There's dumb, and then there's dumber. The following stories are of the latter group. From dumb decisions made in real-time to the most idiotic questions asked, these incidents were clearly more than just innocent lapses of judgment—they were the result of pure stupidity.
1. I Won’t Be Seeing Red
I was someone's maid of honor and the bride told her soon-to-be husband to tell his mother that she can't wear red at the wedding (even though she had already bought the dress) because it would clash with the mint and coral color story of the wedding. She then proceeded to say how she, the bride, is so easy going and isn't one of sweat any of the small stuff.
2. Just Passing Through
This woman and her family were taking up an entire bike path including the shoulder. Instead of cutting through them, I moved onto the shoulder and cheerily excused myself as I passed her. I didn’t touch her, and she didn’t really have to move, since I managed to squeeze by. Yet, while I was passing, she just started screaming at me.
What she didn’t expect was me coming to a screeching halt to ask her what her problem was. Her angry yelling promptly stopped and she hid behind her husband and desperately avoided eye contact with me. All that energy for what?
3. The Cry of Crowns
Knew a sister-of-the-groom (also maid of honor) who pitched a violent fit because the bride was going to wear a tiara for the ceremony and therefore, the sister couldn't. Literally screamed at both families, "I am the sister, for God's sake!"
4. Pulling Your Leg
When I used to work at Disney World, there was this incident with this lady and her turkey leg. One day at 9 AM, a lady came into our Guest Services and demanded a refund on her turkey leg because it tasted weird. When we asked her for the details to process the refund, it turned out that she had bought it 3 days before and was carrying it in her bag ever since.
5. You’re Not the Cat’s Meow
My ex's younger sister was a pre-med student. Whenever we had family gatherings, she would monopolize the conversations, talking about her knowledge in chemistry and how she was going to become a surgeon one day. No one else could get a word in edgeways. One day, she brought her new boyfriend to a Christmas party. I guess she wanted to leave a good impression on him.
After having talked about herself for more than an hour, nonstop, she suddenly stopped and said, "I hate talking about myself. I'd rather listen to others." She then asked her boyfriend how he was doing in school, only to cut him off and start talking about herself for another hour. The whole experience I had at her house has actually affected me. I'm from a different country, and I grew up in a pretty strict family, so it was mind-boggling and shocking to witness such a spoiled and entitled person.
The last straw was when the cat my ex and I were taking care of was dying from kidney failure. We decided to stay with the cat for a few days before we put her to sleep. The night when the cat started breathing heavily and we decided to bring her to the 24/7 vet to euthanize her before her pain became too much, her sister came over to say goodbye. Immediately, she started monologuing about herself and bragging about her knowledge in medicine—right next to the suffering cat—for close to 30 minutes.
I almost blew my top in front of her family, but fortunately my ex cut her off and we rushed to our car. It was hell having to hear our cat screaming in pain while I was driving to the vet. Had we gotten to the vet sooner, she wouldn't have had to suffer that much. I honestly started to see her younger sister as a monster after that experience.
I know everyone has reasons for being narcissistic and her family gave her millions of excuses, but when I saw her how she was next to my cat dying, I refused to sympathize.
6. Getting into the Real Estate Game
An old roommate wanted me to start paying more in rent because he was trying to save up to buy himself a house. Unbelievable.
7. Best Friends for Never
I’m a teacher, and there’s this one guy I work with who is not a teacher, but sometimes “helps” in our classrooms. Every time he “helps,” without fail, he’ll tell us about some kid he made a great connection with who he feels like he really got through to...only for that kid to complain about how annoying and fake he is the next day.
Teens recognize/respect realness over pretty much anything else.
8. Do You Take IOUs?
While I was working one day, a woman claimed to have left her money at home after she ordered two sandwiches. They take about ten minutes to cook. I said that’s ok, when you come back, they will be ready. She said she wanted the sandwiches first and that she’d be right back after she and her daughter finished eating.
It would be really quick because they lived right around the corner. I said if you live right around the corner, you’ll be back before the sandwiches are done, but I can’t give you food before you pay. She lost it on me. It was wild. I don’t know how she thought she could get away without paying. She left with no food and didn’t come back.
9. Threat Level: Midnight
I have a friend who is basically a young Michael Scott. Seriously, sometimes when watching The Office, I cringe not because of what Michael is doing, but because it reminds me so much of my friend. One day, our group of friends got on the topic of what Office character we’re most like. He loudly and immediately declared he thinks he’s most like Ryan...
10. Act Natural
There was a girl in my class who was so dumb that she would outwardly disrespect the professor all the time. This one time while the professor was talking, she started to whistle. He stopped class in disbelief and asked her why she was doing it and why she was being disruptive. She said it's a thing she does without even thinking, and then whistled again, and was like "see?!"
11. Not the Brightest Bulb in the Smartphone
Dude took MULTIPLE photos of the Declaration of Independence using flash photography, all while people yelled at him to stop. Other than the array of signs, you are advised multiple times to NOT use flash. They even have a special room to test if your camera is accidentally on flash. His response was just to listlessly stare at the workers and walk away.
The sheer mixture of obliviousness and entitlement on his face made me momentarily lose faith in the idea of democracy while standing in the National Archive.
12. Cutting Lecture Short
I had a 400-level literature class with the unilaterally acknowledged scariest professor in the university. A girl started clipping her nails in the middle of lecture with little sprockets of nails flying off in every direction. We the other students started to make eye contact in an "are you seeing what I'm seeing" way.
When the whole class “eye-greed” that it was really messed up to do that during a lecture, no less, everyone burst into this shocked laughter. The scary professor ended up kicking us out but not before ignoring our explanation as to why we started laughing and then giving us a scolding to make your blood run cold.
13. Beauty is Only Skin-Wound Deep
One woman (who is 40 and in great shape but absolutely desperate to be married) to another woman who is funny and sweet but overweight, “I can’t believe someone like you is married and I’m not.” No lie...and it didn’t even occur to her that it was insulting. She’s too much of a narcissist to realize that.
14. Customer Experience Survey
I used to work at the register of my college campus store. For the most part, people came in to buy an energy drink, gum, or other small things like that, but we also carried other items like sweaters and even computers. People usually only bought an item or two, so there weren’t any shopping carts or baskets for customers.
One day, a woman, probably a student’s mom, came in and asked me for help reaching a sweater on the top shelf. After I grabbed it for her, I went to hand it over, but she motioned at me to hold on for it. For the next ten minutes, she walked around the store grabbing several items and then giving them to me to hold. She used me as her personal shopping cart. Luckily, I had a co-worker in the store on the same shift, so he was able to handle the register.
I was at the end of my rope—but this isn't even the worst part. At the end of this whole ridiculous ordeal, she got a message on her phone. She read it and said, "Oh, you know what? I actually have to go meet my son. I'll come back later to get the things I need." And then she left. Leaving me standing there with an armful of random stuff that I then needed to go put back one by one.
15. The Doctor Is Out
I have a friend who is extremely susceptible to pop psychology articles on the internet. If she's seen some article on her Facebook feed about being a "hypersensitive person" or an "introverted extrovert," it'll be all you hear about for the next few weeks, and she'll give her unqualified self-diagnosis to anyone who will listen.
She'll start accentuating those traits and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's especially irritating because in psychology it's pretty well known that psychological self-assessment is extremely invalid and that people are way worse at knowing themselves than they think.
16. Swiper, No Swiping
While working the front desk of a hotel one day, a woman handed me her debit card for payment. With our software, we insert the card, and it takes a minute to process in the reader and load the number properly into the software. As I waited for the reader finish, I started to make her classic magnetic strip style key cards for her room.
Our key maker was an old machine that made plenty of loud beeps as you programmed the keys. And given its age, most times I would have to try 3 or more times to get a key to program correctly. I handed her card back along with two key cards, and she just screeches, "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO!!???"
Baffled and confused, I just responded by saying, “Uh…pardon me?" To which this lady just repeatedly yelled, "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO!!!??" Still very much confused, I explained, "Uh…I'm just giving you the keys to your room, Ma'am. All I need is a signature, and you're all good to go." Instead, she called 9-1-1.
I still had no idea what was going on. I tried to ask her what she was doing, and she just said, "I'm not saying another word to you until the authorities get here!! I KNOW MY RIGHTS!" I just sat there and said, “Okay…?” She then went outside the lobby and waited for officers to arrive. Some minutes later, she came back with one.
Then she pointed to me and yelled, "THAT'S HER! SHE'S THE ONE!" I was the only person working. Apparently, she thought I swiped her debit card more than once to charge her “thousands of dollars” when I was actually making her key cards. So, the officer came behind the desk and asked me to repeat the process.
When I repeated the same process that I did with the key card reader, the officer asked her if that was the noise she heard. She yelled, "YES!! YOU SEE!" He then informed her that that was the sound of the key card maker and not me swiping her debit card. She just stood there staring for a second before getting red in the face
She grabbed her belongings, left the keys and unsigned folio for the room with me, and stormed out while yelling, "I DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS TREATMENT!!" She then called a few hours later about the single approval hold for the room that was put on her card and accused me of trying to "steal from her again."
17. Don’t Follow Her Down This Rabbit Hole
There’s this woman at work (about 60 people) who tells everybody everything about her life. She just monologues and when she’s done, she just walks away, doesn't reciprocate. People avoid her like crazy. I've been talked at by her for over a year. I avoid if I can, but she’s gotten me cornered in the bathroom. She talked about how she's a private person and I'm such a great listener. At the end, she asks me what my name is.
It's like dude, you've told me what your gynecologist has said about your cervix, and after a year you're just asking me my name?
18. Drop-Off Site
On multiple occasions, I’ve had mothers try to leave their kids with me because I’m in childcare. I literally have to stop telling moms I’m a nanny because I end up getting a strange baby plopped in my lap. The worst time was at a park where I was chilling and reading. A mother sat next to me on the bench with her baby.
We started chatting a little bit. I gave an obligatory coo to her baby and said, “Oh, your baby is such a cutie,” and other stuff like that. All of a sudden, this woman stood up, placed her baby on my lap leaving her diaper bag next to me, and said she’d be right back. She didn’t ask. She just put her baby in my lap and walked away.
19. She’s Better Than the Real
I saw a white woman at Taco Bell have a very loud, very condescending conversation with the guy behind the counter about how Taco Bell isn’t authentic Mexican food. She obviously wanted the whole restaurant to hear, and obviously thought she was the only person at the restaurant (employees included) who was culturally aware enough to know this fact. She ended up storming out shouting, “Maybe if you guys had authentic Mexican food I’d eat here more!”
Oh, I should mention that the guy behind the counter was Mexican.
20. Spray That to My Face
This one girl in my class loved to apply perfume whenever she could, despite the fact that the girl sitting next to her was very sensitive to fragrant smells. One day, she sprayed a whole bunch on herself, and the girl started having a coughing fit. She then had a migraine and was sent to the nurse’s office to calm down. When the teacher asked the girl why she did that, all she said was, "What's the big deal? It's not my fault."
21. Leaving Your Mark on the Eardrums
I have multiple coworkers who have conversations on speaker phone, or blast bad music, or catch up on their obnoxious Instagram stories (street fights, car racing, and multiple instances of rappers practicing their machine gun noises) in the break room. They do not find this disruptive or inappropriate in the slightest.
I have it on good authority that they do the same stuff on the bus.
22. Not That Kind of Dough
One day when I was at work, someone came to me and asked if I could break a one-hundred-dollar bill for her in pennies. I just looked at her for a second and then looked around me to make sure I was definitely not currently working in a bank. I was indeed still in the bakery where I worked and told her sorry.
23. The Border of Human Decency
My husband and I went out with his family to celebrate his birthday. We went to a Mexican restaurant for an early dinner and was being served by a Mexican. My father-in-law started saying trash like, “Wow do you even know nowadays if they’re legal?” that he doesn’t hate immigrants, only the illegal ones. My husband was so upset and embarrassed because his dad talks so loud, people around our table and the waitress definitely heard him.
24. Never a Fair Fight
A girl tried to fight me in a bar about twenty years ago. All I did was look at her funny unintentionally. I was going to the bar for a round of drinks and forgot the order. I happened to be looking at her when I was lost in thought. She challenged me outside. I couldn't believe it. I'm 6'1 220, and she was small.
Fortunately, I guess, the bouncer heard her yell her challenge to me and went to make her leave. Later, when we were leaving an hour later, she was still standing on the sidewalk and she wasn’t done. She ended up following me to my car pushing me and punching my back all the way there. It was all so very surreal.
25. Never Her Fault
I go to school with a girl who finds a way to blame others for all her wrongdoings. She failed a class three times for not doing the coursework or going to class. Claimed the teacher was out to get her. People constantly walk out of her life because they’re sick of her gossiping about them. Claimed she is such a loyal friend, so (insert name) must be a total witch.
Puts down a friend because “she’s way too confident.” Doesn’t understand why that friend doesn’t hang out with her anymore. Someone called her out for always putting people down. She complained about how mean that person is.
26. Sniffing out the Imposter
A girl from my school pretended to be highly sensitive to fragrances for years. She would cough and choke until she was blue, vomit, faint, have to leave the room or go home early, have her asthma acting up, and overnight stays in the hospital. Anyone who recently used toothpaste or chewing gum couldn’t be around her.
Everyone was naturally very careful around her. But one shrewd cookie noticed some inconsistencies with one of her great performances. And one day, he sprayed a ridiculous amount of deodorant behind her out of her earshot and eyeline, and she didn’t so much as flinch. Everybody was absolutely enraged with her.
There had been a school-wide effort for years with everyone going to great lengths to avoid causing her any hurt or stress—it was every product and every scent, erasers, pens, soap, lotion, lip balm, detergent, perfume, cleaning products—so, naturally, every student and staff member was absolutely furious.
27. Leave a Part of Yourself in the Book
I once saw a teacher pick her nose while reading from the textbook and everyone saw it. I don't know if that's what you mean, but it was definitely something.
28. One Honk Only
I've been going to my local high school’s running track to jog and exercise since lockdown. Well, to park your car, you have to go through a driveway that’s marked with arrows as one way only. The exit’s on the other side of the parking lot. Soccer moms in town are notorious for parking their cars in this driveway.
Blocking the driveway makes it hard to get into the actual parking lot. As I pulled into the driveway, one of these women thought that it was a brilliant idea to put her car into reverse as I was entering. I couldn't swerve out of the way. There was an SUV parked right at the mouth of the entrance that took half the available space.
So, my reaction was to immediately honk my horn. I'll never forget what happened next. She then proceeded to panic, throw the car into drive, and run it into a small boulder that lined the driveway. It ripped the passenger side air deflector clean off. According to her, I was now that awful person that honks her horn for no reason.
29. High School Heartbreaker
At my senior prom, my (now ex) friend and I were talking about our experiences in high school. Reminiscing. Or at least I was...she was nonstop complaining about how everyone around her hated her, how another friend of mine was annoying and needy, etc. etc. The conversation gets to a point and she just bluntly says to me, "Yeah I know, between the two of us I'm a better person, not that it matters!" As I later learned, she was hooking up with a guy a grade below us who already had a girlfriend.
Who's the better person now, Mikaela?
30. Not Funny, Mate
When I walked into the apartment I shared with a friend, it was covered in vomit because her dog ate a pillow and had puked it up—two days earlier. The living room was covered in dog puke, and she had just sat there in the middle of it. She thought it was funny. I took out my phone and called a moving company on the spot. I arranged for the first appointment they had, packed all of my stuff and had it put in storage while I found a new place. That was my last roommate.
31. The Stars Don’t Always Align
I have a very close and dear friend whom absolutely I adore with all my heart. She's intelligent, warm, funny and kind. Just an incredible human being. That being said, she has regular "psychic" readings. After these, she will then live her life according to what the "psychic" has told her, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The reason I say "psychic" in quotes is because I've been to several of these sessions with her. I'm interested and figure it can do no harm. She always told me that me she gives nothing away, but the first thing she does is tell them exactly what she wants to know, why she wants to know it, how she's got to this point, and what she'd like moving forward...
I told them my name and got told my pet needed to go to the vet once. Oh, and one told me (off the back of a horrendously abusive relationship) that my ex was a delight and we should get back together.
32. That’s Not Yours
It's been 3 years since, but when my sister’s mother-in-law opened up all her wedding gifts and packed them away while she was on honeymoon, I'm still mad thinking about it!
33. The Bottom Barrel of Comedy
I was standing behind a guy and his girlfriend waiting to get into a comedy show about a week ago. He was going on and on to another couple about how much he was a “fan of ciders” as the other couple was suggesting restaurants they try while visiting our town. This was strike one. Lo and behold, I get the table behind this dork and his girlfriend, and when the comic did some crowd work at the beginning of the show, he asked the crowd to try and think of something he (the comic) would not do for a million dollars.
Cider guy chimed in at the TOP of his lungs, “Suck a fart out of my butt!” The comic didn’t hear him, so he repeated it two more times. The room went silent. It was like something a seven-year-old would say. I cringed for a full five minutes.
34. Try This on for Size
I have worked at Spirit Halloween every season for the past 5 years, and super shady things happen at Spirit Halloween all the time. So, I have endless stories to tell—but this is the craziest thing that ever happened to me. I was working the dressing room basically just regulating who goes in and taking costumes out of the bags to withhold accessories to prevent theft, etc.
This was my first year working there, so I was about 20. Just a couple days before Halloween, a girl around my age came to the dressing room with a typical college girl costume. She said something like, “Oh good. We’re about the same size! I’m in a rush, so I wouldn’t have time to find an associate to help me.”
I just kind of smiled and took the bag from her not knowing what that even meant. I unpacked the costume, leave the accessories, and put it in a basket to carry to the dressing room. She looked really confused, so I just asked her to follow me and I’d get her a dressing room. I really wish I was making this next part up.
This girl said to me, “Why would I go back there for you to change?” First, I was just like HUH???? I can’t even remember exactly how I responded because I was so confused, but it was something along the lines of “You try on the costume yourself, so you know how it fits you. An associate doesn’t do it for you.”
And this girl had the audacity to be MAD AT ME for saying that! Her response was basically, “Well, I don’t want to have to get out of my clothes and change into the costume, so it isn’t worth my time. That’s so unsanitary to have a bunch of people trying the costume on instead of you just doing it, so I don’t even want it anymore,” followed by her storming out.
35. A Shooting Star Lands Among Us
A VERY talkative co-worker claimed to be very humble, generous, and "prim and proper." She once asked me how my weekend was, only to not let me answer and spend 20 some minutes telling me about hers. Once she was done, she just walked away. She was at the age of retirement but was barely making ends meet and asking for money all the time. She kept telling the manager that she needed to be reimbursed for every little thing gone wrong with her personal attire.
She always talked about how her friends would tell her she could be a movie star, but she was too humble to accept that lifestyle. She was divorced and always complained how her kids were so disrespectful and ungrateful because they never spoke to her anymore, and how they wouldn't give her any money, but she would give the jacket off her back for them.
I could easily add more to this list, but I'll try to sum it up here: despite her very friendly first impression the more you listened to her the more bizarre and hypocritical it got. You realize pretty quickly to avoid her at all costs.
36. Committed to the Act
My friend and I were around 14 and sneaked some of my dad's whiskey while my parents were out. We each had a few sips from the bottle, did the obligatory, "ahh it burns," and that was about it…at first. A few minutes later, my friend started to act really drunk. He was crashing into walls, falling down, slurring his speech.
I was thinking there was no way this kid was drunk because we only had like .25 ml of that whiskey. I didn't even feel anything except a little lingering burn in my throat. I knew he’d had to be faking it. He then started dry heaving, smashed a lamp, and then he went toward the TV like he was going to grab it.
I had to literally bearhug him while he fought like he was resisting arrest. He was foaming at the mouth and screaming. And wouldn't you know it, just like that, he "sobered up" and relaxed. So, in the span of five minutes, he got drunk of a sip of whiskey, wrecked my house, fought me like a wild animal, then sobered up.
37. Fork Off, Lady
I was driving a forklift in an area open to the public. I'm basically in a narrow hallway (about as wide as my forklift is long) and have to spin the forklift around to grab the next pallet. I check my surroundings then start to spin the forklift. As I reach the point where I'm basically touching the wall with my backend, a woman pops around the corner and decides to basically jump through the shrinking gap.
Seeing movement, I immediately stop (saving her from being a smear on the wall) and tell her how close she was to being hit. She says, "Well, I wasn't hit." I told her she's welcome. Don't think she got it.
38. Unbalanced Withstanding
I had a customer who hadn't paid their bill in 5 months and was in bad standing even before the everything went nuts. We actually agreed to waive her late payment fees of three months. This woman then had the audacity to DEMAND that we remove 75% of her bill and then demanded to speak to the CEO when we obviously refused.
39. An Alumni of the School of Lies
A girl (we called her Janet because she was so similar to Arnold's cousin on The Magic School Bus) showed up in my program at university, constantly throwing out these outlandish claims about her accomplishments. I was applying to graduate schools at the time and every time I mentioned a school (not to her, ever) she would throw in "Oh, Yale? I got in there." I'm sorry, but if you get into Yale you don't end up going to my school.
She was also overweight but supposedly qualified for the Boston Marathon. She didn't run in it though, because she apparently broke her ankle so badly while hiking that the bone was sticking out—or so she told us the next day while walking on it with a tiny wrap on it and an exaggerated limp. Oh, she also had a fiancé (who also qualified for the Boston marathon), but he was in med school in Michigan (she was eighteen). She didn’t have a ring because he fake broke up with her because his buddies told him to. Somehow that was supposed to explain it.
She was also the sort to start every comment in class with, "Well, I wrote a paper about this once" or "At my old school it was this way" and was always asking "Well is there a page limit for this paper? I always write way too much, hee hee!" Just the most obvious lies and a complete lack of awareness of how obvious and obnoxious this all was.
40. Not Part of the Games
I worked at arcade/bowling alley combo that served food like a full restaurant. My position had me deliver the food and take the dirty dishes to the back. So, there was a group of 6 people bowling, and they ordered our sampler platter that had a little of everything from the appetizer menu. I brought the platter out to them and set it down.
Then I asked them if there was anything else that they needed. Without really looking, this woman said, “We’re good.” I started to turn around to leave, and this woman grabbed my arm and yanked me towards her like I was her kid, swore in my face, and then said, “Where are my chicken wings?” I was in disbelief, and I paused not really understanding what was happening.
I then looked at her and then at the platter. I told her, "They’re right there, ma’am, in the little basket on the platter.” She let go of me with a skeptical expression and said, “Hmm, ok,” as if she really didn’t believe the wings were really in there. If I didn’t hate working there and my shift was any farther from being over in 10 minutes, I would’ve spoken to a manager, but I didn’t care enough to stay to get it sorted and just wanted to leave.
41. A One-Passenger Kind of Brain
Ex-friend was complaining about how she was so nice and always there for other people, but no one was there for her. In an attempt to empathize, I said, “I understand entirely. I felt the same way when—“ She cut me off mid-sentence to say, “No offense, but I don’t have the capacity to deal with your problems.” She then went on to talk about her dad blowing up babies in Vietnam.
42. Choose Your Poison
When I went out drinking with 4 of my friends from college and played never have I ever at a bar, a friend of mine, let’s call her B, knew something about me that I was very embarrassed about. B knew that it made me anxious even thinking about it, so naturally, she brings up this very specific thing in the game.
She then looks at me directly making it obvious for everyone at the table that I’ve in fact done this thing. But even though it hurt me, it wasn’t the worst part. It came afterwards, when another friend realized how uncomfortable I was, so she did something to keep the game going and move on from me. She did the same to B.
B flipped out in the middle of the bar, started yelling at my friend for being rude and exposing her to all of us, humiliating her, etc. This might not sound that irrational from her side, but the catch is that we all knew about B’s thing because she already told us and other classmates numerous times, whereas with mine, she was the only person who knew. Needless to say, we are no longer friends with B after that night.
43. No One Likes a Man in That Uniform
There's this one former colleague of mine who was more than a little bit of a jerk. He was complaining about the process for hiring. He recounted how, in the last two interviews before my former employers hired him, after the executive/director level interviews, he was asked to spend an afternoon with the rank-and-file.
According to him, everything was going completely fine. He said that he dazzled the executives and had solutions to all their challenges and issues. But somehow, after the team met him, he was informed that there would be no offer. That the team rejected him. He was baffled, "What could possibly lead the team to reject me?" he asked.
Our response, "Well they met you, didn't they?” He was an insufferable jerk and given the chance, I would have rejected him too—but our leadership didn't ask. I endured almost one year on the same team as him (after hitting my head against conference room tables in frustration during the monthly transatlantic team meetings). He lasted maybe over two after that.
He didn't understand why they canned him. He desperately fought the dismissal. In another example, he wore a historically accurate SS uniform to liberation days in Belgium. Didn't know why folks didn't ask for selfies with him or compliment the cosplay.
44. All Dressed up for Nothing
I got called into the manager’s office and was offered the temporary clothing manager position. I didn't necessarily want a manager’s position, but I had basically been doing the job for months without the benefits, so I accepted it. I went onto the shop floor and was immediately greeted with "congrats" from colleagues.
A girl who works with me had recently become a duty manager. How she became a manager is beyond me. She then went and told my business to everyone including the fact that she had been offered the job first and turned it down, which is why it was offered to me. Everyone knew I was being offered the position before I did.
15 minutes later, another manager approaches me saying there's an issue with putting me in the system, but they're trying to rectify it. For the next 2 hours, I listened to the girl telling everyone and anyone how hard she is going to have it and that she will now have to cover the clothing department as well as her own department.
She told colleagues, friends, and customers who didn't even ask. She made my business known to everyone. Eventually, I was brought into the office and officially told that I wouldn't be the clothing manager. Apparently, my boss missed a deadline to put me on the system. The manager apologized profusely, and I went back out on the floor to hear the new DM telling my story yet again. Longest. Shift. Ever.
45. The Dance Must Go On
One of my older coworkers thinks she knows how everyone should do their job. She whined at me one day for talking to another coworker while working on filling a large number of orders (we work in a pharmacy). Literally the next day, during the same daily drop of orders, she and a different coworker stopped to sing a song and dance a little jig, then spent just as much time laughing at themselves/each other.
Not the first or last time she told me to do or not do something and then swiftly ignored her own instructions, but this really stood out.
46. Firing Mr. Fudd
There was a new hire in the office who had no idea of what personal hygiene was—already not a great start. He was loud, obnoxious, and not even good at his job. Then one day, just outside the office during a break, he started talking to us about catching rabbits in traps. He was pointing to the fields around the building.
We laughed because for everything he said, not one of us took him seriously. When we went back inside, he headed straight to the cubicle of our office manager. She absolutely loved rabbits. Her cubicle was basically a shrine for rabbits and adorned with all kinds pictures and other items inspired by rabbits.
Some are her pets, and some are just rabbits that she thinks are cute. She has statues, rabbit pens and pencils; Nobody in their right mind would have asked this woman in this cubicle about going trapping rabbits. He did. I was surprised he made it to the end of the day. I was not surprised when he didn't return the day after.
47. Two Sides to Every Jerk
A toxic coworker loved to say, "When I have a problem with someone, I tell them to their face." That's not at all how stuff went down. He talked smack about almost everyone else on the crew, as long as the person he was talking about was not present. He was completely two-faced. If you confronted him, he would seem perfectly reasonable, but everyone else would never hear the end of it.
48. That’s Definitely Worth It
I had a customer ask me how many ones I could give him if he gave me a $20. I told him $19 because I was charging a finder's fee. He told me that was a great deal and slapped down a $20. We were at a bank. I was his bank teller.
49. Face the Faces: You’re Annoying
Every clown who FaceTimes or uses a speakerphone to hold a conversation in PUBLIC. It's not cute. You're not cool and everyone around you thinks you're a jerk.
50. Cashier’s Check Outta Here
I work in a somewhat popular restaurant that’s fast-casual style, and it was my first shift as a line cook by myself. I had already worked in the kitchen and can do every position there, but it was my first time doing it by myself. It was a busy night for us, and we were short staffed. By the time we had slowed down, I was exhausted and hot.
I had been standing over 8 burners for about an hour and was taking my lunch. I sat in the office, and the AC was blasting, and it was well needed. My co-worker who was cashiering that day took her lunch 15 minutes after mine started. She saw me in the office and demanded I get out of “her spot.” I just looked at her.
She then told me being a cashier is harder than a line cook because she has to deal with the public. When I told her that I wasn’t moving she swore at me and then was awful the rest of the night. It took about everything in me not to slap her, but instead I told my coworkers who told the MOD, and soon after, she was fired for stealing.
51. Pick Your Poison
My uncle has been an alcoholic for 20+ years, only recently he’s been sober for eight months since he finally got his card for medicinal marijuana. I have mine too, so I take him to the dispensary when I go. His mother pays for all his weed because he can’t hold/be trusted with a job. Recently, we went into my favorite dispensary and he didn’t have enough money to buy the two-ounce deal he was anticipating.
Then, I overhear him from the other room admitting his alcoholism, and how his mother has paid for his weed every single time he’s come into the dude at the counter...hoping he would help my uncle out. It made the entire store feel weird.
52. Blond Boomerang
I worked for a big chain grocery store as bagger and cart wrangler. There was this one overweight blond woman who would come in all time and cause chaos to no end. One example of her ridiculous and unnecessary nonsense included buying a 15-pound turkey and complaining that it tasted bad and wanting to return it.
She presented a platter with an empty carcass except for one piece of meat on one bone. Another time, she bought a $37 plant, did not water it, showed up a year and a half later with the plant dead as a doornail, and demanded a refund. Then she bought a grill, used 10 gallons of gasoline as fuel, caused an understandable fire/explosion, came back with receipt and charred grill, and demanded a refund. I could go on.
This would be a weekly, if not bi-weekly, happening. It got to the point where many cashiers would see her enter the store, turn off their light, and leave. Now, when I say she made a fuss, I'm not talking about your normal "I want to speak to your manager" type deal. Oh no, she went beyond that and went even further.
She would rant and rave, throw herself on the floor, roll around, throw things, call the police, which I witnessed and kept count at 87 times, and pull out her cell phone filming herself being "victimized" to report us to the media. She was eventually banned from the store after years of this. I heard stories that she began terrorizing our neighbor branch 7 blocks down the road.
53. Poor Little Rich Boy
I have a friend who is blissfully unaware of how utterly conceited and privileged he is. His parents buy him everything and he has never worked a day in his life. When we were in college, his parents got him this huge MacBook Pro with all of these upgrades that basically made it have all of the best and fastest parts. The screen was basically 4K. He boasted about how much all of this cost.
One day, we took a day trip to this really nice mall, and we visited the Apple Store. We walked in and it was pretty packed. He looks at me and loudly says, “It feels so good walking in here and knowing I have the best and fastest laptop.” Not even a month later. he broke the computer. Recently, he graduated college and his parents got him a brand new 2019 Dodge Charger. We went to another friend’s grad party, and he somehow made the conversations about the car and asked everyone if they wanted a ride.
At the same party, the other friends’ parents surprised her with travel tickets to visit Europe. Her dream trip. Knowing her family, I knew they scrapped the funds together for this trip. My friend was so happy; she and her family were hugging and having a really good moment together. The conceited friend ran up to the family and started saying stuff like, “Oh you’re going to Europe? It’s so great! When I went I saw etc. etc. etc.” basically turning the moment revolve to around him.
54. Can’t Picture It
“Um. You can’t be Middle Eastern. You don’t look Middle Eastern.” I unfortunately get this a lot. I usually say, “and what does every Middle Eastern person look like?” It usually makes them uncomfortable. For reference, I am pretty pale, freckled, blue eyed, and otherwise my face definitely looks like a Middle Eastern woman. Have you ever heard of the Crusades? My mom and grandmother are both full Middle Eastern and look similar.
55. You Could Say They Were the Talk of the Block
I live in a city with a very large university in the middle of it. One day, years ago, I was driving through campus. At the crosswalk I was stopped at, two girls who knew each other stopped, said hi, and started having a full conversation IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. I had to honk at them to get them to realize they were still in the crosswalk.
56. No Kids Allowed
I was walking my dog who does not like children, and we were coming up on a woman and her small child. I could tell the kid was going to make a beeline for my dog, so I crossed to the other side of the street, so there wouldn’t be any issues. This lady incredulously yelled, “WHAT? My kid can’t pet your dog?”
She yelled this as if her kid was entitled to touch any dog she wanted. I said, “he’s not good with kids, sorry,” and she yelled back, “Whatever, loser.” I was stunned, honestly. I thought about that interaction the rest of the walk. But had I just let her kid come up to my dog, that kid probably would have gotten bitten.
57. The Right to be Big is Selectively Given
My mother-in-law. One day, my sister-in-law came over to my house, bawling her eyes out, because her mom told her she was fat. My wife spends quite a while comforting her, calming her down. Finally, she's feeling better and leaves, and my wife calls her mom and tells her not to be so hard on SIL, that she's damaging her fragile self-esteem (she'd been bullied in school and had just gotten out into the world as an adult and was building herself up, making friends).
MIL gets very haughty and tells my wife that she's just looking out for SIL so that she doesn't wake up some day and realize that she has allowed herself to be fat and ugly. That will damage her self-esteem far more, my MIL says. About a week later, MIL comes over crying. She works at an old folks home, where her mother lives, suffering from Alzheimer's. MIL had bent over to pick something up, and her mother came up behind her and said, "Jesus Christ you're getting fat, look at your big fat ass!"
So now, MIL is crying to my wife saying, "How could she say that to me, doesn't she understand how hurtful that is?" I had to leave the room to laugh incredulously.
58. May I Suggest Velcro?
I had a volunteer come up to me at the public library where I worked and demand that I tie her shoelace.
59. Know-It-All-ism is a Life Sentence
I volunteer in a program that takes science classes into local prisons, as there is no legal obligation to offer science classes to inmates but so many people are really keen to learn these types of subjects. Generally people are really great, but one guy from a prestigious university kept filling sentences out with phrases like, “I’m not expecting you to understand this part,” “This probably won’t make any sense to you,” and worst of all, “I bet people like you have never seen anything like this before.”
The tension among the students was palpable, but they didn’t say anything in front of him. After class was over and the guys had left, their regular math teacher asked for feedback, and they shredded the guy to pieces. He’s never allowed back on the program, and we’re now very careful to remind participants that lots of the students are exceedingly bright, many have degrees and diplomas, and that you should never, ever assume that they don’t understand you.
If they don’t understand, they’ll say. It’s not up to you to decide for them. I don’t think the guy had any awareness of how incredibly insulting he was being to a room full of high-security inmates.
60. Needless to Say
A former friend told me about how they’d threatened to send people to hurt someone after a disagreement. The worst part was that they clearly expected me to find it cool and quirky. Needless to say, I didn’t.
61. With a Face Like That, Who Needs a Heart?
I am a paramedic and I recently brought a cardiac arrest patient to the ER. I was trying to transfer the patient onto the hospital bed as the doctor walked in. It's my job to give the report to the doctor, letting them know if I gave drugs, if I defibrillated, the history of the patient, etc. I start to give my report and the doctor says, "You look just like someone..."
I start to give my report again and he stops me again, interrupting and goes on about how I look just like some celebrity...I have heard this before, so I toss the name out and he is thrilled to have the name...meanwhile we are still doing CPR and breathing for the patient who is still very much in cardiac arrest. I ask the doctor if I can give the report now and he comes back to reality.
62. Fried and Disappointed
One time, I ordered a chicken fried steak in a restaurant in which I was currently the only customer. It took an hour to get my food, and when I started eating, I realized that I had gotten chicken fried chicken. I called the waitress over and explained to her that I had ordered chicken fried steak, which she confirmed.
I then told her I had received chicken fried chicken. She stared blankly at me for about 10 seconds and said, "What? You don't like chicken?" I'm usually pretty quick on my feet with a witty comeback, but I was literally left speechless for a minute. I finally got the words out to explain to her WHY I wasn't happy with this mix-up but ended up just leaving. Needless to say, I have not been back.
63. On the Homefront
I work in a library, which means most of my co-workers are service-oriented. We try to provide everyone in the community with something they need to better themselves and enjoy life. It usually involves some amount of self-sacrifice because we're short staffed. One of my co-workers is hyper-focused on coming up with ways to provide education, foster creativity, strengthen democracy, etc.
Sometimes she believes in her vision so much that she pushes too hard, and I have to put my foot down. I'm only one person and this is still, at the end of the day, just a job...despite how civic-minded she is. Back in 2016, she pitched a fit that left me dumbstruck. That year, Veterans Day fell on a Friday. Many other libraries in my area closed completely. We stayed open and provided free coffee and cookies.
Those who worked that day got paid time and a half. This co-worker never worked Friday because she didn't want to, she wanted to be free to do charity work or cook for her kids, which is nice but let's call this what it is—a privilege. She gets to make demands of everyone else so she can have a three-day weekend. I was above her in terms of title, yet she was repeatedly permitted to demand work from me by a deadline that worked with her personal life. Still pisses me off sometimes...
Anyways, she still doesn't want to work that day, but she wants to get paid time and a half. We tell her we can't afford that and even if we could, why would anyone elect to work a shift that everyone is getting paid for whether they work it or not? We'd have a hell of a time filling the shifts. She says, "Well. If the library can't pay everyone, we need to close that day."
So, we're going to honor our vets...by closing the library...because you want to be paid to do what you've always done: stay home.
64. Part of the Banned
I used to be the community admin for an online game about a decade ago, and there was a guy who was permabanned who kept making new accounts to protest his ban on the official forums and get people to try and rally behind him to unban him or put malicious links to scam people. Our GM staff was largely outsourced, so I did most of the forum moderation on my own.
He had obvious and telling posting habits and horrendous grammar, so it was usually easy to know if it was him. After a quick check of an IP address to verify, the account was usually banned and posts deleted where appropriate. Well, this dummy, one day, used a bunch of different accounts, even though I’m not sure why.
Banning was easy on my end, and he did all the logging in and out and made like 20 messages supporting himself. He made a long chain of posts with all of his accounts trying to deliberately bribe me out in the open to unban his account. It wasn’t even a private message. It was just straight up in a new thread offering me cash to do so.
For one, I started the job as a player and was recruited for my honesty and ethics as a whole in the community. It wasn't happening, and the cash was negligible in what I was being paid. Second, just exactly how dumb does someone have to be to think someone would accept a deal like that with everyone watching?
Did he think I would be so dumb to fall for something like that in blackmail by showing any sign of interest? I really couldn’t figure out what or why he was trying so hard, so I had the webmaster IP block him after that since he was using a static IP and left the thread open for posterity to prove the point.
65. Get a Whiff of This
My boss's office shared a wall with the bathroom. He got caught with a pipe that routed the smells and sounds from the women’s bathroom into his office. When he got busted, he had the audacity to try to deny it and claimed he had done nothing wrong.
66. Lasting Feelings
Once while we were married, my ex woke up one time while we were sleeping. She starting hitting me, and I mean hard for no apparent reason. I wake up due to the pain of being punched like crazy and think what is going? What happened? Did I accidentally stick it in while she was asleep? Nope. After about an hour of her being really angry, she finally told me that she had a dream that I slept with someone else, and she felt the need to beat me when she woke up.
67. The Mysterious Bank of Dad
My dad re-mortgaged our house to buy a $50,000 four-wheel-drive car (he has not one, but TWO other cars). We are not well off in the slightest, at least my mother and I aren't—my dad refuses to tell us how much he makes in a year, has separate bank accounts and a secret (at least, he thinks it's secret) credit card and savings account.
His reason for getting the car when (he says) he has no spare money? "Your mother has had a new car and I haven't." I kindly pointed out to him that mum didn't buy the car, she inherited it, and not only was it not brand new, but she would also most likely prefer to have her mother alive than get a new car. Didn't change his reasoning.
His biography could just be titled "Astonishing Lack of Self-Awareness." Forgot to say he now complains about how much he has to pay for the mortgage and that my mum should be giving him money for it. We have told him several times it wouldn't be so high if he didn't add his car to it, but anything that's not an echo of his own opinion is considered disrespectful.
68. Coming to a Mutual Agreement
When my ex and I were still together, her car broke down so I bought her one of her choice. I gave her a $20k limit for anything she wanted. She wanted something small and easy to drive with good storage space so she chose a brand-new Scion for $16.5k. We drove 4 hours to the next state to get one in the color that she wanted.
A few months later, she's leaving me. She's been cheating on me with a guy who was cheating on his wife to be with her. They were mutual cheaters, and she's leaving me for him. Well, here's this brand-new car. It was in my name. I was making the payments. And she's leaving me to go be with the mutual cheater.
I told her that she had two options regarding this car. She could either get a loan to purchase this car off me or I'm taking the car back. I'm not going to pay about $18,000 after interest for a car for her now. She wasn't happy about this. She was also using my old cell phone since she broke hers. I told her that I wanted my phone back, too.
After I got it back, I looked at what she left on it. She deleted the contact of her new cheater boy, but the text messages remained. I knew his number, so it was easy to see who she was talking to. She was saying to him that I was "driving her crazy" about this car and that I wouldn't just leave her alone about it. You think that you can leave me for the guy that you were cheating on me with and that I'm still going to pay for this brand-new car of your choice for you?
69. With Such Customers, There’s No Need for Service
My drunk mom who, when the waitress asked her if we were there for a special occasion, started her sentence but took a really, really long pause in the middle. The waitress then said, “That’s great!” and went into her specials list. My mom thought she had cut her off and sat there with her mouth open and went “Well huh!” And rolled her eyes directly at the waitress.
It was so uncomfortable while she took the orders, and my mom talked about it loudly for the rest of the night and left a really bad tip. My husband and I waited for her to leave and gave the waitress an extra ten in cash for putting up with her.
70. Perceived Intelligence
In high school, a person who I thought I knew to be reasonably intelligent, and had recently been accepted to UCLA, and later went on to be an attorney asked if, "assault was a new thing or had it been around a while?"
71. Good Grief
My mother and I were out walking and we came across an older couple we knew from the local church. Their eldest son had died the previous year from an inoperable brain tumor, and their younger son just moved out for university. Mum starts with, "Must be nice to have the house to yourself! More time for Church!"
The conversation devolves from there. She ignores all hints to drop the subject, including the mother stating they hadn't been back to the church since their son died. The couple were obviously horrified. I couldn't end the convo quick enough. Afterward, my mother told me I was just being immature and had no conception of what "polite adult conversation" was like.
72. Bonding the Wrong Way
I visited my grandparents for the holidays in a northern part of the state. All of our family went together and stayed in their fairly large house for several days. The second day I was there, I tried to organize a family game for everyone to play since nobody seemed to be doing much of anything. Nobody wanted to play any of the games I suggested.
So, my husband and I pulled out our Magic the Gathering cards we had brought and started to play together. My mom approached me in the middle of a game and said, "I can't believe you brought a game like that to a family gathering. You two have isolated yourself from everyone else by choosing to play your nerd game instead of mingle with family."
Everyone else was just talking and watching TV, and we did end up getting my sister to join us for a game, so I don't know what her problem was. Later that same day, I got really tired from running around in the woods with a couple of my family members and decided to take a nap on the couch downstairs. My mom woke me up and looked concerned.
She asked me if I was feeling okay. I told her I was fine, just tired, and then she suddenly switched. "It's too bad you came all the way here not to spend any time with your family. We were putting together a game upstairs, and everyone was asking, 'where's Raven?' but we couldn't find you." So basically, she got mad at me for playing my own game with my husband when nobody was interested in hanging out with me, but later when I'm tired and trying to sleep, everyone decides to play a game together, and I'm at fault for not wanting to spend time with family?
73. Not Everything Is Better Out Than In
I do a workout camp with a group of people. I just started in January along with this other girl, Natalie. From our first work out, there was something about her that kinda rubbed me the wrong way. She struck me as the girl who would make the meeting last longer because she won’t shut up. A couple of weeks in, she missed a workout or two. Well, the following week, she was back.
Camp was done, I had become friends with this woman, Susan. She and I were walking back to our mats, but I got ahead of her and that’s when Natalie, out of nowhere, accosts Susan. Literally what she says is, “Yeah, so, I was on my way to camp on Friday and I thought I had to fart, so I did...and I wound up pooping myself.” All Susan could say was a shocked “Oh...no.” Because why the heck is she sharing this?
But Natalie wasn’t done just yet. Not by a long shot. “Yeah, and I don’t know if it was because of the smell or actually being sick, but I wound up throwing up, too. So, I had to drive home in my own diarrhea and vomit. Charles had to clean the car. It was awful.” Susan said she was glad she was feeling better, Natalie left.
I asked Susan, "Did you do anything to welcome that?!” Susan yelled “NO!!!!” And then we cackled because OH MY GOD. Several months later, we were at camp when Natalie walks up to me while I'm sitting on the ground, turns around, sticks her butt in my face, and says, “Can you tell my pants are wet?” I said no. And that’s when she told me she thought she could hold it but peed herself on her way there cuz she sneezed...and then she says, “Well, if you smell something, it’s probably me.”
Sweet god.
74. Potentially Fatal Encounter
My mother-in-law said, "I didn't leave him in the car that long. Plus the windows were cracked!" the last time she was ever allowed to watch my oldest child. He was two, and it was 90°F. I was heavily pregnant and had to sit on my hands the next time I saw her because I wanted to cave in the Italian leather handbag that she calls a face.
75. The Tenure Track is Paved With Bad Touches
Newly hired male professor frequently boasting about how the female students were attracted to him and how he could have any of them; he claimed they were attracted by his bad-boy image and intelligence. This guy looks like Milhouse from The Simpsons and smells like rotten, salty sauerkraut, so I wasn't seeing it. I had the (misfortune) of being his assigned TA.
He stole educational material from other universities, refused to hold office hours, and took photos of himself, his wife, and students off campus (1,000+ Facebook photos). All of this while claiming he was a "bad boy" who would one day be in charge. End of semester: he had the worst student reviews I had ever seen (one-star, almost across the board). He was called to the President's office for potential violations of Title IX.
Apparently, he was "massaging the shoulders" of one student TOO OFTEN in a meeting...every single person in the room reported it. Most disgusting thing about my university though: He and his wife still work there. I understand tenure review is coming up soon...hopefully, that'll get rid of them both. Parasites on the system in every single way.
76. Bizarre Expectations
Once, my dad screamed at me for roughly an hour and a half about how he doesn't care about me, how I mean nothing to him, and how I'm not his daughter. The very next day, he asked to borrow money for smokes and energy drinks.
77. The World’s Least Exclusive Club
Saw some lady at Costco throw a tantrum because the line was long. She kept screaming, "But I have a membership!!!" You literally have to have a membership to shop there, the entire line had memberships.
78. Untimely Pest
I was five minutes early to service a home for pests, and the woman yelled at me for 2 minutes about how inconsiderate I was and then told me to wait in my truck. Her husband then pulled up, and asked what I was doing, and invited me in. She then continued to yell at me about how I shouldn't have come in because she said to wait until the appointed time.
Her husband apologized, and told me to just leave, and gave me 20$ cash. I called my boss and explained the whole situation, and we blocked all her account information.
79. Her Own Secret Admirer
My cousin's friend came over to stay for a few weeks. She was very vain and before she left, she wrote a note to my uncle (who is friendly to everyone) saying how she had to sadly reject him, even though she knows how much he is secretly in love with her. We all found the note together after she left addressed to him (he was with us and opened in front of us).
He was creeped out.
80. Free Return and Exchanges
I worked at a guest service desk at a big chain store—think bullseye. A couple of years ago, around Christmas time, a woman came to the desk and complained about a string of lights not working properly. I told her that I could return it or exchange it for. She says she’ll grab a different one and come back. Perfect.
She came back half an hour later and started telling me how there were only two packages left. She complained about how the packaging wasn’t perfect. Then she looked me dead in the eyes and says, “What I’d really like you to do is give me this one for free.” I chuckled and said, “We’re not in the business of giving items away for free. The most I can do is 10% off for an imperfect package.” Needless to say, she returned both items.
81. Grease the Wheels But Not Like That
My co-worker right now. We have union jobs, so we can go to interviews for promotions and such while still on the clock. He averages one interview a week and still hasn't been promoted or hired anywhere else (He's actually super mad at me because I just started here last October and I'm leaving next week for my own promotion).
Anyway, I heard him schedule one of his interviews the other day and it was the cringiest thing ever. This was his opening line: "Yes, is this Pam? This is Gary, you probably don't remember me, but I interviewed for you a couple of months ago for the _____ position. I must have been a bad boy [said like you would say if you had a baby talk fetish] though, because I didn't get a callback. Do you remember me? No? Oh...well, anyway, I was calling to set up an interview for the _____ position you have open over there."
Names changed obviously. When this dude found out about my promotion, he instantly turned purple and stormed out of the building. When he came back 30 minutes later, he walked into my cube and rubbed my back while telling me he wasn't mad at me, just mad at the system. I was so uncomfortable I wouldn't even look him in the eye.
I never looked away from my computer screen. The dude is just not aware at all.
82. Here She Comes
When I was working in retail, my coworkers and I suddenly heard a loud "boom," but we didn't think anything of it. Five minutes later, an older lady who’s in the store almost every day, maybe in her 50s-60s, came up to me and said, “I just drove into your building.” I looked at her, and right before I began to laugh out loud, I realized she actually did.
83. A Zero-Tolerance Policy for Some
I’m a manager at a corporate restaurant. There are a general manager and two other assistant managers like me. We work on a college campus and so all of us assistant managers are students, which is why corporate excused this BS, I guess. Well, my co-manager completely tormented this one employee. Like this was movie-worthy sexual harassment. He stalked this kid on every social media platform, was blocked on all of them, and just kept going at it.
This employee got so upset with his advances one night that he left work in the middle of his shift. My co-manager ripped him a new one, telling him that he was going to be fired unless he came over to his house right that second. The employee refused, blocked him, then my co-manager found him on another social media and continued to say that he would completely forget that this happened, and he could still have his job if he just answered him and came over.
This went on for nearly a week and said employee kept no-call no-showing. He came in one day when my co-manager wasn’t working and reported this to me and my actual boss. We told him that it is difficult to terminate a manager unless he wanted to file a report. He said he just didn’t want anything more to do with this and was just going to quit. It was really sad, but we understood where he was coming from.
Well, during this time, there was another employee, who was like 50 years old, flirting with some of the younger female employees. He had also flirted with me and asked me out, so when one girl came forward it was definitely believable that he was being inappropriate. He wasn’t harassing anybody, but he was making other girls uncomfortable. Literally, the SAME day that this poor harassed boy came in, told us everything, showed us all messages, and quit, my co-manager (the one who was harassing the first kid) freaked out on this one guy.
We told him we were all working on it and he literally THREW a filing cabinet over and said “There is NO grey area when it comes to sexual harassment. I am firing (blank) right now.” And he went out and fired this guy, ripped him to shreds in front of the whole kitchen, and yelled “sexual harassment” the whole time. This one guy wasn’t harassing anyone, he was a little slow and barely ever spoke, and had asked a few younger girls to dinner. Yes, it was uncomfortable, and yes it would’ve resulted in a conversation with him, but he did not do anything wrong at that point.
It was just so insane to all of us that my co-manager literally fired this man for asking employees on a date the SAME DAY that this 18-year-old kid came in and told us about the torture he was putting him through. He literally said, “There’s no grey area when it comes to sexual harassment,” like, screw you dude.
84. Mood Change
A man was regaling his fellow party-goers with his drunken jokes. He described being found as a newborn in a field after his teenage mother hid her pregnancy and gave birth at home. All he knew about her was that she was a Waffle House waitress. We sat there, enthralled, waiting for the punchline until we realized he'd moved from "life of the party" onto the "in vino veritas" stage of drunkenness.
85. Diluting Richness
A co-worker mentioned that she thought milk was too rich, so she poured herself a glass of water and added two of those little cups of non-dairy creamer. This was almost two years ago, and I still don't know what to think.
86. The Internet Is A Tricky Thing
As a tech support worker, I was once asked, “If you send me an email to this email address, doesn’t it make it my email address?” This lady thought she could just give people a random email address without actually creating the email and that the email account would just magically be created on its own. She didn't understand why she couldn't log into the email address she had been giving people for years, and why she got contacted by a guy telling her it was his email address and to stop using it.
87. Stone’s Throw Away from Common Sense
I work as a server in a restaurant. We use little wooden trays as check presenters, and since it is an open-air restaurant, we weigh down the receipts with decorative stones that are like the shiny ones for the bottoms of fish tanks. I dropped a check for an older couple, and after a few minutes, I went back to get it.
The man said, "You should warn people that those rocks aren't chocolates! I could have broken a tooth!" I get a lot of older people who like to josh around with me, so I definitely thought he was kidding. He was not. He was actually mad at me because he had tried to eat the rock, and it was obviously my fault.
88. Now You Both Get One
When I was little, I was visiting my mom at her office and drew my dad a picture. She asked if I wanted to fax it to him at his office and I said yes, because I wanted him to have my masterpiece as soon as possible. But when the drawing went through the fax machine and came out the other side and the paper I had drawn on was still there, I cried.
I thought it didn't work and my dad wouldn't get the picture. I asked my mom, “Why is the picture still here?” My mom then had to explain that the actual physical paper wasn't sent, just a picture of the paper.
89. Playing Around
My now boyfriend and I were on our fifth date. We were out to lunch, and some toddler started throwing a screaming fit. My boyfriend and I looked at each other, and I said something along the lines of, "Kids are the best, aren't they?" Which is when he said, "Oh, I've been meaning to tell you. I have a daughter." We have similar humor styles, so I started giggling thinking he was teasing. He was not. So that was interesting.
90. Always Use Visual Aids
One time at work, I got into this long back-and-forth email chain with someone who wanted to know how to use what is basically a loadable gift/debit card on the vending machines. I started off by just explaining that the card can be used just like any bank card (as long as it has a balance) and there’s no special slot for it, just swipe at the machine and pay normally.
Then they seemed to not understand that; they kept asking about where they’re supposed to put their card. I thought we must just be misunderstanding each other, but I couldn’t figure out any other ways to put it. So began my ordeal. I ended up explaining the difference between the credit card slot, and the paper money and coin slots.
Then I looked up photos of all the different card readers we have on the machines, and circled the apparatus where they’re supposed to swipe their card, and sent that to them. Never heard back after that, so I’ll always wonder: Did I finally answer their question, and they just weren’t considerate enough to say thank you? Did they give up out of frustration that I still wasn’t understanding their clearly more involved question?
Or did they see the pictures I sent circling the part of the machine they’re supposed to use, and get offended by how dumb I must’ve thought they were? We’ll never know.
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91. Scot-free of Relativity
One Wednesday, a customer asked me why our produce section was so empty especially in terms of stuff like lettuce. I told him that it was because of extreme weather in Spain where we source most of our stuff from. He cut off my explanation with, "Why does it matter what's going on in Spain? We're in Scotland."
92. On The Fence
I used to work at a sporting goods store. When we got our name tags, we had to pick out our favorite sport for them to put on there. I’m not really a sports person, but I do like fencing, so I had them put fencing as mine. We were in the break room one day and one of the girls I worked with saw my tag and with all seriousness asked me, “How is putting up fences a sport?”
93. Ready for Anything
When I was 18, I went with my then-girlfriend from Florida where she lived with her aunt and uncle to Las Vegas to meet her parents. I found out that her dad and mom lived in separate houses right across the street from one another for whatever reason. It was strange—but definitely not the strangest thing that would happen that trip.
Her dad came over to her mom's house to meet me, and I couldn't help but notice he was dressed in a suit. I thought maybe he was just a fancy dresser. He kept asking me questions about my family and how I felt about his daughter. He seemed to like me, and we went through the trip on fairly pleasant terms, but nothing else happened of any note.
Once we got back home to Florida was when my girlfriend decided to tell me that her dad thought we were coming out to Vegas to get married, and he dressed up and put on his suit because he was planning on taking us to get married that day. She had to tell him that we had no intention of getting married in Vegas.
94. Is A Park Not A Zoo?
Working in Banff National Park, I've seen some stupid tourists. But this one woman was downright dangerous. She asked me what time we let the animals out, as they wanted to get photos. I just looked at her for a second, and then went into the spiel of "all of the animals found in the national park are wild and we strongly recommend you keep your distance as they are unpredictable."
95. Butt End of the Conversation
My uncle asked my brother if he thought my other brother, who's gay, bleached his bum hole. My brother telling me the story said, "I kept waiting for him to start laughing or smile or anything, but he just stared at me with such a straight face. I was like 'Oh you're serious? I don't know, dude...' What was I supposed to say?"
96. Is She A Geneticist?
My sister was shopping one day with her toddler daughter, who was sitting in the shopping cart. My niece has beautiful blue eyes and many people remark on them. My sister is brown-eyed and my brother-in-law is blue-eyed, but it's a different shade than my niece. Anyway, she's at the store and this lady stops and goes, "Oh, your daughter is so cute. She has such pretty blue eyes. They're obviously not from you."
My sister replies, "No, we're really not sure where they came from. My husband has blue eyes but very different than my daughter's. She's just lucky, I guess.” The lady looks at my sister, in complete seriousness, and goes, "Well, are you sure your husband is her father?"
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97. We’re Open! Don’t Come In
On the first day of a new job, my boss was discussing standard office policies. He said, "And I'd like to point out that we have an open-door policy here." I thought that was cool and said, "Oh, great! So, if I have a problem, I can come to you?" He said, "No, I mean keep your office door open at all times." Oh.
98. Simple Physics
I remember having to defend myself on a speeding accusation. I had footage of the dashcam, which clearly showed me not speeding. I was going 30 mph, but the officer claimed I was driving 50 mph. The dashcam footage showed him driving at 40 mph and catching up to me fairly quickly. That’s when he decided to pipe in and make a fool of himself.
He asked, "If you were really going 30, then why did I have to go 40 to catch up to you?” I responded, “Because in order to catch up to anything, you have to go faster than what you're following. If I was going 50, you would have never caught up to me while going 40.”
99. Maybe It’s The School System’s Fault
My girlfriend in high school and I went to a WWII museum. A couple of volunteers there had actually participated in the conflict. My girlfriend asked them completely straight-faced, “Which side did you fight on?” And they were very confused saying, “The American side.”And then she asked, “Oh, did we win?” They were just blown away by her questions at that point.
We were both 16 and I remember her saying, “Who even knows who won that stupid old fight anyway? Like it’s my fault I didn’t know.”
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100. No Eavesdropping Allowed
A couple sat down in the movie theater 15 minutes into the movie. The lady sat right beside me and was holding a full conversation at full volume with the man who was barely acknowledging her. I politely asked her to lower her voice as it was distracting. She stared forward for 2 minutes before leaning over, "maybe if you weren't listening to my conversation, you wouldn't be distracted." I was too livid to even respond, and then the movie was ruined.
101. Let’s Call a Square a Square
About a year into our marriage, my wife and I bought a dining table and chairs. It was our first “real” furniture! My wife was so happy, she posted pictures on Facebook and wanted her mom to look. Well, her mom commented on the phone that it was a nice “oval table.” Wife is immediately upset. "You didn't look," she says. "Yes I did!" her mom insists.
"It's not oval, it's rectangular." "No, it's an oval, I looked." Wife finally gets her mom to actually go look for real, and then it gets even worse. She drops this gem: "Well that's what I call it!" “Um, you call rectangles ovals?" This has become a running gag for us. Whenever we lose an argument, we always end it with, "Well, that's what I call it!"
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