We've all been there. Those times when you know you're right about something, but somebody singles you out and tries to make you feel inferior. Sometimes these individuals get away with it, but other times, something glorious happens: sweet revenge rides in on karma's back and strikes. them. down...Justice at its finest.
1. Takes One To Know One
I went to get a haircut this one time and the hairdresser made a big show of how terrible my faded highlights were, how the previous hairdresser did a lousy job and how I got ripped off. Then he asked me where I got it done from. With one word, I shut him down for good: "Here".
2. More Than Just Muscles
One of my clients filed a frivolous lawsuit after I refused to give him free services or a refund for his dissatisfaction with a service he had absolutely no reason to be dissatisfied with. During the deposition, it became abundantly clear that both the client and his attorney made the mistake of assuming I was just a meathead.
The attorney ended up so flustered that he lost his composure, insulted me, which is always a clear sign that the other person has literally no factual argument, and we had to recess. After he apologized, he asked a couple more questions and ended the deposition. Insurance ended up settling the claim for almost nothing, just to avoid a civil trial.
3. Are You Smarter Than A Kindergartener?
When I was about five or six years old, I was obsessed with the Titanic. The ship, not the movie. Although, all the ads around that time for home video rentals probably got me interested in the first place. Anyway, I knew every fact, every detail, every bit of trivia about that ship and its fateful voyage in 1912 for a few years there.
Well, one summer, my family had a big get together, as you do. One of my dad's uncles—my great-uncle—was there, who was a huge jerk by all accounts, and my dad hated him, too. My great-uncle happened to discover I was interested in the RMS Titanic, so he decided to quiz me to try and make me look stupid. He asked, "Hey, exactly how long was the Titanic?"
According to my old man, I looked up, met my great-uncle square in the eyes, and deadpanned, said, "882 and a half feet, duh". Needless to say, my dad enjoyed that moment
4. It’s A Tricky Word
I was a service desk technician at a hospital helping a doctor reset his password. He kept misspelling the temporary password—it was "welcome12345". Turns out he thought "welcome" had two L's and freaked out at me, citing his education and my lack of evidence. He insisted that he was right and I was wrong. He just wouldn't back down.
After going back and forth, he got frustrated and handed me off to his nurse and left. She got it on the first try then apologized to me for her boss's behavior. Funniest part was that just as she was hanging up I heard her talking to another nurse saying, "Yeah Dr. Dumb Dumb couldn't spell welcome again".
5. Simplest Solution
I had a boss who thought everyone was an idiot. One morning, the computer in the office wasn't working. She asks me if I know anything about computers. I tell her that I've used one before. She tells me to check the computer in the office and see if I can figure out why it stopped working. I press the power button and she calls me a moron, telling me that she had already tried that herself.
I get under the desk for a moment then come back up. I tell her to press the power button again. It comes right on. She asks me what was wrong with it. I tell her it was unplugged.
6. Talked Themselves Out Of A Sale
When I worked as a cashier in a grocery store, people would always want to argue about their produce. They would bring up heads of iceberg lettuce and then argue with me that they were green cabbage, or vice versa. I would always just smile, void the product, and then charge them for what they thought it was. The best was seeing people come back later mad that their coleslaw didn't work.
The best, though, was the "sweet potato versus yam" argument that I would have with people several times during the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Most of what we sell in the US are sweet potatoes, though some sweet potatoes grown in one state are the yam variety of sweet potato. But people often call them yams and will fight you over it.
Even though true yams are hard to find unless your store stocks stuff for Latin American customers. We did, but yams were rarely in stock and always more expensive than sweet potatoes. Anyway, sweet potatoes would go on sale for the holiday and people would buy lots of them. Every time I rang them up, I would get told that they were yams and that I was dumb for not knowing that.
So I would void them and ring them up as yams for four times the price. When customers would want the sale price I would kindly remind them that I had tried to give them the sale price but that they had asked me to ring them up as yams instead.
7. Following The Rules
I had a paper returned to me this morning because I didn't write out all the names of the authors in the manuscript. I took a screenshot of their submission guidelines detailing that author names must be formatted with the first initial followed by the last name, and sent it back. I got an apology email and a "submission received" notification a few minutes later.
Academia, I swear to God.
8. Do Not Touch
A tour group had a dad in it who insisted on trying to give his two cents on my animals and proceeded to put his fingers in the tank with our stunted gators, despite my warning and practically yelling at him not go. He kept saying how hatchlings couldn't hurt a human, only for the male to shoot out of his favorite hiding spot and latch onto his hand.
Yeah, I had to bite my tongue to stop laughing.
9. Stubborn
I used to project manage train modifications. I was in charge of a particularly difficult door mod on a fleet of trains where the fleet director was a jerk from the minute he realized he had to deal with a female project manager with waist length blonde hair who barely looked 30. I was over 30 at the time, but looked younger.
At the time, I was driving a large grey Volvo but it was getting some work done so I took my “fun car” to work with me for the week. The fleet director commented on how he saw it in the car park and immediately knew the Barbie car was mine, and said exactly that, right in the middle of a project meeting with the train owners.
Someone asked me what kind of car it was out of interest and I told them it was a Peugeot 207 convertible and he said, “No dear, that’s a VW beetle, it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know cars". I said, “well, I have it insured as a Peugeot and I think they would let me know if I’m wrong, plus I’ve owned the car for a while now so I think I know what kind of car I own".
I didn’t want to embarrass him further, so I tried to continue with the meeting, but when we got to a coffee break, he brought it up again. By now, a few people had been out for a cig break and seen the car and it’s obviously not a Beetle, so they looked awkward but didn’t stand up for me. He starts to laugh that I don’t know which kind of car I own and I only have it because I wanted a pink car.
I actually let my daughter choose the car but none of these men knew I had children because screw them they don’t need to know! Anyway, I take my car keys out and put them on the table and tell him to look at the Peugeot logo on them and to feel free to go and open the pink car with them and confirm who is right about the car I own.
I wish I could say he backed down but all he said was that there must have been two Barbie pink cars when he walked past the car park and he only saw the one, which was a beetle. He really was an idiot.
10. Life Lesson
I’m French and live in France, but I grew up in the UK and consider English to be like a mother tongue. When I was 17, I had to change schools, from a private one to a public one, and this was for personal reasons but my new classmates assumed the reason was because my grades were too low and I got kicked out—the private school had high standards.
Anyway, it’s the first day of school and we have English class. The teacher hands out a list of sentences we have to translate, and asks us to compare translations with our neighbor. The first sentence is rather hard to translate from French and the teacher, after having walked around and looked at our answers, announces that only one person in the class has got it right.
We then compare answers with our neighbors. The girl next to me sees my translation and says, “How long has it been raining for?” and then bursts out laughing. “Has it been? Has it been? I’ve never heard that in my life. That is so stupid,” and she makes fun of me for a good while to the other girl sitting next to her.
Being new and also knowing that she was going to feel stupid in a couple of minutes, I didn’t say anything. Sure enough, the teacher announced I was right, and my classmates quickly discovered that I was actually a fluent English speaker with excellent grades pretty much all around. It made making friends really hard, though.
I hope that girl learned her lesson to never make fun of someone without knowing the full story, or never make fun of people ever, that would be better.
11. Backwards World
My wife and I were traveling with a couple we worked with in South Korea. We weren't best friends with them but they were nice enough so we rented a car and travelled around the island of Jeju. Now, this is a small island and you could drive around it in four or five hours, but we were taking our time seeing the sights.
The guy was a bit of a know-it-all but they had been in Korea six months longer than us, so I always took his advice. Anyways, I'm driving the car and we are trying to find the place that we want to eat. I say something like, "are we going the right way," and this guy responds with, "No, we are going south, trust me, I majored in geography". That's when I roasted him with the perfect comeback.
I look straight ahead into the setting sun and respond with, "Weird, we found the one place on Earth where the sun sets in the south". Well that shut him up for a while.
12. Student Employee
I'm currently a junior in college and a couple of weeks ago, when the semester started dying down, I left the dorms to come back home and finish things out online. I also started working at the local grocery store as well. Around a week ago, I was checking out two customers when they told me they wanted to pay 50/50 with two cards.
Our system requires us to manually enter the price, so I did, and the lovely gentleman told me my math was wrong and said he's a sophomore engineering student at a school nearby to help justify why he was correct. I responded, "Oh cool. I'm actually a junior at—insert much much better engineering school—what are you studying?"
I was also simultaneously pulling up a calculator and showing him he was wrong. Everyone always assumes the workers here are dumb so it's always nice to show them otherwise.
13. Think Before You Talk
I’m profoundly deaf, so I couldn't use the telephone to ring the bank—this was pre-internet banking—so all my banking had to be done in person at the counter. One day, I went to the bank to change my address and asked the assistant to please look at me while she was speaking as I was deaf and a lip-reader, then explained I needed to change my address with the bank.
She looked at me, tutted and said, “You could have done this by phone". We stared at each other for a few seconds before I said, “That would be a very one-sided conversation". She went bright red and changed my address.
14. Stick To Your Subject
When I was in the eighth grade, we had just learned about the seasons and Earth’s rotation and all of that. To my surprise, my teacher taught us that the Earth is actually closest to the sun during winter, but it’s cold because of the tilt on the axis, not because of proximity to the sun. The tilt determines the seasons.
And then soon after that, I went to math class and my math teacher said something about how it was freezing because we are so far from the sun. Of course, I piped up to tell him he was wrong according to what Mr. Science Teacher had just taught us. My math teacher went off, ripping into me so hard in front of the class!
It was light-hearted though, as he was known for being funny and making fun of kids all the time. Him and I were going back and forth for a while, and I specifically remember him saying, “Oh yeah, because when I’m cold I move away from the fire! Yeah that makes perfect sense!” And I kept arguing “No, no, it’s because of the Earth’s tilt!”
And so finally he Googled it and I was right! He at least gave me credit and admitted he was wrong after that.
15. That Backfired
Our school's schedule got revamped which meant that one of our classes that was two periods long was cut in half to accommodate all the changes. When I brought this up to the teacher I was co-teaching with, she called me an idiot and told everyone sitting in our table group that I wasn't very good at math as everyone laughed.
A few minutes later, the principal cleared up the new schedule, only for her to realize that she was wrong in the first place. It felt so good to see the look on her face when she realized she was the idiot and not me.
16. Don’t Insinuate
My stepmom used to be an occupational therapist and would help the elderly in the hospital. One patient she had to work with was Vietnamese so he didn't know English. He came with his son so my step mom decided to ask him about his father but her coworker interrupted her saying, "I don't believe he speaks English".
This whole time the son hadn't said a word while my stepmom was working with his father. When they were done the father and son left and as soon as they were at the door, the son turned around and said, "Remember, I don't speak English". The co-worker was dumbfounded when he said that, and all my stepmom could do was laugh.
17. Learn Something New Everyday
I had a friend in college who was very full of himself. One morning, while eating breakfast in the cafeteria, someone said, "I wonder how bagels are made". I said, "I'm pretty sure bagels are boiled". The pompous friend then said, "What are you stupid? Bagels aren't boiled. That's utterly ridiculous". Someone did a quick Google search to find that bagels are, in fact, boiled.
People seemed genuinely intrigued by this information.
18. Cicadas Be Kidding Me!
This reminds me of when I was in the eighth grade. We had the 17 year cicadas making an appearance where I live and I was explaining to my science teacher how I had tons of seagulls by my house, eating the cicadas. She proceeded to tell me over and over that we do not have seagulls in our area because we do not live by a body of water.
Lake Michigan was 45 mins away. I said, “Well, I definitely have seagulls in my yard eating cicadas". A week or so later, she comes back with a newspaper with a big picture of seagulls on it. They were hanging out in the suburbs to eat the cicadas. She admitted she was wrong, but like, my entire life, cicadas or not, we’ve had seagulls in parking lots.
This lady must not have been from around here. We just had more because of the cicadas.
19. How The Tables Have Turned
I work at Starbucks, and I am a bilingual native Spanish speaker. Even though my English is not as good as my Spanish, it’s pretty good, but some people think I have a speech impairment. One time, I was talking with my coworkers and forgot a word in English. I just stuttered and honestly seemed pretty dumb at the moment.
One of my coworkers laughed and started making fun of me. She was a transfer and didn’t know I am a native Spanish speaker. A few minutes passed, and she was taking a drive-thru order which had a Spanish speaker that didn’t know much of English. She had a lot of trouble taking the order, and no one knew what she was saying.
I immediately took over the order, talking in fluent Spanish. Since that day, she’s been hesitant to look me in the eyes.
20. How To Get Free Wi-Fi
A Dutch couple visited my workplace—tourist visitor center—and insisted that the French translation on our map was wrong. The reasoning was that "Groenland" shouldn't be there because it was the Dutch word for "Greenland," not the French one. I told them that "Groenland" was also the French translation, to which they chided back, "And how would you know?"
"I'm bilingual. I speak French," I informed them. "Clearly, not very well!" they insisted, then proceeded to ask for the Wi-Fi so they could use Google translate. Well, I gave them the Wi-Fi, and to Google translate they went. Sure enough, "Groenland". They didn't even apologize, they just said, "I guess the map is correct then," and left.
21. Ruining The Fun
I moved to a new city for work after graduating university. I figured since I was sticking around for a while, I'd check out some local bars for extra, low stress work. The hope was to work as a dishwasher for drinks and meet people between dish loads. I actually pulled it off too, score! Well, one of the cooks hated dishwashers and just kept bad mouthing me every night.
He kept calling me dumb, useless, and saying I will never amount to anything. I really didn't care, as him running his mouth didn't phase me while I made good money at my day job. I figured he was projecting more than anything. Finally, the main cook, who I became good friends with, overheard the jerkoff running his mouth again at me.
So, he told him all about my day job, graduating university, and only working for drinks and to meet new people. Once he heard all that, he never came back.
22. Proof!
Senior kindergarten, I had an activity for Mother’s Day to color some pre-printed cards with three tulips. The teacher told us to color them red, yellow and orange. Well, six-year-old me colored one tulip purple because I didn't like orange. My teacher told me I was wrong, and to redo it because "purple tulips don't exist".
I told my mom when I got home. She then cut the purple tulip out of our garden and I took it to class the next day to prove my teacher wrong.
23. Not Even Worth It
I’m at work one day, writing a menu board for lunch specials. A couple comes in and starts chuckling behind me. The lady gives me this snide look and says, “What’s a SAND-wich? It’s spelled SAMWITCH, honey. She wrote SAND, like in the desert!” I just smiled and didn’t even correct her. That cocky stupidity was truly a sight to behold.
24. Me Fail English? That’s Unpossible!
My sister in law used to make fun of my English all the time. Whenever I mispronounced something, she would start laughing and telling everyone, "she's so cute, she can't pronounce this or that". I always considered her just a mean girl trying to keep all the attention for herself but the English thing really bothered me.
Some background for the story—I'm originally from Colombia but now I live in Canada, I speak Spanish, English, and French. One day, we were drinking and she started laughing at something I said. I finally lost it. I told her I speak three languages while she can barely speak English. We kept arguing until I said fine, let's prove it.
We took a mock up English test online and I got a perfect score! She got eight out of twelve. That was the last day she laughed at me
25. Careful Who You Criticize
This reminds me of the time we had a project manager and his crew come in and brief our group on a migration they were about to do. What he laid out made no sense to anyone and I figured I'd ask a few questions to maybe help him see the error in his ways. He got all mad that anyone would question his wisdom and asked who in the world I thought I was.
The look on his face was priceless when I said that I was the author of the procedure and code they were using. Screw you, Greg.
26. Please Read Carefully
Oh, working in retail has those moments constantly. People don’t read the signs right and one guy didn’t get the right chips for the deal. He was getting mad at me and told me to come and he’ll show me the sign. I had already dealt with people not reading the fine print on that deal so I told him I’m not going to look at anything.
“You can go look for yourself and read it then come back with the right product". He came back without an attitude because he knew he was wrong and from that point on I always had my guard up when I saw him come in and I was ready for a fight each time.
27. Someone Needs Glasses
I used to work in a supermarket and one day a woman came up to me and said that the aisle seven sign was installed upside down. It was an older supermarket so the sign was a 1.2x1.2m MDF panel in yellow with a big number seven painted on, and just screwed to the end of the pallet racking. I pointed out to her that there's no way it had been rotated during the middle of the day.
I knew because I was down there just a few minutes ago, but she wasn't having any of it. She actually took me over there to show me, and of course, it was fine. She stumbled for words a bit then said that someone had already fixed it.
28. Who’s The Boss?
A corporate trainer came to our offices to provide training. I popped into the room to say hello and see if she needed help. She was having trouble setting up the projector before the session, so I started trying to help but I’m not really savvy with projectors. She was getting frustrated with me as she assumed I was the IT dude, and obviously not a very good one.
We eventually got it fixed, and I offered her a coffee. She was a bit rude to me by that stage. I got her one anyway. Fast forward to the session itself, and I introduced her to the room of 40 people and thanked her for coming. She realized I was the head of the division and was the one paying for her to be there. I felt very smug at that point.
29. Girl Power
When I was in the Army, me and a group of specialists were standing in a circle and taking a break in the motor pool. A lieutenant came over and said he needed a forklift driver, then went around the circle and pointed at each male and asked them if they had their license. None of them did, so he huffed and walked away.
He had clearly, obviously skipped over the other female and I in the circle. That was fine, as we were the only 88M—heavy vehicle operators—and forklift licensed people there. The dudes were all paralegals and HR specialists. Everyone just laughed it off, but man, what an embarrassing moment for him.
30. Showed Up
Some years ago, some guys were talking about cars and engines and I don't even remember what else. One of them was really condescending to me, a woman, and said, “but you probably don't know anything about that do you?” My husband set him straight and said, "she knows more about cars than I do so don't be so sure". Then, of course, he tried to prove he knew more.
He did not. I grew up around race cars, and auto mechanics, who also thought everyone should understand their own car. I have to admit I know less now that they are all electronic and computerized, but this was back in the day.
31. More Than Just A Drive
I used to drive for Lyft while I was in grad school. Once, I picked up an undergraduate college kid. The following conversation ensued. Me, “What're you studying? Him, “Computer science". Me, “Oh awesome! What kind of projects are you doing now?” Him, “It's pretty complicated, but I do some pretty amazing things. You wouldn't get it".
Me, “Like what? I'd love to hear about your projects". Him, “Super intense database stuff and web app stuff like HTML. I just learned about the NodeJS framework. This is probably all over your head. What about you? Have you ever gone to college?” Me, “I am currently a computer science graduate student, with a dual bachelor's in computer science and computer systems engineering".
He was awkwardly silent after that, but I still asked him about his projects and he was more than happy to share his experiences knowing that this conversation was definitely not over my head.
32. Words Are Hard
I was working as a receptionist on my summer break from college. One day, a woman with a tired, midwestern, middle-aged voice called from a potential vendor's office and asked for our mailing address. I rattled off, "60 West 26th Street, Suite 400,” before she stopped me and asked me to repeat what I just said, so I did.
She stopped me again and asked in this faux-puzzled way, "So that's S-W-E-E-T 400?” Spelling out sweet. I replied with innocent earnestness, because I think somehow I had not been clear that it is suite, as in S-U-I-T-E. She responded with this incredulous, yet delighted laugh that goes on for what seemed like five minutes".
Dear, you don't pronounce that, "sweet!”, she said, like she was talking to a five-year-old that just failed kindergarten. "It's pronounced ‘suit’". I think she must be joking or I still hadn't made myself clear, so I actually laughed and said, “no, sorry I wasn't clear, it's suite, you know, like a suite of offices?"
Then she sighs wearily like she just can't believe what she has to deal with, and levels with me, so she thinks. "Look, I feel bad telling you this, but you are making a complete fool of yourself every time you say your office address. I know you are going to be embarrassed, but when you get off the phone with me, go find a dictionary and have someone else explain to you how to pronounce suit".
“It's probably not your fault, your parents probably had no schooling and you were badly educated so you don't know any better, but if you don't want to be fired, you'll do what I say for your own good". She then proceeded to make me say the address again, insisting I pronounce suite as suit, and not allowing me to continue unless I said it correctly.
So I muttered my way through it and she finally got off the phone after telling me that I would thank her one day. I just kept wishing she had inadvertently put the phone down wrong so it didn't disconnect, because I was pretty sure the next sentence out of her mouth to anyone within ears reach in her office would be, "My God you wouldn't believe the fool I just spoke to".
“She kept telling me her office "sweet" number! I didn't know what she was talking about, so I made her spell it for me because I wasn't previously aware a human being could be so stupid as to pronounce S-U-I-T-E as sweet, when anyone with half a brain cell knows it's pronounced SUIT! Why oh why do they give morons jobs?"
Only to have everyone go, "uhhhhhh" wondering if they should be the one to break the news.
33. Solar Opposites
I was asked by my brother and girlfriend which planet is first starting from the Sun. I was then belittled for 20 minutes after answering Mercury, because they were adamant it was Venus. I was just disappointed because we were in our 20s.
34. Tricked
I made vegetarian nachos with fake mince in front of a bunch of friends for a party. Another friend showed up late and, unprompted, started trash talking vegetarian food because the nachos were so good he could never give up meat. Boy, was he in for a rude awakening. Finally, one of the other guests eventually corrected him.
35. More Than One Meaning
I was talking about binary star systems at a party, when suddenly, my ex says, "That's not what binary is, are you dumb?" Then another friend looked up the word binary and read it out loud to him, and his eyes bugged out. I told him, "Stop pretending to be an expert on things you don't understand. It makes you look like an idiot".
My ex was thinking of binary computer code. He didn't consider that other things could be binary too.
36. Doesn’t Take An Expert To Know
The day after graduating from high school, my brother, who had just learned to drive stick, took me to go look at cars. The very first one he drove—an old Ford Explorer—wouldn't shift into fifth gear, at which point I said to him, "I don't think you should buy this one, something's seriously wrong with it". He told me to shut up, asked me what I knew about cars, then immediately bought it.
A week later, the transmission dropped. Me, the day the transmission dropped, "Hmmm, what do I know about cars? Not much, but obviously, more than you!" It's been almost 20 years, and whenever he gets too full of himself, I remind him of that. I still know almost nothing about cars, except they go "vroom" and get me places.
I've never had a major repair like a bad transmission, in a little over 15 years of driving and owning cars.
37. That Came Full Circle
When I was in the sixth grade, our science teacher asked us what the shape of a rainbow is. I instantly answered, saying it's a circle, then the so called "topper" of our class looked at me, laughed, and did some trash talking afterwards. Then, the teacher said circle is the correct answer, and the whole class laughed at her.
38. Didn’t See That One Coming
Once at a game night, someone made a comment about an aspect of languages. The comment isn't really important. The point is, they were vaguely wondering about a thing, and I answered the question. They had just met me, and so they tried to rib me by laughing and saying I was wrong. I said, no, I’m pretty sure that's right, and this is why.
He scoffed and said, "It's not like you have a degree in languages or something". Everyone else immediately dissolved into giggles as I informed him that actually I had just moved back from grad school after getting my second linguistics degree. The bright pink look on his face was wonderful.
39. Not So Handy Work
I got in a car accident and had mostly cosmetic front end damage. I took my car to a car shop the insurance recommended. I then got in another car accident involving the front end again, about a year later. I took it to the same car shop. The guy fixing the car says, "Well, whoever fixed your car the first time didn't do a really good job of it".
I looked at him and said, "You guys did it the first time". No one said anything after that. Suffice to say, I did not go back to that car shop for future car issues.
40. Just One Of The Guys
I used to be really into Warhammer. At some point, I went into the store to get something and some young guys were painting models. I walked over to see their work and they kind of sneered at me, a woman, in a male-dominated hobby. When I wanted to lift a model, one of them said, “Don't, you'll break it if you don't know how to hold it properly".
After that, the owner of the store walked in, greeted me as an old friend and we got into a conversation about how the new paints hold up to the old ones. You should have seen their faces.
41. Safety First
While still enlisted in the army, I worked in the maintenance field. Basically, if it had moving parts, I knew a little bit about it. Now every year, my unit goes on annual training, and this particular year, we got six brand new generators. Now the section they belonged to was headed by a sergeant who had over 15 years of service and knew his job inside and out, backwards and forwards.
He then decided that I didn't know how to do my job. In his wisdom, he decided that the fuel cans for his new generators would be set next to said machines. All well and good until I told him they needed to be placed on a secondary containment to prevent fuel spilling on the ground, because we can get in huge trouble for that.
He disregarded what I said with some idiotic excuse, I don't rightly remember what, and went on his way. So naturally, I reported the violation of orders to my superior. Within five minutes, there was a butt chewing and the fuel cans were put on a secondary containment.
42. All By Myself
I am an application developer in the public sector. I have made many of the computer programs where I work, such as the Human Resources, incident reporting, and some of the case management systems. Several times, I have had people try to tell me, wrongly, how to use an application that I made. I especially like it when they tell me I should “ask the people at the company".
Now, what company would that be? I tell them that it is very flattering that they think that the software was made by an entire company instead of by me, alone in my office.
43. Rude Misunderstanding
It didn’t necessarily make anyone look dumb, but certainly made some people feel bad. I lived in Germany for a year after high school as part of an exchange program, and there were several times where I had to make phone calls. I had to call doctors, employers, program coordinators, etc. so I got fairly used to the whole telephone garb in German.
I could speak pretty fluently on the phone, but since it’s not my native language, I would of course make small grammatical errors and stuff like that. This led to the unfortunate situation where people would assume I was German when on the phone because I spoke well enough, but since I kept making mistakes, I was also stupid.
People were quite rude to me over the phone, assuming that was due to the assumed stupidity. After revealing I was actually a foreigner, they always sounded so surprised and complimentary of my German and were much more helpful and polite afterwards.
44. Caught Red-Handed
A director at work did this recently. We work with various agencies, and he tried to rat me out in front of the other directors and our boss by saying I wasn't providing services to two places. I told everyone why the one site didn't get any services; the site wasn't eligible for the services he was talking about. It was a zoom meeting, so I asked to share my screen. I showed them the proof that this site wasn't eligible. I then asked why he thought they were, why he felt it upon himself to check in on my office's sites, and why he felt the need to make sure I was doing my job, seeing as he wasn't my supervisor or director, and didn't work in my office.
As it happened, he decided to check to see if they were getting their needs met because he had learned I also wasn't providing services at another site I claimed was getting services. I was easily able to prove that they indeed did get the services and he was talking to the wrong person. In the end, he looked like a jerk who was overstepping.
He also looked like he was possibly trying to get me fired or take our funding, and I looked competent and professional. People are still mad at him for this and no longer believe anything he says.
45. Foreign Language
I interrupted a group of Chinese girls on the subway in Beijing when they were saying some rude things about foreigners. A 6 foot tall, ginger haired, white girl speaking Mandarin was clearly unexpected.
46. Second Hand Information
When I was working as a pharmacist assistant, people would always ask for the pharmacist because I was young and they assumed an assistant is an idiot—not like I studied or anything. One day in particular, an older lady was rude to me, saying she had to see only the pharmacist. So I called him and he heard her story out.
All she wanted was some cold medicine and a Vitamin B injection. He told her, “I'm a bit busy, but my assistant will gladly help you,” and then he walked away. I got her the medicine, explained how to use it and gave her the shot, being as friendly as I would be with any other customer. She was so disgusted and kept muttering about me being disrespectful.
I think the embarrassment was too much because I never saw her again. I hope she never treated someone like that again.
47. Fool Me Once...
I used to work at a Courtyard Marriott hotel, which is a hotel oriented for business people who have to get up early and work late. You know, real workhorses and road warriors. The hotel was a sprawling five stories tall with around 200 or so rooms. It was also right next to LAX so we always got a lot of businesspeople flying in thinking they were hot stuff.
Their company flew them out to do business in LA—big deal. Then one day, I’m working at the front desk and it’s kind of late, around midnight maybe, and one of our guests comes in kind of intoxicated and asks for me to reset his room key before he heads to his room because, “We always do them wrong". So I’m like, “Yeah sure thing, not a problem, have a good night!”
He comes back down five minutes later, visibly agitated, and says, “What the heck man? I thought I told you to remake my keys. Can you do your job right?“ In the hospitality industry, you’re not allowed to talk back, raise your voice, or really stand up for yourself. Your one and only goal is to make the guest feel welcomed.
So, I apologize, take the blame and say it won’t happen again, and make him an extra key. He snatches them from my hand and storms off to his room. Five minutes later, he comes back down, again! “What is wrong with you? Are you stupid? Are you wasting my time on purpose? I’m heading to my room and you better come up with working room keys!”
He then throws his keys at me. My manager sees this all happen and is like, “You know what, let me handle this. You deserve a break". I’m fuming, of course, so I go to the break room and just pace around, wondering what gives people the audacity to act like that. My manager eventually comes back, and enters the break room with a smile.
He clearly has something to report. He says, “He was going to the wrong floor. His room was actually one floor up. He said he’s sorry". I wish I could have seen his face!
48. That’s On You
I film and edit promotional videos, then post them on my company’s YouTube channel. The day after I uploaded a particular run-of-the-mill video, my manager called me into his office because one of our directors, who hates our department and loves undermining me in particular, sent an email to my manager and a few higher-ups. That's when it got cringey.
In the email, he stated that I had messed up the promo video, because there were “all of these other disgusting videos attached to it". As proof, he included a screenshot of the end of the video, where all of the recommended videos appeared to star scantily-clad Asian women in suggestive poses. Neither he nor my manager knew how YouTube algorithms worked.
He didn’t realize that the videos were suggested because he, or someone on his account, viewed that kind of content before. I have no idea how my manager explained this to him.
49. Wait For It
I was working as a teller at the bank years ago, and a Karen was complaining about how slow and terrible my computer was. She claimed that if I had been using an IBM she'd have been out of there already. She works at IBM, and they only make the best, fastest bank equipment. Blah, blah, blah. I slowly, deliberately, turned my terrible IBM computer for her to look at. Not another word.
50. Terrible Timing
As a lifeguard, we had a rule that very young kids needed an adult in the water within arm's reach in the main pool. I saw this mom and her 5-year-old walk in. Mom is wearing jeans and is on her phone, clearly not planning on swimming. I anticipate the issue and go to talk to her before the kid gets in, to explain our policy.
I explain to her that the pool is four feet deep, minimum, and that the policy is for the safety of the child. Having a parent close by who can respond in case of drowning immediately is by far faster than relying on the lifeguard to get down, jump in, and swim all the way out for a rescue. She says it's a stupid policy.
She says that her kid is a fantastic natural swimmer, and that they take him to the lake and he swims just fine. She says I'm just harassing her, and that I just don't want to do my job—all the classic offended parent nonsense. Literally, while she's telling me this, the kid runs and jumps into the pool, then dog paddles about 10 feet away from the edge. That's when the nightmare begins.
He then goes into active drowning, requiring a rescue from my other lifeguard, who thankfully was basically already there to catch the kid. She signed the refusal of care and left quicker than anyone I had ever seen. I felt bad for the kid, as she seemed almost mad at him for making her look like a complete idiot in front of everyone.
Sources: Reddit,
