school before, I directed my aunt to drive the long way along the edge of campus so we could get a good look at the lake. The view was impressive. The following conversation however, reminded me solidly why I needed college and to move far away from my hometown and my idiot family.
Mom: “What’s that river?” Me: “That’s LAKE Ontario, mom.” (?!?) Aunt: “I wonder if you’ll see whales.” Me: (joking) “I don’t think they come this far inland.” Aunt: “What if I got you a good pair of binoculars?” Me: “If you can find a pair that can see the Atlantic from here, I’m gonna be really impressed.” Cue several minutes of explanation about giant lakes and the fact that a whale wouldn’t survive swimming up a freshwater river all that way even if it was large enough to accommodate a whale.
Wikimedia.Commons
40. Mucho Macho Man
When we were all younger and dumber, one of my closest friends married the craziest man I've ever met. Let’s call him Kevin. My friend had just come off of a very bad relationship that she'd been certain was going to end in marriage, when in reality the guy was cheating on her while using her to support his wannabe pro-golfer existence. He then dumped her when someone with more money came along.
So she was in a bad place. A few months later, Kevin appears. The first time I met Kevin was when the two of them showed up at my apartment to announce their engagement. Since I'd met the previous guy that she was "seriously" dating just a month before, I know they couldn't have been seeing each other very long. Turns out, Kevin proposed five weeks after their first date.
Maybe she was a bit of an idiot for saying yes at that point, but like I said, bad place. It's hard for me to accurately describe Kevin without dipping into being mean. Because I never liked him from that first meeting. It was like he really wanted to be one of those hyper-masculine manly men , but didn't quite know how. He liked to take any opportunity to bring up in conversation that he was a black belt.
I remember the first time he said it because I asked, "Oh, yeah, in what?" And he looked at me like I was an idiot. "In martial arts." Oh. Right. Of course. He also would talk, at length, about how much he worked out (turns out, he didn't actually work out at all). Welp, it only went downhill from there. He liked to think of himself as a car guy, because he had a sports car he couldn't afford and treated it like his baby.
He didn't actually know anything about cars, but he had one. So, car guy. But the thing that really got up my nose about the guy was that he prided himself on how very smart he was. He'd make the most outrageous claims with the most pigheaded certainty. He just knew these things were true, and if you disagreed, even if you showed actual physical proof that he was wrong, he'd just condescendingly tell you that you didn't understand these things like he did and go on with his idiocy.
Just as an example, he once declared that you can't break the law at night. What exactly does that mean? We still don't know. He wouldn't elaborate. As a second example, he had trouble getting a fire going in their fireplace when he was home alone one day. His solution was a total disaster. Mix up some homemade napalm from a recipe he found on the internet. It set the kitchen on fire.
Luckily my friend arrived home in time to grab the fire extinguisher. Yet he insisted doggedly that he knew what he was doing, and really this was the best way to get the fireplace going, and obviously she just didn't understand because she didn't know as much about this stuff as he did. There’s one last important thing to know about Kevin before we get 'round to the divorce I promised.
Kevin was a religious nut. I don't mean he was crazy because he was religious. I've known many wonderful, intelligent religious people in my lifetime. Kevin was a crazy person who used religion as his MO. He would randomly proclaim, "The Bible says..." to support whatever other crazy thing he'd said. Most people let him get away with it, because heck the Bible is really long and says a lot of crazy stuff.
Who could say that, somewhere in there, it didn't actually say whatever insane thing he was claiming? And besides, who wants to confront crazy? Even when the claim was something insane like, "The Bible says that birds are of the devil." (Yes, this is a thing he said one day when he was angry at birds for some reason). I was raised going to church twice a week, once upon a time.
So I knew a bit about that particular book, and I had a pathological need when I was younger to call people on their lies. So we often butted heads. Unsurprisingly, when confronted, Kevin could never actually tell you where in the Bible it said you shouldn't take the first slice of pizza (yep, he said that too), but it didn't decrease his certainty that it was in there.
So, as anyone but the two of them could have predicted, the marriage didn't last. Only, it was so much darker than we knew. He became increasingly erratic, forbidding her from speaking to friends, including me, because, "the Bible says so." Hitting her, because the Bible says she has to do whatever he says and that he's allowed to beat her if she doesn't, stuff like that.
So she left…and here is where the wackiest stuff begins. She gets a lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings, and the first thing that comes up is the house. They bought the house from his parents. More precisely, she bought the house from his parents. He had terrible credit. As a result, his name wasn't on anything related to the house. He also had no job.
Meaning he'd never made a single payment on the house. As far as she saw it, the house was hers. His mother, who came into town to support her son through his misfortune, didn't see it that way. Their reaction was completely cruel and unhinged. They declared that the house still belonged to the mother and threw all of my friend's stuff out on the lawn.
Friend's lawyer gets a preliminary hearing date set up, to determine the initial dispersion of important stuff like the house, at least until the divorce proceedings get all sorted. So Friend's lawyer says to Kevin, have your lawyer contact me to set up a meeting before the hearing. A meeting is set up, and who arrives at the lawyer’s office but Kevin, dressed in jeans and a windbreaker, claiming to be, "Mr. Steele, the lawyer."
I kid you not. He decided he'd be his own lawyer and he'd call himself Mr. Steele (not his name). I don't know how the initial meeting went, but when the time for the hearing came, Kevin was once again acting as his own attorney. This time I can only assume he wasn't working under a pseudonym. Keep in mind, the rest of this is totally going off of her story to me immediately after the hearing.
Kevin and his mother arrive 20 minutes late, not at all dressed for court, casual jeans and shirts. The first thing he says when he walks in is, "Can I approach the bench?" "Why?" The judge asks. "Because I have some receipts." So Friend gets called to the stand. Her lawyer asks a bunch of questions illustrating just how crazy Kevin is and how bad things had gotten and about the house and stuff.
Then Kevin, since he's the lawyer, gets to cross-examine. His first question. "Is it not true that you were beaten as a child?" Her lawyer, "Objection." The judge, "Sustained." The question had nothing to do with anything. Other questions included, "Is it not true that you were seeing a psychiatrist and on medication for depression?" "No. It's not true."
She'd never seen a mental health professional. Not sure if he thought he might trick her into lying on that one or if he was so crazy that he actually thought it was true. But he was his own worst enemy. He asked a bunch of other ridiculous questions, which her lawyer let him ask because they were completely out of nowhere and just helped prove to the judge how nuts he was.
Then he takes the stand. Her lawyer gets him to admit to pretty much everything they said he did, because it was all true, but he refuses to give specific answers to some of the more serious questions. Not no. Just doesn't want to give specifics. Then he gets to make a statement. His statement is how he doesn't want a divorce and also she was abusive to him, such as "peenching" him once when they were on the highway.
Also, the Bible says that she's his wife. So she has to do whatever he wants, and that divorce is bad. How can the judge make them get a divorce when the Bible says not to? Apparently he went on in this vein for a while. She just gave me a couple of the highlights. Needless to say, the initial hearing did not go his way. She ended up getting the house in the short term and a protective order against him after he admitted in court to his mistreatment of her ("the Bible says it's ok, though!").
After this he dragged his feet at every point of the process. For more than six months, he wouldn't show up to things or would refuse to sign things until the last possible moment. He moved to a different city and apparently joined the Army reserve. This was also a big problem. When Friend found out about this, her lawyer contacted someone there to point out that he wasn't allowed to be around weapons something like that because of the protective order.
The lawyer even contacted him and offered to drop the protective order so he could stay in if he'd just agree to finish the divorce proceedings in a timely manner. Kevin refused. In the end, he got pretty much nothing and quietly disappeared.
41. In The Trenches
I worked this one woman. Technically, she was well-educated with a master’s degree. But some of the things she said were...interesting. Sitting in the office, we’re all typing away getting on with things. Out of the blue, she says, “Guys, imagine we were in the war.” I’m confused. “What do you mean?” Her: “Like, we are as we are right now, working at our desks, typing away, but it’s WWII and stuff is going off outside.”
I’m even more confused. “So working on our computers during WWII?” She, enthusiastically mistaking my confusion for understanding: “Yes! Can you imagine?!” Me: “There weren’t computers like this then.” Her: “Um, yes, computers were invented when electricity was invented in the early 1600s. Keep up.” I’m completely dumbfounded.
Bonus story: We’re all at an outdoor bar having afternoon drinks. She suddenly screams and ducks. We all look around and she shouts, “Did you guys not see that giant seagull dive at me?!” Patiently as I could, I say, “Um, a seagull didn’t dive at you. A bumblebee flew past you.” Her response? “Oh yeah, I always get those two mixed up.”
42. I Feel It In My Bones
I worked with this guy at a pizza shop in high school. Super nice dude, funny, but the man was dumb as rocks—which in part contributed to why he was funny I guess. One afternoon, we are in the middle afternoon lull of the day. So a couple of us go outside to smoke. Our boss comes out and as always, he tries to give fatherly advice. Sees us all with smokes in our hands and goes, “I don’t know why you guys do that, it’s terrible for you.”
This idiot of ours goes, “Nah man, it’s totally good for you.” We all think he’s making a funny retort to try and deflect the obvious critique from our boss. So we all laugh a little. No fooling, this kid hears our laugh and goes, “No. I’m serious. It’s good for your bones. They have like some sort of calcium in them...” The boy was so serious. Took probably three weeks of us bringing in research and medical books to show that smokes are, in fact, not good for your bones.
Hoping he’s okay out there in the big wide world. Bless his soul.
43. One Peculiar Breed Indeed
So this woman is a peculiar breed. She appears to have been involved in a freak accident that removed all common sense and basic understanding from her mind. What makes her stand out from the crowd is her ability to maintain her opinion even in the face of irrefutable evidence. Here are some of her best: First up, Ireland is a myth.
She believes Ireland is made up and a conspiracy theory because “potatoes come from the store, not disgusting mud.” She is British and we both live in Britain, however I am Irish. I showed her my Irish passport and photos of me in Ireland yet she still thinks it’s photoshopped?? That's just the tip of the iceberg with her. Three months ago I caught her crying and I asked her what’s wrong.
She said she didn’t have long to live. I obviously asked her to elaborate and she said, “She was giving herself a tattoo with a highlighter and a needle and was told she would get ink poisoning.” She ended up going home and writing a will on her Instagram story. She lived. She also had a huge crush on a guy we both knew. She decided to ask him out because, hey, she deserves love too.
She decided to message him on Instagram so if it backfired she could “say her friend sent the message,” her words not mine. She accidentally found the wrong account of a guy with the same name. A married guy. She refuses to accept it was the wrong person and messaged them every day until she was blocked. She is terrified that if there is a nuclear conflict, the wind might blow the missile the wrong way and “hit us.”
She refuses to believe that London is in the southeast of England because “when she went there the satnav pointed forwards.” She believes Northern Ireland shares a border with England and when shown proof she proclaimed the maps are all drawn wrong. She doesn’t know what a birth certificate is and says she never got one.
She greeted a French exchange student with bad German and shouted, “Speak English or find a new job” in France at a French ice cream man. She is a vegetarian, or so she says, but allows herself to eat pork, chicken, and beef as “they don’t count.” I don’t know what counts. She laughed at me when I said gelatine is from cows and is in gummies and said that “gummies come from factories, dummy!”
She also doesn’t realize cows live after being milked and assumed they cut the cow open and there was just a bit of it called milk.
44. When One Door Closes…
A couple of years ago, I worked at a cafe, and met my fair share of...interesting people, but this couple takes the cake when it comes to sheer stupidity. For some quick context, the main entrance to the cafe is a door you just have to pull in order to open. I was cleaning up the coffee machine after I had made a cup for a customer when I looked out the glass wall to see a man and a woman approach the cafe.
The woman tries to push open the door. It doesn't work. I figure she just did that classic thing where you're not sure which way the door opens and just tried pushing first, since it requires less effort than pulling, so I don't think much of it, and just get ready for when they enter. She pushes the door again. Okay. Maybe she figured the door was just stuck.
I mean, that happens every now and then, right? I'm about to go help when I see the man walk past her with that "I got this" look on his face. He confidently places his hand on the handle and...he pushes. Then it just escalates He looks genuinely surprised, and tries again. And again. And again. Each time, he gets more forceful, at one point slamming his shoulder against the glass door.
The two are so preoccupied with this door that they don't even notice me staring dumbfounded at them the whole time, other than being, you know, helpful. Eventually, I figure that if I don't help, they'll either leave or break the door, so I push myself from the counter to go there and help them. That's when they spot an open sliding door on the other side of the cafe, leading to the outside tables, which are very popular at that time of the year, and decide to go around and squeeze past all the guests sitting there and enjoying their meals.
When they finally made it through, it's as if the stars and planets aligned perfectly. They look toward the main entrance to see an old man approach, place a hand on the handle, and...pull the door open with no effort. It had been an absolutely uneventful day up until that point, so I had to ask a co-worker who didn't witness this to handle them, and I just walked into the back to laugh.
45. Very Conditional Love
Long ago, in his unwise youth, my husband dated a girl, let’s call her Jane. Jane had a job that had required a certain level of education. She had stable employment, a modest but nice apartment, and a decent car. It was time to reward herself for her success. What she wanted, no, DESERVED, was a brand new car. Granted, it was the 1970s, when car prices were lower, but it was early in her career and she had no savings for a down payment, not to mention she already had a perfectly serviceable car.
Several people, including my husband, gave her an explanation of depreciation and how new cars lose value very quickly, but Jane wasn't having it. She wanted a new car and that was that. Somehow she got someone (we'll say it was a bank, but it may have been a finance company) to give her a loan. Due to the lack of a reasonable down payment and probably her own inept negotiating skills, the monthly payment was rather high and just barely doable, provided she scrimped on things like groceries and heat.
She struggled along stubbornly for a few months, but then was hit with a rent increase. It wasn't much of an increase, but she had absolutely no cushion. Moving wasn't a good option because that would bring other expenses. She asked her dad to give her a loan to make her car payment. He agreed but made it clear it was a one-time thing.
"You've got to talk to the bank and get out of that deal," he told her. "You're going to lose money"—because she was now upside down on the loan due to depreciation—"but you're just digging yourself in deeper." Jane thought it over, and she came up with a plan. It was, to her, the most brilliant plan ever thought of. In fact, she couldn't understand why no one had ever come up with it.
She would sell the car. She did not discuss this plan with anyone, perhaps out of fear of blinding them with her brilliance. She was in a hurry to be rid of it, so she advertised it at far below book value. Her ad was answered by someone who was even stupider than her, and this person did not question why there was no title. Jane brushed her hands together in a "that's done" motion, used the money from the sale of the car to buy a much more modest replacement, and proceeded to move on with life.
Pretty soon the bank called, reminding her she hadn't made her car payment. "I don't have the car anymore," she told them with what can only be imagined as great satisfaction, "so I don't have to make the payment." What had she done with the car, they asked. "I sold it." I see, they said. And exactly where is the car right now? Needless to say, the car was quickly repossessed by the bank from the person who thought they had bought it.
Jane was quite shocked to learn she did indeed have to pay back the loan, which as mentioned earlier was currently more than the value of the car. She was also shocked to learn that if you sell someone a car you don't actually own and it gets repossessed, the person you sold it to will demand their money back. My husband, hearing all this, decided that just maybe he'd look for a girlfriend who was a little bit brighter.
46. Sick And Tired
There is no other way to describe this woman I work with than stupid. She has called in sick multiple times since September 16th. In this time she has: driven herself to the hospital with a 40° temperature. Let us remember that basal body temp is 37°, 39° is classed as a fever, and at 41 or 42 your organs shut down. She blacked out on the Autobahn—you know, that place where CARS DRIVE AT WHATEVER SPEED THEY SEE FIT and crashed.
Last night, she choked, couldn't breathe, and turned blue. Her mother had to come into her room to try and save her. She only decided to seek medical attention this morning. I live in Germany, but am a native English speaker. On our first day, we were talking about languages. I asked if she could speak anything other than German, she said no.
Odd, as lots of Germans our age (she's two years younger than me, I'm in my late 20s) have at least school level English, but whatever. She then had a phone conversation with her mother in perfect Arabic. She couldn't discern that German and Arabic are different languages. She asked me what working visa I had to get to live in Germany and if it was hard to get it.
I am an Irish citizen—we have freedom of movement with the EU, of which Germany is also a member. She was entirely unaware of this. This woman is harmless, but one day is going to unintentionally cause her own end.
47. Getting A Second Opinion
I work as a healthcare provider at a doctor’s office and occasionally will work the front desk. The following exchange happened Friday. Patient: (filling out paperwork) “Are kidney stones the same as a bladder infection?” Me: “No...stones are hardened deposits that form in your kidney” P: “Are you sure??” M: “Yes…they are two different organs.” I wish I had just given up then.
Five minutes later: P: “Are bladder problems the same as kidney stones??” M: “No…still different organs and in different parts of the body.” P: “That can't be right, I have stones and it always hurts when I go to the bathroom, therefore they must be related to the bladder!” M: “I promise they aren't.” P: “Well, how do YOU really know? It's not like you’re a doctor” (insert eye-rolling). “I'll just ask Google!!”
M: “Ok…” P: (a couple of minutes later) “OH MY GOSH! Even Google is agreeing with you! Ugh, I'll just ask the doctor when I get in the room!” M: “That's perfectly fine.”
48. Money For Nothing
My part-time co-worker Andrea came running up to me, bursting with good news. "They did it again! They messed up and paid me an extra hour again this week!" "Huh?" I said, "What do you mean?" "I work from midday to quarter past five every day, but the last few weeks, I've checked my payslips, and they've been paying me 5.25 hours each day! I'm getting an extra ten minutes each day, which is fifty minutes a week, almost a whole extra hour! For nothing!"
"Um" says I, ever eloquent, " You realize that decimal is part of an hour, right? Not minutes?" With an amazingly condescending and pitying look, she says "Yes, I know it's a decimal. Five point two Five. Point two five of an hour is twenty five minutes, but I've only been working fifteen!"
She then throws in, as you might to preschooler, "Twenty-five is ten more than fifteen!" What else could I do? I said, "Wow, that's pretty lucky, don't worry, the secret's safe with me, but you can buy me a couple of beers sometime with your lucky windfall bonus money." I watched as she ran off, happy as a pig in proverbial, utterly convinced she's getting money for nothing.
49. Snack Time Gone Wrong
My idiot “friend” wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. Simple enough, right? Hahahaha…no. After deciding to use his mom's steel pan to make the sandwich, he went about prepping. Mistakes were made. He used fresh butter to coat the bread. Fresh as in just opened and still hard. He just cut off big chunks and basically ripped the bread up trying to spread it.
He cut the cheddar into large chunks as well instead of a series of thin slices. The sandwich was overloaded and lopsided with giant holes in the bread. He turned the heat on the burner to high, and didn't put any oil or butter in the pan, figuring that the butter on the sandwich would be enough. He didn't turn on the fan above the stove and walked out for a minute after setting the sandwich on the pan.
Now, I don't condone using the fire alarm as a cooking timer, but that's what happened. He just decided to flip the sandwich and keep going. The chunks of burned cheese, bread, and butter coating the pan nearly ruined it and there were some pretty bad permanent stains on it even after steel wool was used. Here’s my confession: That idiot was me.
I swear I'm a better cook now, but my mom banned me from the kitchen for a few months after that, and I am still only allowed to use her cast iron when cooking at her house. That specific pan is still in use 10+ years later, though.
50. A Real Brown Thumb
This guy Harvey has been one of my closest friends since college. Absolute genius—top of his undergrad and business school courses, high-flying consultant, etc. It would all be truly nauseating, if he weren’t such an amazing guy. We were roommates for a while in London. Literally, the perfect person to live with—tidy, fun, but also understood boundaries. Except he had one fatal flaw.
At one point when we were living together, I went for a three-week adventure holiday, so was pretty much out of contact. Anyway, I asked Harvey to take care of my plants while I was gone. Seemed a simple ask. Gave him instructions to water them every couple of days and rough amounts of water needed. Came back and the dear boy seemed very guilty.
“Sorry, but I think I may have destroyed some of your plants...I watered them as you said, but something may have gone wrong...” I walk in and look around at my plants, figuring he might have forgotten to water them a couple of days or something…Well, nope, he really did destroy them. Fair enough, things happen right? But then I started smelling this godawful smell in a couple of places.
Couldn’t figure it out. He was Mr. Tidy, remember? Turns out Harvey had watered all of my dried plants—think bundles of sculptural sticks, etc. A bit of fake ivy where I was trying to make an ugly window ledge look pretty. He’d watered them diligently every two days for three weeks. Pools of vile water in the bottom of their containers, like some kind of semi-sentient primordial ooze that absolutely reeked.
Black mold crept up the sides of the containers and on the bases of the plants that yielded clouds of spores when I pulled them out. Black mold is toxic of course, so was a bit scary. I had to trash plants, containers, etc. in case they very likely would make us sick. Turns out my dear, sweet, genius Harvey had noticed the dank smell, but thought that was “probably normal for plants at some point in their lives” and didn’t want to let me down by not watering.
So he lived in our veritable plague farm of a flat for all three weeks suffering in silence. I really had to struggle not to weep while laughing. He was so earnest and had tried so hard. But good lord, sometimes even geniuses can be complete idiots.
51. The Computer Wiz
This guy is also not the brightest when it comes to technology. I learned this after this experience. A couple of days ago, the guy messaged me asking why he didn’t receive a “forgotten password” email. I ask him some questions such as “did you send the email to the right account?” just trying to help out. His response went something like this:
“Well, I signed up with my Google account and did the steps. Then it sent an email, but since I used my google account, not my email account, I can’t change my password.” I was confused at first, and then realized what was going on. He doesn’t know that Gmail is a PART of Google. He had made a separate account for EVERY different service google has to offer.
The reason he wasn’t receiving an email was because he was waiting for an email on an entirely DIFFERENT account. I tried to explain to him that’s not how it worked, yet he insisted he was right. His argument was literally: “The ‘G’ in Gmail doesn’t stand for Google, it stands for global. You should know this since your dad’s an IT.” I just hung up and contemplated life.
52. As The Crow Flies
I think it was sophomore year of high school when a friend outed himself as a fool. He seemed like a normal guy…until one day the truth came out. Some of us were talking about the walk home from school. My friend said he hated his walk home because it took him almost an hour. I'd been to his house before and it was only a few blocks from the school, so I asked why it took so long.
He explains that because of all the one-way streets, the walk to school is pretty quick, but to get home, he has to take a different, much longer route.
53. Going The Wrong Way Round
My friend Will got a job at a gas station/fast food place. During his first week there, they were training him on the sandwich line. He said everything was going well and he had the manager there with him to help him out. He finally gets his first customer. The guy orders a steak and cheese. Keep in mind that a steak and cheese sub is Will’s favorite food and he makes good ones at home, so it should be no issue for him.
Well Will makes the man's sandwich and even the manager comments on his good job making it. Right as he was about to wrap the sandwich, the customer notices that he forgot to cut the sandwich and asks Will to do it. This is exactly where it all went wrong. Will says, "Oh ya I forgot sorry about that," then proceeded to lay the sub down on its side and cuts the sub long ways.
The manager and the customer are now just both staring at Will in complete disbelief. Finally the manager asks him why he cut the sandwich like that and Will responds with "that's how you showed me." That was not how he was shown. So the manager and customer at this point start to laugh about it. The manager explains that in no way, shape, or form were you trained that way. He tells Will he can keep that sub for himself and to make the customer another one.
Will makes another perfect sub and begins to wrap it up when the customer notices for a second time he didn't cut it. Now to this day none of us could figure out what went through Will’s mind. Maybe he thought it would get a good laugh, maybe he was super hungry and thought he would get another free sandwich. All we know is that he laid that second sub down on its side and cuts it lengthwise again.
Both the manager and the customer were upset by this point and the manager sent Will away and made the sub himself. Will was removed from the sub station permanently and made into a cashier that shift. But the story didn’t end there. I finally asked Will (in front of some other friend) about the fateful sub day and his unorthodox cutting methods.
I said, “Will, if you had a long day at work and you're starving so you stop to pick up a steak n cheese on the way home and right before they hand you what looks to be a delicious sub...They cut it in half like the way you did, would you accept that sub? Will emphatically said with a look of disgust on his face: “Heck no! I wouldn't take that sandwich." He didn't understand our laughter.
54. Some Neighborly Advice
We had new neighbors move in three days ago, and we’ve already had some interesting interactions. This is gonna be rough!! On their first day here, they knocked on our door to ask if our power was out. We said “no” and they said theirs was. I asked if their breaker switches were flipped. They had no clue what I was talking about. Not a big deal, not everyone knows about this, although they should.
So I offered to come over and have a look. When I walked in their house, I immediately got confused. The lights were on. I said, “I thought your power was out?” They said “It is! Our TV and Nintendo switch won’t turn on!” I went over to the entertainment stand they pointed at and had a look. They had the TV and the switch plugged into a power bar. The power bar has a red light up switch on it to indicate whether it’s turned on or off.
The light was off. I flipped the switch over and of course it worked. They didn’t seem embarrassed or anything. Turns out, that was just the prelude. Later that night, we have another bang on the door. It’s the neighbors. They say, “Are you sure the power isn’t acting weird? Ours is out again.” I ask them if all the power is out or just the TV and Nintendo switch.
They say TV and Switch so I tell them just to flip the light up button to on, on the power bar. They said they did and nothing happened. Reluctantly, I drag my butt over there to have a look. They now have a few more things plugged into the power bar, like a Scentsy candle, a charger of some sort and their cable box. When plugging these other things in, they unplugged the TV to make room for the other cords.
I let them know that if your TV isn’t plugged in, your Switch or cable won’t show up on the screen. OBVIOUSLY. Once again, they weren’t embarrassed. Fast forward to the next day. I can smell the scent of food. Really strongly. I can’t make out what it is, but something smells off. Almost like a chemical smell mixed with spices or something like that.
Anyways, I continue on with my day, scent in the air the whole time. I should have known disaster was coming. I’m out in my backyard doing some gardening when my neighbor yells at me over the fence. “Hey! Do you like deer jerky?” It didn’t click in my head immediately. I said “Yeah I do, why? You got some?” He says “Well not yet, but I will soon. I’m aging it in the basement.”
It instantly popped into my head to ask what the heck he was using, because it shouldn’t smell like chemical. So I ask him, “You got your own meat smoker?” He says “Yeah I made it myself. It’s not that hard. Just need an old rain barrel pretty much.” I said “A plastic rain barrel!?!? Are you serious?!?!” He looked confused and said “Yeah. Why?”
I then explained to him about how plastic is toxic and when it’s heated up, it releases all that onto your meat. He shrugged it off and said “No big deal, it’ll be fine.” Somehow, that wasn’t the end of it. Today, their children (6 and 8) were running around in our front yard. We don’t really care if kids walk on our grass, as long as they stay out of the garden.
They were wrestling and we had a good time watching them scrap out the front window for about 5 minutes. That was until the younger kid hurt the older kid. As soon as he hurt him he knew he was in trouble. He took off running through the garden, trampling all over my wife’s flowers. His older brother followed and trampled over them some more.
My wife and I went running out to tell them they can’t do that. We told them nicely, didn’t raise our voices or swear. They apologized and left. Not even five minutes after we left, their parents came banging on the door. “Why are you telling our kids off?” We were stunned and explained the situation to them. Their response “our kids don’t lie.” I literally laughed.
Instead of continuing to argue with someone that won’t listen, I was just going to walk away. As I was about to close the door, his wife pipes up, “I don’t get why you guys would be so mad about them wrecking some ugly flowers anyways. It’s the city’s flowers. Like, why do you care so much?” My wife went off. “The city’s flowers? Ugly flowers? Why the heck would these be the city’s flowers?”
The wife then responds, “Like, how dumb are you? All front yards are city property. Like, know your laws idiot!” That’s when I shut the door. Wish me luck!
55. Time To Buzz Off
I know a middle-aged man named Aaron who is 100% a complete idiot. This man can hear anything on the news or on the radio, interpret it using his small brain, and take it as end-all, be-all fact. Don't even argue with him. This particular time a few years ago, it was extremely hot outside and he was trying to explain what he learned on the news.
Apparently, he was told the air isn't actually hot it's just "vibrating" (yes, at super basic level this is sort of true). He went on to say that wind was made by said vibrations, and when it was hot it vibrated so much it produced the “summer noise.” I think this brilliant gentleman thought the noise of CICADAS was produced by the heat itself. Yes, the bugs that make the loud chipper noise. The bugs.
At this point I was too dumbstruck to even have any sort of explanation or counter-argument.
56. Show And Tell
When I was in high school, some of the jocks decided that Home Ec would be an easy A. One of the jocks was an absolute fool. So, the Home Ec class is learning how to use sewing machines. This guy is sewing merrily away, with his thumb sticking out perpendicular to his left hand, putting it on trajectory toward the needle. Not surprisingly, he runs his thumb through the feed and punctures it several times.
He calls out to the teacher for help. She comes over and asks him, “What did you do?” He replies, “I did this,” and proceeds to repeat his actions, including going through the feed and getting additional puncture wounds to his thumb.
57. If At First You Don’t Succeed, Fail Again
I met this guy, Lewis, while interning at a non-profit organization. Lewis interned in the archives department, and once the summer was coming to an end he decided he would get a permanent job there no matter the cost. This led to several hare-brained schemes and unsuccessful attempts to show how good of an employee he could be. He tried to apply to a position in his department that had not existed for years because of budget cuts.
But Lewis was a member of the organization and thought he was superior to everyone else, so of course he thinks they'll just find the money so that he can continue working there. He meets with the main hiring director who again tells him there is no money or need for the position but that doesn't stop Lewis. Instead he comes up with an even worse plan.
Lewis decides to apply for another position in a completely different department that he has no qualifications for. His plan is to get the job....and then after a couple weeks move back into his old office at the archive department and pretend like he had been working there the whole time. Of course, his plan was ruined by the fact that he told co-workers about it, so some people already knew about his false intentions before he even had the interview.
Before this interview, Lewis tried to show how he can be a model employee. One day my soda got trapped in the vending machine. Lewis attempted to prove how macho he was in front of the hiring director by shaking and punching the machine until he was red in the face and ran out of breath. The best was yet to come. The hiring director then proceeds to pull out a key and unlock the machine in a couple seconds.
This make Lewis look like an absolute idiot while he's about to pass out from exhaustion. A few days later at lunch, one of the other interns mentions how she's getting some furniture delivered to her apartment. Lewis butts in and says, "I can come over to your place and help assemble it for you." She tells him thanks but I can do it on my own, but Lewis is unfazed.
"NO, I'm going to come over and help you, this is a man's job." What’s creepy is that Lewis was older than most of the interns by about five years. having already gotten a master’s degree while everyone else was undergrad students. A week later, Lewis receives a visitor in his office. The new CEO who was due to start in a month wanted to check in with everyone.
The CEO begins to explain how he wants to run things when Lewis tries correcting him. Despite having only worked there for two months and being due to leave in a week, Lewis starts to lose his patience. "THIS IS HOW WE"VE DONE THINGS IN THE PAST AND THIS IS HOW WE"RE GONNA KEEP DOING THEM." Somehow he still thought he had a good chance going into the interview despite screaming at the new CEO, who would have to approve new employees.
Well this ends exactly how you thought it would. He doesn't get the job and mopes back to his office to pack up his stuff, riding off into the sunset to scam his way into another job.
58. A Special Guest
I used to work at a motel. It was not the sort of motel chain that brings to mind images of chocolates placed on pillows or romantic evenings in the hot tub; indeed, its signature decor can be seen in the background of certain low-budget rap videos. However, Mr. and Mrs. Idiot made it their monthly romantic getaway. In fact, due to a generous corporate policy that directed managers to provide an extra night free of charge to soothe any complaining guests, for a period lasting a year or more, they succeeded in stretching their monthly getaway to two nights.
Among the complaints that won them an extra night: The room was full of bugs after they left the door open all evening. The toilet stopped flushing after they emptied their ashtray into it The manager eventually received permission from corporate to cap the number of free nights a guest could be eligible for. The couple were the only guests ever to reach this lifetime cap at our motel.
Their shock over no longer having one free night a month did not end their regular getaway, however. It had to get much grosser. That was achieved after an incident involving copious amounts of vomit. Mr. and Mrs. Idiot were informed that they were now on the no-rent list. Apparently, this monthly stay was important to their marriage, because a few months later the manager received a call from Mrs. Idiot's divorce attorney.
What vital information did he need? He wanted to confirm that Mr. Idiot was responsible for both of them being banned from the motel. Yes, this was apparently part of the divorce proceedings. The manager explained that he considered each of them equally responsible, which was not the answer the attorney expected or wanted. Not long after, Mrs. Idiot called the front desk.
"You have me banned under the name Jane Idiot," she announced. "But—" and here she could not hide her pleasure at her own cleverness, "that's not my name anymore. I got divorced, and now my name is Jane Kelly." We had the pitch-perfect response. The front desk employee, trying to hide their laughter, said, "Ok, we'll make sure to ban you under the name Jane Kelly, too." A gasp of dismay, and the line went silent.
59. A Real Medical Marvel
This woman could only be described as a story topper. She has a requirement, nay, a compulsion to turn the conversation back to herself when the spotlight shines on someone else. This narcissistic quality means that it’s almost comedic to see how far she’ll dig herself to gain attention. If you’re telling a story about saving a cat from a tree, she’ll say she’s done it too but also broke her arm while doing so.
Don’t ask where her cast is, it healed really fast. Recently, a friend of hers was describing her rather cancer-friendly family tree. With her history, she has more knowledge of it than the regular person and was telling the group about it. But this woman wasn’t having that of course. Below is a paraphrased conversation. Her: I’ve had cancer. Friend: Oh that’s unfortunate, what type?
Her: (stuttering) The doctor called me over the phone and told me it was some kind of bone cancer. Friend: Wow, that serious! What kind of chemo did you go through? Her: Oh it only lasted a few months, I took radiation pills. Friend: Right...So after contracting one of the worst cancers out there, she conveniently managed to beat it with pills that would probably give her more cancer…if they even existed in the first place.
She’s a medical marvel.
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60. Losing Track Of Time
So a few co-workers in a different department than mine were talking together, and one brings up how there is already snow in Idaho. One of them shows the other a photo on their phone and says "I can't believe there's already snow in Idaho. It's October!" Now, this fool is within earshot of this conversation and decides to chime in. He reveals the strangest detail.
"But it's not October in Idaho yet...." The other two are just flabbergasted and it takes them a moment to process what they just heard before they can tell him how wrong he is.
61. Hard To Live With
This guy a good, sweet dude. He'll give you the shirt off his back without thinking twice, but this dude isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. In fact, if he was an axe, he'd be so dull and blunt of an axe that you'd mistake him for a sledgehammer. In any case, I have to frequently remind myself how much of a good guy he is because the stuff he says and does is beyond frustrating.
I bet that a few hours spent with him could get even the enlightened Lord Buddha to break into a meltdown. All those years of meditation it took to reach nirvana down the drain...He needs to take out his driver’s license whenever someone asks for his date of birth and he will STILL mess it up. “It’s the 4th of the 16th month of 1993.. so that's April 4, 1993 right?"
Usually the other person just loses their patience and asks, "Sir, just read me the individual numbers from left to right.” He has never eaten Chinese food. There is nothing wrong with that, but whatever was going on in his brain is clearly wrong. I was thinking about ordering some Chinese food, so I asked him what he wants. He tells me he doesn't like Chinese food because it's too spicy.
So I was like ok, I'll get some noodles and some beef or chicken that's not too spicy. I start naming your common Chinese takeout dishes, and he has no idea what I’m talking about. I get nothing but a glassy-eyed gaze from him. I ask him what he ate last time that was so spicy. The dude starts naming some Indian food dishes. Kebobs, biryani, and stuff.
I was like, that's not Chinese food, that's Indian cuisine. He's not having any of it and a little argument breaks out. Turns out that the Indian restaurant is in Chinatown so it's gotta be Chinese food according to him. He then calls a mutual friend he went to that restaurant with and puts him on speakerphone and asks him to tell me that yes, in fact he has had Chinese food and that definitely was a Chinese restaurant.
The mutual friend completely loses it and starts laughing like a psycho while trying to explain to him that just because a restaurant is in Chinatown does not mean it can only have Chinese food. I lose it too. His face turns all red in anger and I could swear I saw his head swelling up ready to pop. He drives for Uber and so do I, as we both try to make our way in life.
Now, Uber deposits your earnings into your bank account automatically at the end of the week. If you want your earnings before that, you can instantly cash out. Uber takes a 50 cent fee for instant cash out. This guy shows me that he has $1.83 in his earnings and asks me how much will uber take if he cashes out right now. I tell him 50 cents, so if he does cash out right now he will have $1.33 deposited in his account.
He says, "Oh my god that's almost half my money! Tomorrow I’m planning to make 50 dollars so I'll cash out then so Uber will only take like 10 dollars and give me 40 dollars! Uber is so greedy. If I cash out now they take half of my money but cashing out tomorrow, I only have to give way less than half of 50 dollars!" At this point, my natural instinct is to educate the fool but I know that if I attempt to do so, I'm entering into a world of hurt.
I give it a shot. I tell him that no, no matter how much money he has in his earnings, Uber will only take 50 cents for each cash out. If he cashes out now, Uber takes 50 cents from 1.83 to give him 1.33. If he cashes out tomorrow with 50 dollars, uber will take the same 50 cents from his 50 dollars and give him $49.50. Anyway, I try a little while longer, but he can't get beyond Uber taking half of his money if he cashes out right now.
One day, he and I are talking about dental hygiene. We both agree that brushing after every meal is a good idea and it works well to prevent cavities. Flossing? Yes flossing is a good idea too. So far so good, but then I pull out my bottle of mouthwash. This is where it all falls apart. I tell him mouthwash is good too, it helps bad breath and all the germs in your whole mouth, especially the parts where we don't usually brush.
He’s is like, "No way, someone said to do mouthwash but I don't do it! I never do it because it's just a way for the dentists to make more money! It has chemicals and stuff in it that messes up your teeth and helps the germs to make even bigger cavities, rotting your teeth! They want you to mess up your teeth so you can go back to them and give them your money!"
At this point, I'm flabbergasted, and I ask him where he got that idea from? I show him my mouthwash bottle and how it says it's antiseptic.....but nope, he’s not having any of it. He's full of confidence that he knows it's a conspiracy for them to get our money and all that antiseptic and prevents gum disease stuff on the bottle is a lie! Never use mouthwash because it destroys teeth! But I knew how to get him.
Now I'm like ok so what about toothpaste? Look, this toothpaste says whitening and that it's anti-cavity. If the dentists and all these companies want to mess up our teeth, then they would put tooth harming chemicals in our toothpaste too? If we can't trust the mouthwash then how are we supposed to trust the toothpaste? Look the toothpaste and my mouthwash are both made by Colgate! It's the same company!
He then takes the tube of toothpaste and starts reading it. I can see like maybe two brain cells light up. About 10 seconds later he has a eureka moment. I swear to all that is holy that he then said, "Look here! it says made for sensitive teeth which means they didn't put evil chemicals in it and right over here it says Extra Fresh! Which means they only use the most natural and the most freshest ingredients to make this! So it's totally natural and good for your teeth, unlike that lying mouthwash.”
I then as him what if the toothpaste label is lying like the mouthwash label is lying? He tells me that I don't understand what he knows and that I should trust him about this. Ok.... He is also an automobile "expert.” He popped the hood of his car that was running and sprayed WD-40 all over the engine. He read somewhere that WD-40 is good at cleaning grease so he decided to empty like two whole cans of WD-40 all over everything while the car was running. It ended exactly the way you think it would.
A few minutes later, lots of hot, black smoke started coming out from in there and he freaked out. Did he quickly take the key out of the ignition and turn the running car off?... Nope. He ran inside the building, filled a big bucket with water in the bathroom, ran down three flights of steps with that heavy bucket of water, and then poured all that water all over the car's engine.
I guess it kinda worked, the smoke definitely stopped. The car also stopped running. In fact, you can't turn the car on now. Turn the key in the ignition? Nothing, no engine sounds, no clicking sounds, nothing. Maybe it needs a jump? Nope nothing again, battery is fine. It's been a few months now and that car is sitting right outside in the same place getting all rotten and rusty.
I told him to save a little money and have a mechanic check it out. Nope, he doesn't want to do that because mechanics fix one thing but mess up your car more so that it breaks down again after a few months and you’re forced to pay that same mechanic more money. That's alright though, because he is confident he can fix it himself. This also went horribly.
Because he is so confident he can fix his own car, he walked into an AutoZone and asked an employee to give him the tools that are for fixing cars. "What specific kind of tools, sir?" "All the tools that are used by mechanics to fix cars when they are not working!" He walked out of there with no tools but he was definitely angry that AutoZone was messing with him. They just want his money.
A few months ago, he went to visit his uncle in another country. Before he left, he asked me what kind of gift he should get for his uncle? I replied with the usual, you know stuff like clothes, perfume, wallets, or some electronic device. He, says what about a gun? I could buy him a nice one! I'm like what the heck?? ..... OK, say you get one for him, how do you plan on taking it with you to give to him?
You know, since you're getting on an airplane to travel there? He says no problem. It's safe in a holster and I'll also have a permit to show to the airplane people. After hearing this, I was like WHAT THE HECK? You can't do that! You are gonna get tackled to the ground. Best case scenario, they are gonna ban you from stepping foot inside an airplane, any airplane ever again!
YOU CRAZY?! How do you not know this? He just brushed it off. Oh, and: He and I went to Walmart to buy cleaning supplies for our apartment. We go stand in the checkout line and he whispers into my ear, "Hey that chocolate, is that a Snickers? Can you pick one up for me?" I tell him to pick it up himself because he’s literally standing right next to it.
He whispers again, telling me to do it. I’m like whatever and I pick it up and put it next to our stuff. He then says that the Snickers should be next to me or that I should hold it. At this point, I’m like do you want the Snickers or not?! Why are you whispering in my ear? What's wrong with putting the Snickers bar right next to the other stuff are buying?!
Apparently, he was afraid that the people around him wouldn't view him as the masculine tough guy he thinks he is if they found out that the Snickers is for him. I pick up the candy bar and loudly say mmmmm I love Snickers and this is for me! His face turns red and once again I swear his head size was swelling up. He thinks he knows geography. He will say dumb stuff like "Florida is north south of New York" "Chicago and Atlanta are touching but Chicago is left."
He is also guilty of the classic "Girls pee from the butt." The first time I thought he was joking, the tenth time not so much. He refuses to believe otherwise because he's very "Knowledgeable about human autonomy." Sometimes I wish he wasn't such a nice, sweet guy so that I could flip my wig and call him an idiot. Because that’s what he is.
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62. Chickening Out
I was on a yoga retreat two years ago when I met a girl named Autumn. She was the kind of girl who is Instagram fit, owns healing crystals, and goes to Coachella. Very much a free spirit, flitting her way through life. On the first night of the retreat, the group dinner was a vegan version of a Malaysian curry that is traditionally made with chicken.
Upon hearing this, Autumn announced to the table, "I don't eat chicken. The way chickens are farmed in the US is cruel and barbaric. They're kept in cages and pumped full of drugs." The table: *collective shrug* Ok, fair enough. Autumn: I'll eat hens though! The table: *collective head scratching* But hens are chickens. Autumn: No they're not! They're totally different animals.
The table: Male chickens are called roosters, and female chickens are hens. At the end of the day they're still all CHICKENS. Autumn: No, chickens were invented by the U.S. government. Chickens aren't real animals because corporate farming has perverted them. The table: *crickets chirping* Autumn: But I'll eat chickens when I visit third world countries, because they're well treated there.
No amount of explaining or arguing could convince her that hens are in fact, chickens. Or that chickens are real animals. Talking to her was like repeatedly running into a brick wall. Eventually, we all gave up and went to bed.
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63. This One Shocked Me
When I was in eighth grade, my teacher struggled mightily to convince a girl that bees are pretty much normal insects, but when they sting you, they’re injecting a toxin that hurts as defense mechanism. The girl did not believe her. Instead, she thought that bees buzzed because they obviously contained electricity and the sting was therefore actually an electric shock.
64. On Yours But Not On Mine
I live on a 50 acre New England farm. About two thirds of it is wooded. After I'd been here for about a year, I was walking the boundary stone wall, which is on my side of the land. From a neighbor's yard I hear a bellowing voice, "YOU'D BETTER NOT BE ON MY LAND." I replied, "I'm not. I'm on my own land." He yells back, from somewhere in the trees on his side, "JUST SO YOU KNOW, NEVER STOP FOOT ON MY LAND."
Me: "OK, we've got a deal. And you stay off mine, OK?" I hear a grunt. Then I ask, "By the way, is this deer hunting tree standing on my side of the wall?" At which point he exploded, "THAT STAND HAS BEEN THERE FOR TEN YEARS!" He picked a fight for absolutely no reason, and ended up agreeing to not trespass on my land...and had been trespassing for a decade.
65. Stay Thirsty
My sister used to work with a lady who was a total airhead. Let’s call her Kelly. There were a ton of stories, but this one in particular really stuck with me. One day Kelly had to call out from work in the middle of a heatwave. She was in the hospital, on IV fluids, from dehydration and heat exhaustion. After returning to work, my sister asked her how she got so dehydrated. The answer was mind-blowing.
Apparently, poor Kelly had no idea why at first, although I'm certain they tried hard to explain it to her at the hospital. I wasn't there, but from my sister's story, the conversation went something like this: Sister: "What happened? How did you get so dehydrated?" Kelly: "I don't know! I was just swimming." Sister: "Were you drinking water?"
Kelly: "Not really. But I was swimming!" Sister: "Uh, ok? You weren't drinking anything though? Like all day? It was almost a hundred degrees!" Kelly: "Yeah but I was in the water so I wasn't hot. And you can't get dehydrated when you are in water." No amount of explanation could convince her that she could, and did, get dehydrated while swimming because she didn't drink any fluids for hours on an incredibly hot day.
Too bad my sister doesn't work with her anymore, the woman was a gold mine.
66. A Hard Lesson To Learn
There is a ridiculous girl in my class this semester. Entry level course. Students are around 18 years old. First week. I teach physics. That day, I used an example based on the scan of a running body. I then let the student work on another example based on a javelin. The girl raises her hand to signal she has a question. It was the strangest thing I ever heard. I walk to her desk and she asks, “Can you tell me what my finger has ?”
I don't understand so I freeze, confused. She then puts her finger really close to my face and I see some reddish skin shedding. “My finger, it hurts and I don't know what it is.” I'm baffled and I say I'm not a doctor and that questions about physics would be more appropriate. “Well.. you talked about the body of a person running. I thought you were a doctor.”
A few days later, we are in the computer lab. They have to follow a few steps, written on a sheet of paper, to retrieve some files. She raises her hand. Apparently, the computer is broken. She says that when she follows the first step, the computer shuts down First step is to click on the "start menu." She repeatedly pushed the power button. The "start button."
She did a few other dumb things not worth mentioning, but she managed a 0 on her final exam. But that’s not even the weirdest part. The weird part is that her copy was not blank. In fact, it was filled with words and equations. Except nothing made sense. But it wasn’t like some students do when they don't know the answer. Usually those are copying formulas for the sake of putting something on the paper and you can see on paper that those students do not feel strongly about their performance.
Her exam was not like that. It was an actual "resolution" of the problem. Basic algebra logic was thrown out of the window, but her way of giving her answers was full of confidence. I have never seen someone so blind about their lack of skills. She failed way under the passing grade, then asked to see her exam in my office. She tried to argue about my grading being too harsh.
I explained calmly how everything was defying reality on her copy, but she was still arguing some of it was good. I'm simplifying here, but her arguments were like: Ok, you said I should have used the conservative principle of energy here and the answer was 256, but my answer is 28 and at least I have one correct digit, even without using the right approach.
I don't even know how she made it that far. I don't even know how she will be able to provide for herself as an adult.
67. The Slow And The Dead
So this happened a few years back. I apply for a new job, which requires a drug test for all new employees. The company is relatively small and handles all of their testing in-house using dipsticks. There is little to no supervision or protocols when you take the test. They literally hand you a cup, ask you to go into one of the bathrooms stalls (it’s not even a single stall bathroom), have you pee in a cup, then hand them the cup.
They dip it right in front of you then you are done. Easy right? So this girl comes out and hands her cup of urine to the supervisor, who then proceeds to test it. Supervisor looks up at her and shows her the dipstick. Then this glorious conversation takes place. Supervisor: So you want to try again? Her (confused): No. You have my urine right there.
Supervisor: Oh, so you're dead then? Her: (more confused): Huh? Supervisor: Look, the urine you gave me was about 58 degrees Fahrenheit. Either you are lying or you are dead. And since you don't look or sound like a corpse, I'm going to assume that it is not your urine. Her: It is my urine! I am cold-blooded. That's all. Supervisor (chuckling): Are you trying to tell me that your natural body temperature is around 58 degrees?
Her: Well I've never checked it, but yeah when I am nervous it's something around there. Needless to say, she was sent home immediately and told not to come back.
68. Fooled Him Twice
My neighbor, after someone had attempted to take his bike and being advised by me to get a better lock, proceeded to save his time by not locking his bike up at all, but balancing the lock so that it looked like his bike was locked up unless you actually looked at it for a few seconds. I warned him that someone had already tried to take his bike and that it wasn't really clever leaving it unlocked like that.
He says, "I promise you I'll lock it up." Why he's promising me anything, I have no idea, I was just being neighborly. He then leaves his bike unlocked like that for about a week until someone takes it, just like I said someone would. I guess it did save the thief time. Then, he did exactly the same thing again! About two months after his first bike was taken, he left another bike out unlocked for weeks and it was also taken.
69. The Mother Of All Idiots
At one point, I believed my mother might have a severe learning disability, coupled with learned helplessness. No, she's just an idiot. When given directions to go to the end of the block to find parking, she shot back, "How am I supposed to know what a block is, I don’t remember that from school!?" After learning I have a gluten intolerance, she makes sure to buy me foods that don't contain gluten.
"I brought you gluten-free olives, gluten-free tomatoes, and gluten-free baby carrots." When I explain gluten comes from wheat, she shoots back, "Well I'm not wrong!" Speaking of baby carrots. I love them. My mom tells me how horrible they are because they are packaged in cancer. The water inside is cancer. She yells at me anytime I eat them. Unless they are the gluten-free type she brings over.
The first time she declared bankruptcy (the first of three) she claimed it was the furniture store's fault. She had purchased a new living room set. Yes, and it gets more bizarre. Despite having money for it, she mistook the "No payments for a year" deal as meaning "You are not allowed to pay for this for a year." By then the interest had made it far more expensive and the original money was spent.
The first time I brought my new boyfriend, now husband, over she giggled and told me she had something to show me. She walked me to her bathroom and said, "I've never pooped so big in my life! I saved it to show you!" It had been there for days. My husband still mentions this. I once bought her a laptop. This was an enormous mistake.
I spent the next year giving lesson after lesson. Simple things like how to make folders and organize pictures, how to use Google or Netflix. It was fruitless and caused a lot of fights between us. Eventually she said the computer stopped turning on and I viewed it as a blessing. After about six months of her complaining, I finally went to her house to see why it wouldn't turn on.
It was not plugged in. It. Was. Not. Plugged. In. I also bought her a cellphone. She can never remember how to find the pictures she's taken, how to access her email, and specifically how to connect it to her WIFI to save data. She told me she had the cable guy come out three times to see why it wouldn't connect, but it was simply broken.
I went over, looked at the password that comes printed on the router, typed it into her phone, and it connected. My mom swears I should go into tech support. Despite being technologically inept, though, she sadly knows how to use Facebook. I am not on Facebook. Daily she'd send me Facebook links to gluten-free recipes and warnings about cancer in every product I use.
I would respond daily, "I am not on Facebook and cannot view the link." Her solution was ridiculous. She would screenshot the articles, take her phone to Walgreens, have the photo center people get the pictures off her phone, print them, and she'd then physically mail them to me. I have received over one hundred 4x6 screenshots of spam since December.
Speaking of Facebook, she believes everything. It's sad and annoying, but occasionally hilarious. My favorite was when she excitedly told me that this Halloween is the first in 666 years to fall on Friday the 13th.
70. Catch Me If You Can
This server at the restaurant I work at apparently took a customer’s credit card info while checking them out. He then goes on shopping spree with it , pending close to $7,000 in a matter of a few days. He wasn’t just using it on online purchases but somehow even used it at places like jewelry stores where there are no shortage of surveillance cameras.
I don’t know how he thought he could get could away with any of that. What truly makes this a great story is how they busted him. Once the owner of the card notified authorities, officers went to one of the jewelry stores where he bought a $600 gold necklace and had them call they guy to come back him for some reason. Not sure how they convinced him to return but he did.
Sure enough, he walked right back into the store with officers just waiting for him. Last I checked, he’s being charged with around seven felonies, and he had priors. I doubt he will see the outside of cell for a long time.
71. Too Much Of A Good Thing
This was related to me by a co-worker. This is at a casino coffee shop that also serves soft-serve ice cream and makes ice cream sundaes. On the condiment bar, there's a large glass bottle with honey syrup in it for adding to your tea or whatever, along with cream, sugar, etc. It's in an old Torani syrup bottle with a stopper/pourer thing and clearly liquid.
It's a honey/water mixture, like a non-alcoholic mead. Family of idiots come in and order three sundaes, all different. They each grab the honey syrup container and just dump it on their ice cream sundaes. Like, all over the sundaes. And the counter. They each take a bite of the sundaes and come up the order counter and complain that they're too sweet.
They want a refund or new sundaes. This is about $16-$22 worth of ice cream depending on what they got. The refund or free sundaes are denied since they did this to their own ice cream. They buy all new sundaes, walk over to the condiment counter, and add honey syrup again, but this time not as much.
72. A Game Of Telephone
My sister turned 21 today so I have been mulling over some of her more extreme stupid moments while writing a speech for her party. This is one of my faves: About three years ago my brother was about to move to New York (we live in Western Australia). My sister came up to him with a grave look on her face and asked if he was going to “Gunpoint.”
He was confused and asked to her clarify. She said that she didn’t think he should go there. My brother asked her if she thought “Gunpoint” was an actual place and she responded that she thought it was a place in NYC and it didn’t sound very safe because people were always getting "held up at “Gunpoint.”
73. Getting Her Wires Crossed
The woman I work with is a lovely lady, but a bit clueless. In addition to that, she refuses to take hints. As an example, she became a huge fan of the show The Expanse and she tried every day to make me watch it. I told her over and over that my husband had watched it, and I'd glanced at a few episodes over his shoulder, but, while I could see that it was an amazing show, it just wasn't my cup of tea.
That didn't work. She still kept trying to make me watch it. Finally, in some desperation, I said "If you want to talk about the show with other people, have you tried Reddit?" She'd never heard of Reddit, so I explained, "There are discussion threads for every topic you can possibly name. I guarantee there will be some about The Expanse." She seemed interested and said she'd check it out.
Fast-forward a couple of months. She and I were discussing some random topic, and I said "I saw a post about it on Reddit." She got a very weird look on her face and said accusingly, "What were you doing on Reddit?" Puzzled, I said, "Why shouldn't I be?" She said angrily "Oh, gee, I don't know—because you're married?" Now I was even more puzzled and asked, "What's that got to do with it?".
She looked a little less certain and said "Well, it's a dating site, isn't it?" Turned out that she'd completely forgotten our previous conversation and had Reddit confused with Tinder.
74. The Architect Of Your Own Destruction
My roommate, Drew, was in a wildlife ecology course required for her degree. She was very excited by the material and couldn’t wait to start. Two weeks into the semester, she comes home raving about how the professor is a “pig.” After some prompting, she revealed that he said leggings are unprofessional in the workplace. Therefore he is a pig.
In response to this affront, the next week she drops the class—presumably (?!) without giving the decision any thought at all. The following week, she is outraged to find an email saying her scholarship has been revoked, citing the fact that she was now at 8 credit hours, no longer a full time student, and thus ineligible for the $50,000 Dean’s Scholarship she had SOMEHOW been awarded.
Drew spent the rest of the semester complaining, did nothing to fix the situation, and did not register for any classes next fall.
75. Good Friends Keep You Guessing
Oh man, my friend Mark. When on a road trip to the US, we asked him if he brought his own toilet paper and proceeded to convince him that toilet paper isn't a thing in the US. It was only at the border when he looked at the trunk and realized we hadn't brought toilet paper either that he caught on. He also thought unripe oranges (which are green in color) were called “Greenges.”
At midnight, he looked at the sky and said "WOAH the sky is black!!" and then pointed to the moon and said "What planet is that? The sun?" It was a half-moon that night. When asked to name the Great Lakes, the only one he could name was "Lake Mississippi." We live in Canada where we have to memorize the great lakes for like grade 6 geography, so most people can name at least one.
He thought Matte was pronounced "Mah-tay" because "it looked French and all E's in French have an accent." He would never NOT fall for the "gullible is written on the ceiling" trick. I once got him three separate times in the span of 10 minutes. At a beach in South Ontario, he pointed to the small lake and said, "What ocean is that?" It's about a 10-hour drive to the nearest ocean.
76. One Heck Of A Year
My college roommate freshman year. He's the kind of person who should have perished at 10, but somehow survived to his 20s. And the most infuriating part? He's the only child in a family that's so rich he'll never need to work a day in his life. I got trapped in a contract that had me paying rent on the place regardless of if I stayed, and I couldn't afford to move out.
This guy traded a $400 speaker for three fake tabs of acid he only found out were fake when he was detained for them but couldn't be convicted due to them not being potent enough to do anything. He also somehow had a girlfriend back home. They agreed to have an open relationship while he was at school, but he dumped her when she mentioned having coffee with another guy.
During that time, he somehow managed to seduce 2-3 different girls a week and still thought he was the victim of a cheater. Oh, and he got the clap. Four times. Twice from the same girl who wouldn't get it treated because she thought the nursing students ran the university health center. He faked a cough and somehow got prescribed opioid-based cough syrup from the university health center.
He drank the entire bottle in 15 seconds. He didn't believe isopropyl alcohol was actually toxic, and drank it by the pint. He found possibly the single biggest idiot alive, besides him, to date. She was both a pansexual LGBTQ rights activist and a card carrying member of the KKK. He got herpes from her. He got sued for child support. He tried to change his major to one that the school didn't offer.
He got in trouble for taking pictures of Jehovah’s Witnesses and tried to argue freedom of the press. He wasn't even remotely affiliated with a news agency. He woke up at 4 pm and thought it was 4 am. He went to any given class maybe once a week and didn't understand how he could be failing. His GPA was 1.2, I'm still amazed it wasn't lower. This was all during one year.
77. Meal Replacement Service
When I began trying to become vegan, my mother fully supported me. In fact, she made a vegan version of one of my favorite dishes of hers (a simple dish with rice, chicken, and soybean sprouts). I assumed she switched the chicken with tofu and happily ate it, but I mentioned it still tasted quite a bit like chicken. I almost spit out my food when I heard her reply.
She told me that she put chicken in it and then took it out just for me, that way it will still taste good. Bless her heart. I didn't get mad at her, of course, she was genuinely trying to be helpful, but I will never let her live it down now that she realizes how ditzy she sounded.
78. Acronyms Are Hard, To Be Fair
This happened way back in high school. Senior year government class. I had grown up with this girl. She was your classic dumb blonde cheerleader type. We all expected dumb things to come from her. But usually they were good natured and an attempt was made. But I’ll never forget this one time. We're learning about the different government entities and we get to NASA.
The teacher asks "who knows what it stands for?" and most people get it wrong but are very close ("National Air and Space Association" is what I hear the most). But this girl, to the surprise of everyone, raises her hand so fiercely. And she's like "I know this!" This is a girl who thought the American Revolution happened in 1900…But we're all very interested to know what she's going to say.
The teacher is taken aback that she might know this too. But he's like "please, share with the class!" Because he really wants her to do well. So, with so much pride she sits up and goes "NASA stands for NATIONAL AUTO PARTS OF AMERICA!" To say the class laughed was an understatement. The teacher laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes.
He wasn't trying to be mean but was caught off guard. She rolled with it because her making dumb statements was the norm. This has stuck with me for almost 20 years and still makes me smile.
79. This One’s A Keeper
Last year I had the luck to live with an idiot roommate in a shared house at university. Here are a few of his adventures. He got hit by a train. Tipsy ad trying to get himself home, he realized he was on the wrong platform…so walked straight across and woke up in hospital with officers by his side telling him not to leave. That’s not what ended up happening.
He jumped out of a window onto his damaged legs and took a taxi home. He was later fined for trespassing on the railway. He also managed to score 109% plagiarism on an essay for his course. He claimed that ‘because he copied it from a book and not from the internet, he didn’t think they would be able to tell.” They could tell. He scored zero. We are still unsure of how 109% plagiarism is even possible.
He managed to lose three iPhone 7s in the space of five months and would just buy a new one every time one went missing. One time, still tipsy, he climbed a building and proceeded to fall two stories onto the pavement. He woke up with no memory of the night but couldn’t walk properly and was peeing blood. He decided not to go to the hospital because he doesn’t like queues and waiting, so he limped for two months and ignored his bloody urine.
He once showed up to work eight hours late. When asked where he was, he told his managers that he was still coming down off Ketamine from the night before. Somehow he was not fired for this. One time when we had a party, he got on our roof and proceeded to fall off, ripping the guttering off with him, which he proceeded to stab my other housemate with for a joke.
He once snorted cocoa powder as he was told it would get him high. He has failed his first year of university twice now, and is currently paying to retake it for the third time. He hasn’t told his parents. They expect him to graduate this year.
80. One Cooked Turkey
I work at a grocery store that always get slammed during the day of a major holiday (or day before if we aren’t open on the holiday in question), because every other chain store would be sold out from last minute panic buying as well. I was just finishing up restocking what I could in the baking aisle (since that’s where most of the demand comes from) and I was about to start getting ready to close when a man came up and asked me, “Where are your frozen turkeys?”
“They’d be in the frozen foods section in the little bunker in the middle of the aisle,” I politely said, albeit questioning why anyone would buy a FROZEN turkey at 4 pm on Thanksgiving Day. They wouldn’t be able to cook it fully unless they deep fried it immediately once they came home, and that was still probably not going to happen.
“No no no,” the man said, “I don’t mean those frozen turkeys, I mean the other kind of frozen turkey.” Riiiiight... “Uhhh, I’m sorry sir,” I said, “those are the only frozen turkeys we have. If you wish we might have some hams in our meat department that are thawed and should be good by your Thanksgiving din-“ “I don’t want a stupid ham, I want a proper frozen turkey, your hams are properly frozen yet I see no turkeys.”
It was then I realized that he meant REFRIGERATED turkeys, not frozen ones. “Sir, we don’t SELL refrigerated turkeys, we only have the ones in our frozen section.” “Why wouldn’t you have a good and proper frozen turkey?” He asked, infuriated by the simple information given to him, “(Popular Chain superstore) sells them and they’re all sold out.”
“Because they’re a ginormous superstore while we’re a much smaller grocery store,” I explained, “now unless you have another question I need to get back to work.” He left in a huff, muttering something about how we lost a customer because we didn’t sell what he wanted. I let out a sigh of relief before hearing someone behind me ask, “Excuse me sir, where are your frozen turkeys?”
I nearly lost my head before recognizing the voice as my grandfather’s, who apparently was listening to the whole conversation while choosing a refrigerated HAM for Thanksgiving dinner.
We laughed for a while about it before I had to go get ready to close up the store and he had to go back to his house and get ready for Thanksgiving.
81. Caught In The Lies
When I lived with my parents, we had a knock at the door one day from our neighbors across the road. They were all flustered, and told us that someone had stolen their car the night before. Apparently, the wife had seen a strange looking man wandering around the street late at night. He had apparently been looking into car windows which were parked on driveways, including our cars.
The next morning, their BMW was gone, including the keys, which were hanging by the front door of their house. They "assumed" the strange man looking in car windows had somehow fished the keys from the house via the letterbox. The whole thing sounded very strange. To not call law enforcement when a man is literally peering through car windows on people's driveways was strange enough.
Months later, the neighbors got a divorce and sold their house. That's when the insane truth came out. Turns out, they'd made the whole thing up, and had dumped the car for the insurance, as they had fallen on hard times. Apparently, their story hadn't held up well, and they were found out. Who broadcasts a story like that? Why make yourself look stupid for not calling law enforcement when seeing a strange man eyeing up cars? And then tell all the neighbors about the man?
82. The Language Of Friendship
In college, there was this girl, Kristy, who was part of my friend group but I didn't really know her. She seemed nice but apparently somewhat lacking in the common sense department. One time we were hanging out with our friend who was an Italian exchange student, Dee. She was texting one of her friends in Italy and for some reason I don't remember, and the girl asked to see the messages.
I tuned into the conversation just to see absolute shock and confusion on Kristy’s face and she said, "Wait, why do you write to him in Italian?!?!" We were all there like, ok what is going on here? Dee explained that as she was Italian and her friend was Italian, that's just how they communicate because...in Italy people tend to speak Italian. I can never forget this girl’s response.
Kristy then comes out with, "I don't get it. You speak English, so surely it's easier for you to speak to him in English, rather than translate everything to Italian???" And here's the kicker: "Do you understand everything he says to you even though it's not in English? Wow, that's amazing." Bear in mind she wasn't being one of those "You're in {insert country here} so you should speak {language}" people.
She genuinely didn't understand and she was trying but eventually just gave up like, "This is so confusing, I don't get this at all." I still can't believe this conversation actually happened, or how it happened but there we are.
83. Work Smart, Not Stupid
This guy, Dave, had an employment history that was rather sparse and spotty, but our good-hearted supervisor decided to give him a chance. Dave was given a schedule that he found confusing even though it was the same every week. He frequently called in, and was puzzled as to why that would be a problem. On one occasion, he agreed to cover another employee's shift, then failed to show up.
When reached at home, he at first denied having agreed to work. When it was pointed out that he had signed off on the schedule change, he suddenly remembered. But his explanation for why he couldn't come in made my head explode. He just said, "Oh right, well, I've been drinking so I can't come it." He was very surprised when he received a write-up for this incident, because, after all, he'd only agreed as a favor to the other employee and it wasn't fair that he should be blamed.
Part-time employees, like Dave, were eligible for paid vacation after one year. Within his first few weeks of being an employee, Dave began putting in vacation requests for the immediate future. He could not understand why these requests were denied. Upon noticing that the scheduler would write VACATION across the posted schedule when an employee had (approved) time off, he tried writing it in himself, apparently thinking no one would notice.
This was not successful. Dave once tried to call in with the explanation that his neighbor had had to go to work so Dave had promised to wait for the refrigerator repairman on his behalf. Dave was told this was not a valid excuse and if he wanted to have a job he would have to come in. This was a very progressive workplace, so when Dave requested to wear make-up and women's clothing, he was treated respectfully and told he could dress as he wished as long as his clothing did not interfere with actual job duties.
This was a serious request, and was treated as one. We had an employee who advertised her services as a lesbian dominatrix. We had no problems with non-traditional orientations. However, he asked if he could wear dresses. We worked with dogs, and the job was quite physical, and it was explained that a dress would not be practical. Shorts, capris, split skirts—all these were suggested alternatives.
He then asked if he could wear high heels. No, Dave, you cannot walk the dogs in high heels. Meanwhile, another employee abruptly stopped showing up for work. We were not particularly surprised, given that she had been warned about her attendance, but it did leave us short-handed. It broke Dave's heart to see us all working so hard, and he went to the supervisor and told her he knew where the employee lived, and he'd be glad to go talk to her and try to get her to come back to work.
The supervisor said, "Dave, we don't want her back. She's not shown up in nearly a week. She doesn't have a job anymore." Dave was stunned. "You mean—you can get fired for that?" The supervisor said that was the moment she knew Dave was hopeless. "Yes, Dave, you can get fired for not showing up for work." A few days later, Dave, despite many warnings as to what would happen, called in yet again.
When he turned up the next day, the supervisor met him at the door and informed him he was fired. He did the "Oh, you" wave, laughed, and walked right past her. She actually had to chase him after him—through a lobby filled with clients—and tell him she was serious and he needed to leave the property. I’m still not sure he got the point of it today.
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84. Stranger Than Fiction
So I’ve had a friend since college who’s a great guy. I love him to pieces, but I’ve occasionally considered ending the friendship because his wife, Lucy, is so jarringly dumb. For the life of me, I do not know what he gets from her. Ok, I do, she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in real life. But even still, I don’t know how he does it. She’s sweet, she means well, but there are sandwiches more intellectually stimulating.
A while back I had a friend visiting, Camden, and Lucy was dropping her kids by to hang out with mine. I invited her to stay for a bite to eat because yes she’s exquisitely dumb, but she’s perfectly friendly. Camden’s been trying to break into acting and he recently had a bit part on a TV medical drama. So I brought it up, saying, “Camden just recently had a small role as a doctor on this show.”
Lucy went “Ahhh, that’s so exciting! Congratulations! That must not be easy, to get a job there. So, what kind of doctor are you?” And he explained, “Oh, it was a very minor role, I didn’t get a speciality or anything, I didn’t even get a name.” Oh my god, her reply nearly ended me. She laughed and went, “Well, we all feel that way when we first start, regardless of what job. Just keep working hard, and you’ll get all that stuff over time. But don’t sell yourself short! It’s not easy to be a doctor.”
He took the compliment and went into how he went about playing the role, the body language he tried to adopt for the intensive care unit, that sort of stuff. Then she cut him off and went, “Actually, you know what, if you wouldn’t mind, my son has actually had this oblong cyst developing on the small of his back for a couple weeks now. I’d really appreciate if you could take a look.”
So we both laughed, thinking she was joking, and I was impressed with her uncharacteristically high-level joke. But then she actually started to call her son over. It’s just like her to start a funny joke and then take it way too far. It took us too long to realize what was happening. Camden, confused and weirded out by the whole thing, started saying, “Oh, no, uh... heh... they didn’t teach us any medical stuff for the part. I can’t, like, help you with this.”
I jumped in and changed the subject, but she left shortly after. I’d long since given up on trying to explain to her why some jokes are funny and others are not, so I thought I’d let it be, even though she seemed kind of miffed when she left. Later she came back to pick her kids up, and by then Camden had gone home. As she was leaving she remarked, “You know, it was very rude of your friend not to at least look at my son’s cyst. It would have taken him, like, ten seconds. I hate how doctors think they’re above helping anyone unless they’re getting a check. Didn’t they take an oath to always help anyone who needs medical advice or something?”
So, as I processed the pure bitterness in her voice, I realized she genuinely and truly thought Camden was a medical doctor. Convinced I must be misunderstanding her, I further reiterated, “No, no, he’s an actor. He played a doctor. On that show. You’ve seen the show.” (It’s not a small production, it’s like Grey’s Anatomy or House, everyone knows of it.) And, even angrier now, she said, “Of course I have, I know all about it. It’s one of the best hospitals in the country, why do you think they put it on TV? Being in the spotlight like that, you’d think he’d try and be a little more professional with people. That’s all I’m saying.”
The surreal mix of entitlement and delusion in her statement left me dumbstruck and I decided I must still be misinterpreting this somehow, because there was no way any grown adult who votes, drives, works, and has kids of her own is that stupid, not even her, so I just let her leave rather than risk offending her further or embarrassing myself.
As soon as she was gone I called my friend, her husband, to try and catch him before she was home. I relayed the whole series of events to him. His answer made me beyond annoyed. “Oh that. Yeah, it’s a problem. But it’s not entirely her fault. Often times those shows use stories ripped from the headlines of the actual news, you know? So you can see why she gets mixed up sometimes.”
She bumped into Camden at my anniversary party not too long later and asked him, with genuine concern, if a character on the show who’d been in an accident—again, on the show—was recovering well. He tried telling her in plainer terms, “I don’t...work there. I’m not a doctor. I just played one that one time.” And she said she was so sorry to hear he’d been let go, and where was he working now?
So, if you wonder how our country ended up where we are, know that she has a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college and holds a job with several subordinates and partial responsibility over our city’s water supply. So…advocate for education reform whenever you can, and enjoy these twilight years of the great American experiment.
85. Better Stupid Than Sorry
Milo is a very good friend of mine; he really is a sweetheart with a heart of gold. The poor guy is just dumb, to this day has said some of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Milo was telling me how he has had many pregnancy scares with his ex-girlfriend. He also informed me that she had not been on birth control and they would not use a condom.
I informed him that was stupid and that’s why he’s probably had so many scares. He then tells me that wouldn’t make sense because “my stuff doesn’t have DNA in it.” I was completely baffled by his response and before I could even say how ridiculous this was, he followed with another great line: “Plus condoms don’t prevent STDs either, I’m not sure what they’re even for.”
I wish I could make this up, but this 100% happened and we still tease him about it often. He gets around, so I’m curious if he has any little kids running around. I hope they have more brain cells than their dad does.
86. Common Sense Isn’t So Common
Malcolm had just graduated high school and landed a job in my team. Our recruitment company had stopped working with us because we had poached one of their employees, and I suspect they placed him with us as one last piece of revenge. He was on a one-year business admin traineeship, and seemed to think he was going to run his own business one day.
Now, Malcolm was nice enough. He showed up on time, he wore professional attire, he tried to sound professional on the phone. But he had one fatal flaw. Unfortunately, he had an incredible lack of common sense and a complete inability to comprehend the most basic instructions. Despite us showing him the correct way to do things several times, he would still do things like:
Take other people's staplers because he couldn't figure out how to refill his own, bend paperclips out of shape to the point that they no longer even held the pages together, and saying, "But I like it this way" when he was questioned. Instead of folding letters in thirds with the client's address in the plastic window, he would fold it in half, then in half again, and crumple the envelope to try to cram it in
While setting up his voicemail message, the automated instruction voice told him to say his name. He gave an entire voicemail speech instead. My boss told him to fix it. He did the exact same thing again. He walked away when he jammed the printer, even though its screen shows very specific instructions (with pictures) on how to fix it. He got chewed out by a regional manager for this one. And he was just getting started.
He also told stories about being hospitalized for drinking too much water, and jumping into his car while someone was stealing it because he always just left the keys on the seat. I kid you not, he was actually proud of himself, telling us all about how he was questioned by the authorities. He once asked me how to "print a website" (this was on work time, and the page was called "How to Start a Business").
I clarified that you would have to print each individual page, and he looked defeated. Halfway through his time here, we realised that he needed to be told not to sleep at his desk, to which he said "it makes the day go faster." He would almost always leave 15 minutes early every day (my boss worked different hours) until he had it explained to him that he is paid to be at work, working.
He once loaded up a manager's car with the wrong boxes of pamphlets, but couldn't even calculate how many we needed to recover, because he wasn't counting how many boxes he'd taken in the first place. This seems like a normal mistake…until I tell you one thing. I had set them up for him on a shelf, shown him, then taped on a post-it note saying "For [manager's name]."
At one point, I caught him trying to send spreadsheets of our customers' sensitive data to the external company that graded his coursework. I had to explain that no, you can't give out clients' full names, dates of birth, addresses and contact information to people who don't work here. He accepted a call from reception and told them it was okay for them to send a client to our locked floor.
We're just head office processing the paperwork; clients aren't supposed to show up here. Then when the doorbell rang, he didn't even get up to answer it. I had to do everything I could to converse with them without letting them in, meaning I wasn't able to go back inside to grab business cards for the consultants who could help them. Then there was the disgusting stuff.
This kid kept chewed-off fingernails on his desk, and he spilled toner on there, which he ignored until we moved offices. I counted. He just never asked, or Googled, how to clean it up. Guys, he straight up left it there for almost five months. After that, he was only in our new office for six days before his placement was finished, and managed to spill some kind of sticky, oily goo all over his desk and inside the drawers, ready for his replacement.
He proved over and over that we couldn't trust him with anything even mildly difficult, so he only ended up performing about 15-20% of the role. Then one day he told my co-worker "this job is too easy" and that he was looking to pursue higher education in the field. This was a shock to us all, as his coursework was returned most of the time for errors.
The weirdest thing I saw was when we had flimsy envelopes that needed a piece of tape in each corner to secure the contents. He would place the two pieces of tape on top of each other. It seemed like every time we tried to teach him something, half of it flew right out of his brain. We tried different learning styles, hoping maybe if we wrote it down, or sent pictures, or got him to press the buttons himself a few times, that he would start to get it.
No dice. I told my boss about one of his mistakes that I discovered after he left, and she told me "some brains you just can't work with." He finally finished up with us a few months ago, and I'm still trying to adjust to working with his competent replacement. What do you mean, you know how to follow patterns, problem-solve, and refer to notes?! I will never take common sense for granted again.
87. Safe AND Sorry
This took place over a decade ago, when I was 17. I was getting my A Levels from a high school in India (I’m Indian). There was this loveable fool, Dennis, who was a part of our group. Very funny guy. I can’t be sure if he was playing dumb for laughs or just really dumb at times. Anyway, most people in our group were couples and were getting sexually active.
We had one popular couple who would be intimate without protection and then the girl would take a birth control pill (emergency contraceptive) after. She would take at least 4-5 each month, I really hope she’s doing okay now. The rest of us played safe and very rarely had to go for the pill. At that time, the pill that was easily available cost like $2.50 and was called something like “Pill 72” and it had two pills in it.
The first pill had to be taken within 72 hours and the second had to be taken 12 hours after the first. We all knew that because it was mentioned in the little booklet that came in the box. Well one day, Dennis and his girl lost their virginities to each other. Of course they used no protection at all and decided to listen to the popular couple instead of everyone else.
Dennis and his girl were at my boyfriend’s house and we were all chilling. The guy from the popular couple bought the pills for Dennis’ girl and handed them over for her to take. Dennis, like the gentleman he was, opened the packaging for her, poured her a glass of water, and gave her a pill in her hand. Then he did something that made me gasp.
He then takes the second pill, pops it into his own mouth, and then proclaims “done.” It took us the next half hour to explain that he wasn’t supposed to take it, it was meant only for her. He still couldn’t understand. We made him read the booklet and we tried to find a video for him to watch. He was still unconvinced. It got to the point where someone ran down to get his girl another pill for her to take 12 hours later.
I heard he took the second pill AGAIN, “just to be safe.” In fact, the next time they used the pill, they bought two, and he took one set and she took the other. We tried to talk sense into the girl and she said “just go with it.”
88. Too Large Of Holes
I grew up on a small farm with cows, and turkeys. Across the street, there was a small produce farm. When I was six or so, we got a new neighbor. He had been a corporate lawyer in New York City and then woke up one day, said, "I really hate my job, I'm going to buy a farm and raise exotic animals." This guy did not know much, but by gods he had a dream and he wasn't going to give up.
He and his wife were both city folk, born and raised in New York City. They moved in during the winter and he asked my dad a lot of questions about pens, fences, vets, and the works. Spring came and I was awakened by frantic knocking on the door. It's the wife, Jen, panicking because, "It smells like poop! Is there a problem with the sewer? Who do we call?!"
My mom starts laughing, which frustrates Jen more. My mom explained that it was spring and the produce farm across the street just laid down their fertilizer. My mom had to further explain that fertilizer is just a nice word for cow poop. After she left, we could hear her screaming at her husband that she hated it here and this was the dumbest idea he's ever had and she wants to go back to the city.
Keep in mind that our houses were pretty far apart, as we were both on six to 10 acre lots. She could really project. They got some emus and llamas shortly after. This is like 1990, when most people had never even heard of an emu at this point. My father is suitably impressed with the livestock, less so with the fencing Arthur chose.
It was wire fencing with pretty large holes in it. Large enough for both the llamas and the emus to stick their heads through...and then they'd decide they were thirsty so they'd snake their heads back through a lower hole and get stuck that way. Arthur would then come running to our house for help getting his animals unstuck before they drowned in the water troughs.
This happened at least once a month for over ten years. Arthur never changed the fencing, despite my dad asking him why he wouldn't change the fencing or at least move the troughs into the center of the pens. They've since moved, but I'll never forget the zaniness of runaway emus and llamas, fantastical escaping pygmy goats, or Jen freaking out because it smelled like poop.
89. A Menace To Society
This guy, Rob, worked with a small rotating group of people. Slowly but surely, he annoyed each of them by being dumb and angry. Rob’s 35, the first co-worker is barely 17, sweet girl and a very hard worker. Everyone is protective over her, even though she's pretty tough and probably doesn't need it. Rob repeatedly asked her out to eat, making it a point it wasn't a date, yet also saying it would just be the two of them.
Creepy guy. He didn't take her polite rejections, didn't take her flatly saying no, then finally got mad and confused when she went off on him. The manager had a long talk with him, and he lost hours since he refused to work with her and not be a creep. Second co-worker is an older guy, 60 or so. Deaf as a post and needs some serious hearing aids to function. Really cool guy.
Rob first complained the older guy was allowed to wear headphones...manager explained the difference but we're not sure he understood. Then, Rob kept turning down the volume on the monitors (which are vital for older guy’s job and nothing to do with Rob’s) because "he should be able to hear fine with robot ears." Older guy requested not to work with Rob.
After a sit down with HR and Rob not budging on robot ears, he lost even more hours. We're convinced they didn't fire him then because they thought he was so dumb he must be disabled. Nope, and they lived to regret it. Third co-worker is a young woman, who took exactly 0% of Rob’s antics from day one. He continually talked bad about co-worker one, and co-worker three continually defended her.
Story goes that Rob grabbed her butt, so she decked him in the face, and his defense was that there was a spider on her and he was trying to save her. HR suspended him, investigated, but apparently co-worker three dropped it saying the hit to his face and ego should be enough. They reluctantly let him back but yet again, with less hours.
During this time we had a boss leave, so many people got to move up a position or two. This manager had been there for years and was the obvious choice for the manager position. Rob complained, saying she wasn't a "people person" like he was. He spent his time trying to sabotage her, in the weirdest ways possible. Moved stuff and blamed it on her. There was just one thing he forgot. He did it right in front of the cameras.
She was the only person he could work with due to past issues, and he continually complained about having to work with her. Made her explain basic aspects of the job to him, stuff he’s been doing the whole time he’s been there, then would mess it up, blaming her for not training him right. Ate others’ lunches, left the containers in her office.
One lunch included something the manager is allergic too, not deadly allergic but still not something to mess with. At the sight of that container in her trash she went directly to HR, who had been keeping an eye on him, then filed a complaint about the lunch thefts. This was enough to fire him, but before the investigation was done he PUT THE ALLERGEN IN HER FOOD, watched her eat it, then congratulated himself on catching her in a lie when she "only broke out in hives.”
Fired, charges pressed, and was escorted off the property within a half an hour. He was mad, saying they had no evidence, because he had made sure to stay off the cameras. The escort responded, "No you didn't, but thank you for the confession."
90. Man On The Run
A few years ago, I was a Driver Trainer for a large trucking company. Basically, my job was to take newly-minted truck drivers and teach them how to handle themselves in the real world. Sometimes, it was easy; other times it was like teaching a fish to play tennis. One of my students, Dale, was so dense he made a lead brick seem like a feather pillow.
Not because of his driving, but because he almost got himself (and me) busted. Here’s the story. Dale was on my truck for about three weeks. He wasn’t the worst student I had, but he was far from the best. At week two, we end up stuck in Salt Lake City, Utah after delivering a load. It was a slow time of year and SLC had always been a sparse area for outgoing loads, so I expected to have to wait to leave out.
Not a big deal; I needed the downtime. Dale, from out of nowhere, started to seem anxious about something. When I ask him why he’s so tense, he tells me he needs to get his license changed to his home state. He lived in Louisiana, but his license was from Iowa. The company used a loophole in Iowa state law by granting temporary residency to students to get them a license.
After the license was issued, they had 30 days to get it switched to their home state. Not a major issue since management knew the drill and would get us to the student’s home state in plenty of time. “Dude,” Dale asked, “When can we go to Louisiana? I need to get my license changed.” He asked this every day for a week, but it wasn’t until we were stuck in SLC that is really seemed to bug him.
“Look, I’ve told dispatch you need to get home. They’ll work it out. Just relax.” He didn’t. After three days, we finally get to leave SLC bound for Chicago. It takes a few days and the entire trip, I can tell he’s getting more and more nervous. Eventually, he can’t talk about anything else except how he NEEDS to get home. He was getting pretty annoying.
We make our delivery in Chicago and get another going to Laredo, Texas. Normally, we would have gone through Houston, Texas, but this happened during the massive floods and I knew going that way would be a bad idea. Fortunately, I found a way that would avoid the flooding AND get Dale to his hometown. Better still, we would have enough time for him to get a ride to the DMV, get his license changed and still make delivery in plenty of time.
Win-win-win. And Dale finally seemed relieved. We get to Dale’s hometown on a Sunday afternoon. As he gets ready to leave, I tell him “First thing in the morning, get your butt to the DMV, get your license taken care of and get back here pronto so we can get going.” He says “OK” and leaves with his girlfriend while I enjoy some time to myself.
The next morning, I give Dale until 10AM before I start getting impatient. I texted him, asking where he was, and got no reply. I text again; again, no answer. I call...no answer. I tell dispatch, who’s asking me when we’ll get moving, that Dale has disappeared; he was supposed to get his license changed over but I haven’t heard from him all day.
Dispatch tries to call him and they don’t have any better luck. Apparently, Dale has disappeared. By late afternoon, I start getting the feeling this little jerk has bailed on me and wasted my time (this was a common occurrence for new drivers). I tell dispatch that I’ll give him until the morning to reach out; if he doesn’t, I’ll continue on to Laredo on my own.
There was still plenty of time and dispatch agreed. Morning came, Dale was still AWOL and I was out of patience. I send him one more text telling him I’m leaving without him and head out. I drive for several hours before taking a mandatory break and check my messages. I check my texts and see a huge surprise. Dale had actually reached out to me.
“Hey, man. My PO found out I took a job driving and was angry that I left Louisiana. She told me to get back as soon as possible or she would have me listed as a fugitive. I called her yesterday (Monday) but she’s out of town and told me to wait till she gets back on Wednesday.” I’m completely shocked. PO?…as in PAROLE OFFICER?!?!
“Dale, are you telling me you’re on parole and leaving the state without permission?!” “Yeah, I got parole for two years. I didn’t think it be a big deal since I was working.” “Dude, you violated your parole! You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up back behind bars. “Well, my PO said she wants to talk about it Wednesday.” “Yeah, I imagine so. You better get in touch with dispatch and let them know so they can work something out.”
I end the conversation and continue on to Laredo. I deliver the load and pick up another headed to Atlanta, GA. Thursday, I call Dale to find out what the deal was. He tells me that his PO gave him the OK to keep working. “I assume you have some kind of official document that says that.” I tell him. “Uh…no. She didn’t give me one.” “Then you better GET one because there is no way I’m leaving the state with you unless I have something from the state saying it’s OK.”
“Uh…why?” “Because if I carry you across state lines KNOWING you’re violating parole, that makes me an accessory.” “Oh, ok. I’ll ask her.” I tell Dale when and where to meet me. I tell him that if he disappears again, I’m not coming back to get him. He says he understands. I get to the location when I said I would….and he’s nowhere to be seen.
I text…no answer. By this point, my patience for this clown is completely gone. I tell dispatch I don’t trust this guy’s word and I’m not taking a chance on him lying to me. I leave out again and head for Atlanta. Dale does reach out…six hours later…and wants to know if I’ll come back for him. I tell him that he has lied three times and acted so shady that I can’t trust him to do the right thing.
If he wants to finish his training, he can sort something out with management but he won’t see me again. Months later, I found out the whole story. Dispatch told me later that Dale’s PO had NOT given him permission to leave the state again. Apparently, I made the right call by leaving him there. Fortunately, they weren’t interested in prosecuting me. I have no idea what happened to Dale, but I imagine he did something else that was stupid and landed back in the slammer.
91. Not So Nice Guy
When I was a kid, we had this dude living next door who seemed like a nice guy. This is the mid 90s and he had a neon business, so he was doing pretty well for himself. Then, he got together with a crackhead and his house slowly started going down the drain…literally. At one point, his septic system went up and since they were lighting up every dime he made, he decided that he was just going to make a cesspit. I wish I was joking.
We live on the East Coast in the mid-Atlantic, so it gets hot and humid come July. Thanks to this guy, our entire neighborhood smelled like a temporary toilet at a mid-summer festival for about three months. Fast forward to January, it’s nice and snowy, and we come home to our house being broken into. Our computer is gone, the TV is gone, and a bunch of movies and medications are gone.
Officers show up and they start dusting and looking around. They go outside and lo and behold, there are tracks going from our side door back to the neighbor’s house. Of course, they denied everything and are at least smart enough not to keep the stuff around after we got home. They were not smart enough to use different names; they pawned everything though.
Needless to say, we had new neighbors within a few months of this incident.
92. His Story Didn’t Ring A Bell
When I was five years old, my dad told me and my nine-year-old sister that telephone poles were actually trees that had been genetically engineered by the power companies to grow straight up into a perfect pole with two little arms on each side to hold the lines. It was just one of the many “dadisms” that he preached when Mom wasn't around.
One day, he brought my sister home earlier than usual from school. He explained to my mom that the principal had called him to come and pick her up. When she asked why he told her that a local power company worker had come to her class that day to talk about power line safety. The power company worker had asked the class, "Who knows how telephone poles are made?"
My sister raised her hand and proudly shared what my dad had told her. The worker laughed and said, "I think your dad lied to you." My sister's response completely threw him. She said, "I think you're a liar." We still quote her at family gatherings whenever we think someone is pulling our leg.
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93. Simple Physics
I remember having to defend myself on a speeding accusation. I had footage of the dashcam, which clearly showed me not speeding. I was going 30 mph, but the officer claimed I was driving 50 mph. The dashcam footage showed him driving at 40 mph and catching up to me fairly quickly. That’s when he decided to pipe in and make a fool of himself.
He asked, "If you were really going 30, then why did I have to go 40 to catch up to you?” I responded, “Because in order to catch up to anything, you have to go faster than what you're following. If I was going 50, you would have never caught up to me while going 40.”
94. The Gullible Virgin
I had a high school friend, Sam, who wasn't…the brightest crayon in the box. Last I saw him, he was living with his addict girlfriend, who's pregnant with his child. Or, so that's what I thought. I haven't spoken much to him since he had gotten expelled from school, and our relationship faded into only Facebook updates on each other's lives.
The other day, I was speaking to a friend, who we'll call Sara, that still keeps in contact with Sam. He got brought up in conversation, mostly laughing about the ridiculous things he did in school, and then I asked about what he was up to. Now, back in high school, Sam vowed himself to celibacy. He didn't want to be intimate before marriage. Also, despite how strung out his current girlfriend is, the only drug he ever used was pot.
Sara: “You know the baby's not even his.” Me: “Wait, seriously?” Sara: “Yeah, he's a virgin.” Me: (confused because he posts on Facebook all the time of how happy he is about becoming a father) “Does…does he know?” Sara: (shaking her head) “Nope. He legitimately thinks he got her pregnant.” Sara let me have a moment, just to see the astonishment on my face.
She went on to tell me that when Sam first told her his girlfriend was pregnant, she asked him when did he start being intimate. Sam said he never did, however, they do perform oral. Sam believes that when his girlfriend…swallowed…it impregnated her with his child. Sara and a few others tried to explain to him that's not how it works, but he's either just lovestruck or just plain stupid.
There has been speculation that the true father is a guy who graduated a few years before us. He is Black. Sam is white. His girlfriend is white. She's about four months pregnant.
95. No Connection
A very grumpy high-society woman came to the store saying her brand new 3,000-dollar Microsoft surface bought by her husband was defective because she could not get internet when she was on the move. I quickly realized she was talking about Wi-Fi, so I tried explaining to her how Wi-Fi actually works. Boy, was that a mistake!
I told her that she could not use her Wi-Fi outside her house, but that she could share her smartphone internet connection. She would have none of it. She said I was lying to her and making fun of her. She even asked to speak to my manager, who then proceeded to tell her the exact same thing, almost to the word. She left screaming.
96. Give Me a Hand Here
An infantryman was told to trim the hedges. Instead of getting shears, he decided to just lift up the enormous lawnmower, and then have his buddy start the motor...as the infantryman holds the hedges in place with his bare hands. When the medical team got called in, we bandaged him, then used a tourniquet temporarily. Senior medics took him to the ER, but they couldn't save his hand. Shocker...
97. How Do You Like Them Apples?
I asked my boyfriend if he wanted an apple. He said yes, so I pulled one out of the fridge and handed it to him. He looked confused. I asked him what was wrong…his answer still blows me away to this day. He asked me to slice it for him. He'd never eaten an apple whole before. He wasn't sure how to bite into it. He was 27.
98. An Iron Clad Defense
I was an Assistant DA in a college town in Texas. A fellow prosecutor (in plain clothes) overheard this exchange between a defendant and his attorney in the courthouse hallway. "Why don't they dismiss this case? The paper says 'State of Texas v. ______,' but I didn't punch the state of Texas. I punched my wife." Oh, buddy…
99. License Plate Letters
A few weeks ago, I had to explain to my wife that the letters on her license plate were part of her “license plate number.” She got a ticket at her university for parking without payment. The payment kiosk makes you enter your license plate number when paying for a day of visitor parking. She was ranting and raving about what bullcrap it was, so I asked her to show me the receipt she got when she paid for parking.
Sure enough, she had just entered the numbers and not the letters. I don’t know how she made it into her mid-30s before learning this.
100. Biology Tutor Needed
I demolished my right foot in a motorcycle crash and had to have the top of my foot removed. A guy I worked with asked me when it would grow back. I explained that the skin and stuff was going to have to be grafted, but that the tendons and bones that had been removed were gone forever. He looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why don't they just cut the whole thing off and let it grow back?"
