To be fair, people can’t help having a low IQ, and not everybody has to be brilliant at calculus to make an impact on the world. But, well, there’s also a certain kind of stupidity that is so glaring and unbelievable, it becomes its own kind of special achievement. These Redditors had the misfortune to meet those idiots, and they barely got out alive.
1. 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.
2. 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".
3. 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.
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4. Orange You Glad You Asked?
About a month and a half ago, my boyfriend came to visit me at school. He was there for lunch, too, and somehow carrots were brought up, so he said, “Oh, I’m allergic to carrots". My friend right next to us then piped in with: “What do they put in carrots that you’re allergic to?” It still gets brought up to this day; he’ll never live it down.
5. 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.
6. 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?"
7. 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.
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.
8. 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 it wasn't bad for your health. 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".
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9. 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 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.
10. 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.
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11. 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.
12. 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.
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13. 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".
14. 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 puffing 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 it's not good for your bones.
Hoping he’s okay out there in the big wide world. Bless his soul.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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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18. 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.
19. 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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20. 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". 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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21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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 domme. We had no problems with non-traditional sexuality. 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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24. 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.
25. 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 anything else.
I informed him that was stupid and that’s why he’s probably had so many scares. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
He 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.
He found possibly the single biggest idiot alive, besides him, to date. 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.
30. 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 choked on 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.
31. Gender Double Standard
One girl brought her friend to the ER after she had pepper sprayed her as a joke. She told us that they thought that "it was bad only for men".
32. If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
I teach at the college level. Years back, I taught a freshman/sophomore class that met every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. One Wednesday, I gave a chapter exam. It was easy. I had a word bank of 25 terms and concepts at the top of the test, and the 20 questions of the exam were different definitions or descriptions of those terms. All the students had to do was match the corresponding term from the word bank to its definition or description, with five unused terms left over in the word bank.
All the correct answers were right there. That Wednesday, almost half of my class was missing. There was a university function going on and no one thought to mention it to me (this was before emails were prevalent). I gave the test anyway. This one guy, a real fool for the entire semester, was there and took the test. He answered all 20 and got them all wrong. A zero. How's that even possible?
That Friday, I told the whole class that those who took the test Wednesday did not have to show up for class Monday. Those who missed the test because of the school function were to show up and take the test Monday. As I let class out, I called the failing guy to me and told him that as far as I was concerned, he was not there Wednesday; he was to show up and take the test Monday.
He looked at for a second and said, "Huh? Oh! Oh, thank you, Mr. Deacon". I didn't even bother making a new version of the test. It was just the leftover copies of the original test. This kid took the test Monday. Again, he answered all 20. And again, he got all 20 wrong. And he answered all but maybe two or three of them differently. When I handed them back out, I gave him both of his.
At the end of the semester, he tried to pay me with $100 to give him an A in the class.
33. Not Getting Away With It
We had a large assembly where a law enforcement officer came into school and explained what to do if the students saw or shared inappropriate images online. This one kid, Jamie, raises his hand to ask a question. “Sir, what if we see something inappropriate online but enjoy watching it?” “Well, curiosity can be a healthy thing..." Oh my god, the next words out of his mouth were legendary.
“It was a woman. With a dog. Then I watched a video where a kid from [rival school] got beaten up. Hilarious". The whole room was stunned. Another time, Jamie was short of the bus fare home so decided to take it from another kid by mugging him. While wearing his uniform, complete with logo. In front of witnesses and security cameras.
He also claimed he had a disorder that meant he would flail his arms wildly like an octopus when he was afraid. We called his mother. He did not have any disorders, but he still kept shouting, “Oh my arms! I’m so afraid!” When told to do some work. That’s not all, either. He insisted his mom did not allow him to wear socks as an excuse to get out of sports. We checked. His mom laughed.
His final straw was when my friend led a school trip to a horror attraction (jump scares, fake zombies etc.). When an actress jumped out pretending to be a monster, he shouted “Oh my arms!” did his flailing, and punched her in the stomach. The lights were all turned on and the manager asked the whole group to leave. He started laughing and thought he’d get away with it as he’d “convinced everyone about his fake disorder".
He said this in earshot of my friend, the teacher in charge. Sigh.
34. The Not-So Clean Freak
My roommate Kat is a germaphobe. She presses cross walk buttons with her elbow and won't use public bathrooms unless it's an emergency. That doesn't make her stupid, of course. But she comes home and refuses to clean anything. Ever. I found mold growing in the bathroom and asked why it doesn't count as gross to her. Her answer floored me. "Because it's my gross, my germs don't count".
She believes that washing dishes with soap lowers your immune system, so she just rinses them and puts them away. Even if they've sat there for a week with food on them. She only does the dishes when we run out of them, and since I work two jobs I can't always keep up with it. However, she scrubs the parts where someone's mouth touched because “ew someone else's germs".
I pull cups out of the cabinet with old dry milk in the bottom and that does not bother her at all, because at least the rim was scrubbed. So now I wash everything before I use it and after. She threw away all our food once because she found a bug in the cabinet and was worried it was all contaminated. One bug, and everything had to go, even sealed cans of soup…gone.
She believes everything she reads (Like the soap thing.) One day, we're doing laundry and she puts her work shirt in the dryer. Before she'd been adamant they could not go in the dryer or they'd shrink and get ruined, so I asked her what changed. She read online that the plumbing is all connected, which means that the toilets and the washing machine are connected and there's poop flowing into the washing machine.
The only way to clean the bacteria of the poop out is to dry them at high temperatures in the dryer, so she cannot skip the dryer anymore because she does not want poop on her clothes. She brought gloves to change the laundry into the dryer and wouldn't believe anything when I told her that wasn't true. I wanted to scream. It didn't help that we lived in an apartment complex and you could hear people in the apartment above the laundry room and sometimes you'd hear a toilet flush and water flowing through pipes in the ceiling.
The night before we moved, we threw a party where someone spilled a drink on the carpet and offered to clean it up. She replied, "We're moving, don't bother!" I rushed over with supplies and said, "I want my security deposit back!" I cleaned it up while she just shrugged. She made more money than me but couldn't afford her phone bill.
She had a bare minimum plan where texts and data cost after a certain point. She couldn't afford the more expensive plan, so she just paid around $600 in overages every month because she always went over the limits. She was also a few months behind so if she missed a payment, her phone would get shut off immediately and the late fees kept racking up with it all.
When she got her paycheck, though, we were loaded. She'd spend lit on anything and everything she wanted and have no thought of next week. Then the following week, she'd be poor with $20 in her account anxiously waiting for payday and wondering if she could survive only to spend it all again once it came. No savings and no back up plan.
She started dating a guy because she was afraid of saying no to him. Got into an abusive relationship and then couldn't leave because she was afraid of what he would do. That part was more sad than anything else and I did everything I could to help her escape. She's okay now—Well, at least safe from him. I can't really promise she's okay, as I moved away.
35. He Doesn’t Know The Drill
When I was going through basic training for the Army, I knew I would meet some really dumb people. And I did. But they were your garden variety of stupid. The kind of guys you see in the movies. Not bright but good guys that learn, nonetheless. Then there was Rudy. We weren't in the same platoon or even the same company, but we stayed in the same barracks.
So one day I'm polishing my boots and getting my gear ready for training the next day when out of nowhere I'm hit with the horrible smell of feet and corn chips. It was powerful. I had to say something, so I walk through the barracks looking for the source. Eventually, I happened on Rudy. Rudy was sitting on his bunk eating a bag of chips (not corn chips) and talking about getting into Special Forces (Rudy was fat).
His gear was strewn about and he looked like we hadn't all been in training for three months at that point. Also, chips weren't allowed so how he got those I have no idea. It was about that time I'm guessing the drill sergeants had detected the offensive odor of what I'm hoping was Rudy's feet, too. Suddenly the whole room is aswarm with round hats and screaming.
The protocol when a higher ranking soldier, like a sergeant, enters the room is the first person to see them yells "AT EASE!" and everyone stands up straight, feet shoulder width apart and hands behind your back. I did this, everyone else did this and we did it quick. There was one obvious problem. Rudy did not do this. Rudy decided to stand up at his leisure, still holding the chips and eating them.
The drill sergeants then proceeded to lay into Rudy, who was visibly nervous and apparently his reflex to being nervous is to CONTINUE EATING HIS CHIPS. So here's Rudy getting screamed at while munching away until the drill sergeant, who was doing their best to dissect his forehead with their round hat, told him to drop the chips.
Then they start yelling at him to drop and beat his face (push-ups). Rudy then gets down and does 10 or so and then starts to struggle. Meanwhile, we're all still standing there having to watch this, waiting for our turn. It goes on for another 5 minutes until finally the drill sergeant ends it and takes the chips. They tell him to get some water in him because they're going to screw him up in the morning and then start walking away.
They tell us all to carry on but Rudy…Rudy makes a fateful and horrible decision. Rudy decides that was the moment to ask for his chips back. The last drill sergeant then turns around and tries one last time to slice Rudy’s head open with his hat while yelling at him from kissing distance. It was ugly. The drill sergeant eventually got the impression that he got his point across (he didn't), tells Rudy to put away his gear and leaves.
Once the drill sergeant was gone, Rudy notices one last chip on the ground directly next to his smelly foot. Yeah, he ate it. Then he threw all his gear under his pillow (and it wasn't the kind of stuff you can hide under a pillow) and lays down on it, somehow unaffected by the fact that his neck was now a 90 degree angle. By this time, the smell was making my eyes water so I left.
I remember thinking, "Please God don't let this kid be in my unit when I get to regular duty". One month later, I arrived at my new duty station and get assigned a barracks room. I'm stepping out to go take a shower when who steps out of the room across the hall? Rudy. He was assigned to the same company as me. I'd spend the next four years serving alongside this kid, even saving his butt once.
36. Tragic Vaudeville
Me and this girl, Suzy, were in Single Award Science together. Typically at the school I went to, we had to do two sciences at GCSE, but for those of us who were less confident or proficient, we did Single Award: a tiny amount of all three main subject areas. We were having a discussion about plate tectonics. At this point Suzy gets a frown on her face and goes: "Miss. Miss!"
Teacher: "Yes?” Suzy: "So right…to find that out, they must've had like....You know not a drill but like a REALLY BIG drill. Yeah?" Teacher: "Well.. not really, no it—" Suzy: "THEN HOW DO THEY KNOW?! God you can't trust ANYONE can you?" This is great for two reasons. One, the fact that she NEEDED to clarify she didn't mean your pathetic little handheld drill.
This hypothetical drill is one THICC BOI. And two: Her faith in trusting people after the knowledge that a big drill wasn't the answer? Gone. Bye. Never trust people they'll only disappoint you. Another day, we were talking about space. Our teacher said something like, "The number of galaxies probably exceeds 200 billion!" Suzy stands up.
She got up and goes, "No Miss, I'm sorry. I'm not having that". Me: "What do you mean you're not having it?" Suzy: "No, that's just not on like. That's absolutely out of order. Bang out of order". At this point, I'm losing my mind. I've been in the class for almost two years and I can't hide the laughter anymore. Suzy: "Where are they Miss? Where are there that many?"
Teacher: "Suzy. Sit down". Suzy: "No Miss! Show me. I need to see them. I can't get it if I don't SEE them". The conversation did not get better after that. Lastly, Suzy and I also had Art together. Suzy dropped her paintbrush and it rolled slightly under a desk. She bent down to get it and just SMACKED her head off the desk top. It made such a loud noise that we all looked up like, "Girl are you okay?"
She just kinda crumpled, curled up into a little ball on the floor. Inconsolable for a moment. Finally, her friend is like, "It's okay! Just stand up we'll get you an ice pack!" Suzy sniffles a little, "okay..." and tries to stand way too fast and slams the back of her head right off the corner of the SAME DESK. It felt like...tragic vaudeville. Probably because that’s what it was.
37. Not Worth The Stress
I own a mid-size bowling alley with about 10 employees. This guy, Loel, was 19 when this happened (under a year ago, maybe eight months). I hired him after losing two employees in a week, so I was desperate for somebody. He did so much damage. First, he was caught humping a bowling ball in the break room. Loel intentionally "forgot" to put oil on the lanes because he read somewhere that "it would make the ball blow up" and he thought that would be cool.
Loel eventually got removed from anything except for serving food and drink. I figured this would be OK. Oops, that was a mistake! Pretty soon, on the first day I put him on duty serving food for a full shift, a woman comes up to the counter and asks to see a manager. Confused, I ask her what happened. She tells me her pizza is too dry to eat.
You know where this is headed. I go to check on Loel, but he blocks the entrance to the back room with his body and yells to the woman at the counter "we used a new tomato sauce". I immediately panic—this is clearly a lie. We don't make our own pizzas, they're food service. I push past him, and discover he is serving the customers WEEK OLD pizza that has been sitting in a cold dry room.
Loel tells me "I didn't want to waste food and I thought you would be mad at me". We had a Christmas party one time and Loel literally tried to go down the chimney of the business, but the kid couldn't get down further than his waist. The firemen came to get him out. We found him playing one-person soccer with our plastic food containers, running after them and trying to kick them into "goals" like the pinsetter on the bowling lanes.
I was using the toilet once when Loel walks into the bathroom and stands outside my stall calling 9-1-1 to report I was dead. I tell loudly, "HEY I'M ALIVE IN HERE!” Loel tells me, "You weren't moving, I thought you were a goner. Sorry". Officers still had to check it out and search the whole place. Oh, and Loel bought a taser and used it on himself while on the job.
Loel told me he bowled a 300, with no proof of course. He got super defensive when challenged, up to the point of sending me a photoshopped picture of a 300 claiming it was his. Then he told me it was "just an example and his LOOKED LIKE THAT IT WAS ONLY AN EXAMPLE I SWEAR" and starts crying. My business partner (Call him Rob) who I worked with for 20+ years was left in charge alone with Loel one night when I went home and the others weren't in.
While I'm home, I get a text from Rob: "I hate ’Lubesuckers,’” among many other horrible words. Turns out Loel took his phone. Then I fired Loel, that was too much. Still the worst employee I ever had.
38. Do My Eyes Deceive Me?
Well, this friend of mine is not normally an idiot. On the contrary, she is a very smart woman with a university degree in the health field. But I guess we all have our moments sometimes. Back in 1995, we were one year away from graduation, and exhausted, so three of us decided to take two weeks in summer to go to relax on a beach in Brazil.
We rented a small apartment and were enjoying our very deserved holidays. One day, taking a stroll on the beach, we start seeing plenty of jelly disks, perfectly transparent and round, washed up on the shore. One-time my friend said: "I wonder what those are". I had a sublime moment of inspiration. I answered her, "Silicone [chest] implants".
She looked at me like a deer in the headlights and said NO WAY. Yes! I affirmed. And proceeded to explain that the health system in Brazil is very dodgy, so women go to have very cheap plastic surgeries that are so botched that they end up losing the implants while swimming on the sea, but they don't care, they just go and have it done again.
She gave me a blink-blink look, said "Geez..." and carried on walking. The third friend looked at me with a stern face, and I whispered, "Leave it". At the airport, at the end of the holidays, I felt bad and confessed they were just jellyfish. She didn’t speak to me for a long time.
39. By Any Other Name
So I was at work yesterday (I’m a stocker) and was working in the coffee section of the store. Then, this lady came to me with a Nestle coffee that said “Decaf” on the package. She proceeded to ask me what Decaf meant, so I told her that Decaf stands for Decaffeinated. She stood there for a couple of seconds, and then said, “So it has more coffee?”
I said “No, it means that the coffee is decaffeinated,” and she said once again, “So, it has more coffee right?” At this point I was shocked. How can someone who drinks coffee not know what caffeine is? So I said, “You know what caffeine is, right? It’s an active ingredient that coffee has. Well, this coffee doesn’t have it in it". She was processing what I said, then took a regular coffee up.
She replied with, “Oh, so Decaf is stronger than this one?” At first I honestly thought she was messing with me, but I could see on her face that she was literally confused, so I just said “emm, no, Decaf is ‘lighter’ than regular". She just said “Oh, okay” and grabbed the decaf. Maybe she’ll notice what I was talking about when she drinks her morning cup and doesn’t feel awake at all.
40. Not Cut Out For The Job
So, I used to work in a little local burger chain, and the managers were notorious for hiring just the dumbest, worst types of people, ever. But this one was... a whole new level. Some examples: She did not know the difference between a lemon and a lime. I asked her if she remembered her colors? Lemon yellow, lime green? I watched her face contort".
OH! Is that way they're called that?" She did not know if cheese came on a cheeseburger. She also didn’t know there was more than one type of cheese. She asked what kind of chips come on a Frito pie. For those who don’t know, Frito pies are literally just a bunch of Fritos brand corn chips, chili, and cheese. It's a very big thing in the region we live in, they're at every event imaginable. How she was confused about it, I'll never know.
We had to wear disposable gloves to cut and handle jalapenos, at least to show trainees how to do it. I usually never did, but we had too many accidents of dumb people touching their eyes after touching jalapenos. She did exactly that, because she thought that they were tiny bell peppers, even though I told her several times that they were jalapenos and spicy.
She did not know how sweet tea worked. She didn’t understand why we brewed it hot and then added sugar. She told me several times that the tea wasn’t cold, so how would the customers enjoy it? She also didn't understand how we knew how much sugar to add. She kept asking if that was enough or too much, and how would she know when she got it right?
We had a giant measuring cup with a clearly marked line on it. I told her several times that if she filled it up to the line every time she made a batch of sweet tea, then it would always be right. She didn’t seem to believe me. Yeah... she lasted about two weeks before we got absolutely sick of her and fired her. Thank goodness for that.
41. Can’t See The Forest For The Trees
My boyfriend went to his grandmother’s place in New Hampshire last summer. He went over to help her with some house work over the summer. She lives by a heavily wooded area, and my boyfriend likes to bike in woods. So he decided to take a nice bike ride in the woods, except he doesn't know his way around the woods. He called me before he left for the bike ride to tell me he'd be going for the ride.
I get a call an hour later from him, saying he got lost in the woods. I was confused because I was under the impression that he knew his way around those woods because he grew up playing in them. So I said to him, "If you didn't know the area, why would you go biking in it?" His answer was baffling. He replied, "Well, all woods have the same layout".
My thoughts went blank at this and I'm speechless because I don't know where he got that idea. Then he said something that really made me worry. He said "Anyways, I figured I'd call you first to keep you aware of what’s going on. I have to go now, I have to call my grandma to see if she can find me". Now I know me and him agreed to try and maintain an open line of communication, but this isn't what I meant by open line of communication.
On one hand, I appreciate that you thought of me first, but on the other hand he should try to get back home first. So, I end the call after telling him to focus on getting back home.
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42. Need To Intake Some Advice
So backstory, I have a cottage on a lake and work at the marina as a summer job. I’ve been around boats all my life and know a fair bit about watercraft. For those of you who don’t know, a jet ski doesn’t have a propeller, but rather a small turbine like a jet engine. This has some pros and cons but the main problem with jets is that they don’t like sucking up debris.
So it’s a general rule of thumb for the operator not to start the engine in shallow water so as not to suck sand into the engine. Anyway, I was manning the gas pump when I see a guy pull up on a brand new RXP-300 Sea-Doo. This is the fastest Sea-Doo on the market and worth over $15,000. Immediately, my stomach drops. I can tell that he’s not very experienced because it took him three tries to dock.
I fill his tank and he gets back on the Sea-Doo. I see him insert the key and I warn him about starting the engine in shallow waters. Me: “Hey, you might wanna pull your machine out a bit. You don’t wanna suck sand into your engine". He just looks at me really condescendingly, as if to say: What do you know? You’re just a dumb kid. So he starts the engine and it protests loudly.
He starts revving it and the grinding just increases in volume. I can see the water around him become murky as the engine kicks up ever more sand. The best way I can describe the sound is ice cubes in a blender. All the while, he’s smirking at me as if he’s saying “Yeah, suck it, my engine is fine!” Just then it struck me. This was the type of guy who thought he was better than anyone else because he was rich.
So he pulls away in his struggling Sea-Doo and I see that he has forgotten to pull in his rope and it’s now trailing behind him. I ask him to come back around and I’ll toss it in as it passes. He does so, but undershoots the dock. So in his stupidity, he throws it in reverse and backs over his own rope. The rope gets sucked in the impeller and stalls his engine.
When he gets to shore, the rope may as well have been a steel beam it was so tight. He then asked if it would be fixed later today, to which my boss replied with a stern look saying: “Dude, nobody could fix that, your turbine is totally shot and because of that stunt you pulled back there, your wear ring is probably spent from all the sand. You’re gonna need to swap out the whole thing".
The look of absolute defeat on his face was priceless. We did have to swap out the entire turbine assembly, costing him a small fortune.
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43. Meet My Idiot Nephew
This is the story of my nephew's disastrous adventures, how my family demanded I cure him of stupidity, and how he was fired from each of his jobs. My family is kind of strangely staggered by age. My older brother is 37 and I'm 19. He's my only sibling so I am, by extension, my nephew's only uncle. My nephew is also 19, my same age. This is actually a big problem.
Because we’re close in age, my parents expect me to understand my nephew and to figure out what's wrong with him. Infuriatingly, they expect me to be an uncle/mentor figure to him AND relate to him as a teenager. For context, let's go back to his younger years. The first true act of stupidity that my idiot nephew pulled was his cyberattack on my dad's business site online.
He was only 14 when he did this. By "cyberattack," I mean he went onto my dad's website (my dad sells sports memorabilia) and posted inappropriate videos to the comment section of the site. No, not just a little, 7,000 image comments’ worth using a bot he found online. Next was his genius 16th birthday stunt. At his party, he had a pool. He also had a garden gnome.
He decided the best move for maximum coolness with his peers was to somersault off of a makeshift diving board made out of glued together 2x4s. Not only jump off the diving board, but do an acrobatic display with a gnome at the same time. He leapt off the diving board. Keep in mind there were seven other people in the pool and 3 more out of it but nearby.
As he kicked off the board in reverse, plunging head and back first, he slammed his feet into the gnome and kicked it straight up. As he crashed into the water, the spinning gnome experienced gravity. It slammed into his leg, which pulverized and put him on crutches for three months. He was lucky he didn't kill one of his friends with a gnome to the head.
On his first day of real work this January, he was working at a gas station. He decided, since it was cold that day, that when he showed up, his best work attire would be a heavy coat and balaclava. That's right, he wore bank robbing clothes "because it was cold". They almost called the authorities until the inevitable "It’s me" when he pulled the mask off.
He is a big video gamer and actually has had some success on twitch playing Minecraft, he has 500 subs. Why anyone would want to watch him do ANYTHING is beyond me. He probably digs straight down and mines at night. Anyway, here's a few of his misadventures in gaming. He was caught trying to play "real life Minecraft," as he put it, for YouTube.
That means going in the backyard with a pickaxe and digging holes in the lawn. He bought a jar of borscht (Russian beet soup) at a grocery store and drank it on stream while playing CSGO. I don't play it but he says it has lots of Russians and he wanted to show "Super Slav Energy". Next was his attempt at taking the SAT instead of ACT.
He refused to study for his ACT retake and scored 8, an improvement from 6 on his first try. My school offered SAT for students who failed at ACT. He got a 660, which he called "hard work". He also was caught in the shower giving himself a vinegar enema as "punishment for failing" after the ACT retake, when he came home from taking it.
He once went to a bank with a stack of CDs because he wanted a CD (Certificate of deposit). He also jumped on my brother's (his father's) knees while he was sleeping and ran out of the room. My brother woke up groaning in pain and my nephew just admitted it out of the blue. Another time, he tried to ski in the house. That's right, skiing indoors.
He put snow from outside on the stairs, came barreling down, and slammed face first into the Christmas tree, which collapsed like his hopes of making the nice list that Christmas. The last story I can think of was the time he decided to do a "boogeyman impersonation" last weekend. I don't care that I’m a grown man. I freaked out on him over this one.
He jumped out of my closet at 2 am during Thanksgiving this year. That's not the big deal. The big deal is I had thought I was alone in my room for three hours, in pitch black, before he (wearing red lightbulbs clipped to his glasses) leaped out of my closet shrieking like a banshee and yelling in a shrill voice, "I’m gonna eat you". Hope you got a kick out of hearing about my idiot nephew.
44. A Long Drive For A Short Day At The Beach
I met and quickly fell in love with Barry when I was a freshman in college. We decided that things were getting serious, and decided to move in together. All of this was a mistake. Still, I've learned quite a lot from the experience. Barry has somehow always had strokes of luck, which I think in hindsight is the only reason why he is in existence today, because the boy ain't bright.
He lucked out somehow and bought a 1987 Acura Legend with 50,000 miles on it for $1,500 in great condition. There is only one problem with this: Barry is a horrible driver, to the point to where he ruined that car. One of his friends once told me, "If you let him drive that car, it's going to end up being a $1,500 car". He's driven over curbs and destroyed tires.
He's driven the wrong way in one-way traffic a few times, including rush hour. He's even smashed out the driver's side window in a fit of rage. Eventually he would turn that poor car into a horseshoe by running a stop sign and getting it t-boned because he was crying. At the time that I was dating him, we lived within walking distance of our university, on a semi-quiet street behind a Walgreens, in a tiny house that can only be described as a shack.
This tiny house was behind even an even more tiny apartment "quadplex," four tiny apartments just big enough to be considered livable. I worked for Walmart as a call center operator, within what I would call "walking distance," but others would not—if I walked to work, it was a 30 minute walk. Barry did NOT work. In fact, he never kept a job longer than it took to get that first paycheck.
After Barry got the car, he'd drive me (he would never let me drive). There was one night where I was cooking and I needed a few last minute things. Barry volunteered to go to the Walgreens. Usually, he'd walk. It never took more than five minutes, but on this night, he decided that he would take the car for this 60 second drive.
He comes back after some time, and the night proceeds as normal. The next afternoon, I'm getting ready for my shift at Ye Olde Call Center. As Barry would be driving me to work, I took my time getting ready. You know how it is. When we walked out the door, I knew something was very wrong. The parking spot where the Acura would be was surprisingly empty.
This was after he smashed the window out of the driver's side door, so I assumed that someone finally decided to make off with the thing. We looked all over for it. It was nowhere to be seen. We ask our neighbors in their tiny apartments. Nope, nada. I had to call into my job to explain why I was going to be late: "You see, I think the car's been taken,” I told my manager.
I doubt she believed a word I said. So, Barry calls the authorities and reports the car as missing. While we are waiting for officers to arrive and I'm standing in the empty parking space in disbelief, a strange look comes over Barry’s face. "Wait," he tells me, "I think I know what happened to the car. You wait here".
He takes off down the street in a hurried walk. Five minutes later, a brown Acura Legend with a busted out window comes flying down the street, with a sheepish-looking Barry in the driver's seat. Barry had forgotten that he drove the car to Walgreens and left it there, and had walked back to our house.
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45. Stupider Than He Looks
So about 15 years ago, I was going out with a real idiot. This was before the days of social media, and many families used to put birthday announcements in the newspaper. Since I was turning 18 that year, I often used to look through these and see if any of my old school friends were in there. I was looking through them one day with my boyfriend looking over my shoulder and he started laughing.
I asked what he was laughing at and he pointed to a photo of a toddler beaming with a crown on her head, and the announcement saying “Happy 18th birthday Kelly!” I asked whether he knew this person and the reply was, "No, but no way is she 18. She looks about 5!" Took me a while to explain that families often dig out old photos to embarrass their offspring on momentous birthdays.
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46. Everyone Celebrates In Their Own Ways
So, the idiot in this story is my own dad. As much as I love him, he's a crazy weird man, in the best sense, but should probably be locked up for his own good. This one happened in January, on my sister's birthday. For her birthday we were all going to head to my parents’ and have an old fashioned “kids” party (yes, she's in her 20s) with the family, while decorating her cake, my mother and her were talking about her feeling ill and not drinking.
My mom immediately guessed she's pregnant (my sister didn’t actually want to tell them yet). My sister admitted that yes she was, and my mom was over the moon for her. While hugging and celebrating, they hear a weird noise behind them, turning around to find my father spraying the glitter cake spray into his eyes and all over his face, for no reason.
This resulted in his eyes/face swelling up. To this day, he still won't explain WHY that was his reaction, and why he did it because he's actually excited to be a grandad. He's just weird.
47. 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.
48. 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 jerk? 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.
49. 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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