Everyone has their "dumb" moments and makes honest mistakes, but these stories take it to a whole other level. You won't believe what others think about how society and the universe works.
This Teen Didn’t Realize Setting Your Own Hours Comes AFTER The Job Interview
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“My co-worker’s 17-year-old daughter had her first job interview recently – it was at a movie theatre. When she got home, her mom asked how it went. Daughter: ‘I told them that I was only interested in a job that would let me work from home. That way, I can get snacks whenever I want.’
I would have LOVED to have been a witness to the interviewer’s expression at that moment.”
This Guy’s Privilege Made Him Completely Blind To College Costs
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“We were at a table, 6 of us, eating.
The conversation turned to jobs/employment. One of the guys, a rich kid that had most of his life handed to him, including his tech job at mommy’s company, made the comment that he didn’t understand why, if someone couldn’t find a job, they just didn’t go back to school, get a degree, and try some more.
He couldn’t understand two things:
One, most family’s cannot support an unemployed adult student for the time it takes to get a degree.
Two, the jaw-dropping one, was he thought that ALL colleges, EVERYWHERE, were FREE.
His ‘logic’ was that students go to college straight from high school and ‘they don’t have money’ so how else could they afford school.
We live in the US and this guy was 27 years old, and we had to tell him school costs money…”
This Father Believes The Government Is Out To Get His Hard-Earned Cash
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“My dad collects coins because his extremely Hungarian immigrant grandfather convinced him that the Bank (capitalizing it because to him, all banks are just one huge world bank) is determined to steal all his money from him, so he has to have a backup plan. This in and of itself isn’t too extreme; plenty of people choose self-sustenance due to a distrust of government and economics, but the real kicker happened when he tried to roll his coins.
He has to order his coin rolls online because he doesn’t want to go to the bank and get coin rolls because then the bank will know how much money he’s hiding from them – I’m not kidding. Anyway, he ordered a bag of coin rolls and waited about a month for them to come before he started getting curious where they were. He asked my mom to check the order tracking while he was at work one day, which led to this conversation:
Mom: ‘It says here that the package made it to [town we live in] two weeks ago, but got sent back. It says you gave no delivery address.’
Dad: ‘Yeah, why would I do that? I don’t want them to know where I live, they might tell everyone.'”
Her Change Didn’t Quite Add Up At The Register
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“About 3 years ago I had a young woman, probably early 20s, come into the cafe I work at. She ordered herself and drink and a pastry of some sort. Her total around $6. She proceeded to hand me a 1 dollar bill and 6 quarters. I took the money and waited for her to procure more but she just stood there staring at me. I told her, ‘I’m sorry, it’s $6.87.’. She says, ‘I know I gave you 7.’ I said, ‘No, this is only $2.25.’ She took the money from my hand and counted each item in front of me like I was stupid, counting each item as $1. I pointed to the quarters and told her, ‘Those are quarters, not dollars.’ Keep in mind this person was obviously not foreign or anything – she had no accent and seemed completely American. Anyway, her response was, ‘I know they’re quarters, but they’re dollars.’ She then proceeded to pick up one of the quarters and point to the word ‘dollar’ inscribed on the bottom beneath George’s head. At this point, I was thinking this is the single dumbest person I’ve ever seen or this is the worst con ever conceived, but she didn’t give up. She demanded to speak to a manager. I got the manager and he told her the same thing. She started getting visibly upset and holding back tears. She might have been embarrassed. Best I can figure is that she somehow never learned about money and change somehow and used it so rarely that she assumed quarters were dollars because technically the word ‘dollar’ was on the coin.”
This Woman’s Prophecy Went A Little Too Far
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“I’m a jeweler/metalsmith and often work festivals and street fairs to sell my work. My husband and I were hanging out in my tent last summer at a festival and a woman walks in, looking harmless enough. This may also be a sign of me being a little out of touch with reality as I took in her flowing 10yd skirt and multiple colored scarves and wavy brown/gray hair tied back with a leather rope and assumed she was a sweet old hippie lady. This assumption made her next few words all the more shocking.
She started off simple enough, talking about her own art and admiring a few pieces, trying a few things on, and then she noticed I was pregnant (6 months at that point) and asked if I knew that a blood moon was coming soon and that I should stay inside my house for fear of the power of this blood moon sending me into pre-term labor and possibly result in a stillbirth. She then reminded us that this next blood moon was a sign of the apocalypse and that Jesus would be returning to Earth soon to take all the righteous to heaven. She said that if this happened before my baby was born that I would wake up miraculously not pregnant anymore, as he would claim all innocents in his name and spirit them away to glory. She then said, ‘And you know, of course, this is all our fault. Human’s, not God’s.’
She didn’t notice through her diatribe that our smiles had become completely frozen and we were hunching down more and more in our seats. I said, ‘Okay, well thank you!’ She left and I look sideways at all sweet old hippie ladies now.”
When Her Friend Found Out Why She Was Having A Breakdown She Couldn’t Believe It
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“My sister went to a private high school in a very nice area with very rich kids. One day my sister sees one of her friends crying and quickly runs over to her to ask what is wrong. Her friend, through sobs, manages to say, ‘Everything is just so unfairrrrrrr, I can’t even believe my life!!!’ My sister is so concerned because this girl seems on the verge of a breakdown. After calming her down for a bit my sister asks again what is bothering the friend, thinking maybe someone died, or her parents are getting divorced. ‘Well, you know my birthday is coming up, and so is my sister’s, and well,’ sobbing some more, ‘My parents are getting us both brand new Range Rovers, and because she is older,’ breaks down, ‘SHE IS GETTING THE BLACK ONE BUT I WANTED THAT ONEEEEEEE!!!’ The only thing my sister could do was say, ‘I am so sorry for you’ and walk away. We still do feel bad for her – so detached.”
Not Even Einstein Could Help This Professor With His Problems
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“I’ve met a few people who are really brilliant in one field, yet lack even the most basic level of sense in certain areas outside of it. Sort of like the thing about Einstein not being able to tie his shoes (if that’s true).
My favorite was a university professor: absolutely brilliant knowledge of Middle Eastern politics, particularly around the Israel-Palestine conflict. He could remember insanely precise historical details going back thousands of years and seemed to understand the subtlest of nuances on both sides of the conflict. His lectures were amazing. Or they would have been if he had turned off his cell phone. He simply couldn’t figure out how to silence his phone, or even turn it on and off. He had let his TA do it for him a couple of times, but then he’d leave with it still off and couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on until he came back the next day, so after going through that twice he decided he would just leave it on. And it appeared that every telemarketer on earth had his number because it would ring at least 5 times an hour at full volume, and he’d just talk over the top of it like it wasn’t happening. He also never answered his email, because he apparently didn’t realize that he had one or might need to use it.
One day he’d forgotten to bring his little water jug, and sent his TA to the vending machine in the middle of a lecture to bring him a bottle of water. She brought it back and handed it to him, and he turned red in the face trying to get it open before handing it back to her and declaring that something was wrong with it. She opened it quickly and easily: he’d been turning the cap the wrong way.
I should specify here that this was not a super old guy who you’d expect to have issues with technology and life in general: he was in his mid or late 40’s.”
This Woman Believed Everything In Life Was Free
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“I knew a girl who thought credit card = free money.
Here it goes, I was with her in a mall once and casually mentioned there’s a blazer I like but can’t afford to buy it yet.
She: ‘You don’t have a credit card?’
Me: ‘I have a credit card.’
She: ‘Then why don’t you buy it?’
Me: ‘I don’t have enough money, I can’t afford it.’
She: ‘But you have a credit card!’
Me: ??
And then it hit me! She literally thought that credit cards can be used to buy anything and didn’t know that you have to pay for it later. Her dad used to pay all her bills without telling her.”
This Man Saw His Girlfriend’s True Colors While Traveling Abroad
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“I went on a trip with an ex to Asia. She didn’t like it because she couldn’t understand why people didn’t speak English. So she would just yell at them, ‘I need a napkin!’ ‘Bathroom, where?!’
I pretty much told her to have some respect for people. Talk to them politely. She got all mad and fussy at me the whole trip.”
He Had Quite The Past Life
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“My first job was running the cash register/drive-thru at a disgusting Hardee’s restaurant. Now while nearly everyone that worked there was either in high school and/or in some stage of the recidivism process, this one middle-aged fella was a real gem. He claimed to have an IQ of 180 but refused to join Mensa because it was beneath him. Said he made thousands of dollars selling cigarettes to underage kids while he was in high school, and of course, he went on to serve in the military as a special forces commando. He never did explain how he ended up 300 pounds washing dishes in a greasy kitchen while detailing his life story to a scrawny 16-year-old.”
This Is Why Even The Rich Should Learn How To Clean Up After Themselves
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“I grew up in the richest and whitest of suburbia. Everyone I knew had a doctor/lawyer/CEO for a dad it felt like. I went to France on a school trip (I know, I know) with another school from my area. I saw one of the girls from the other school who I had made friends with over the course of the trip crying. I went and asked her what was wrong and she said she found out her maid got deported back to Bolivia. I was like, ‘That sucks was she really cool or something?’
Nope. She didn’t even speak English. The girl was just pissed she’d have to clean for herself until they got a new one. Then come to find out that wasn’t even their only maid… They were going from 2 maids to 1 for like a week or two and it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.”
This Man Learned Sometimes, You Have To Agree To Disagree
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“My mother’s friend was explaining to me magic after she described a story of how someone she knew knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy in Thailand, who knew a guy, who knew a guy who could shape shift or something, and I was trying to explain how people lie. She wound up coming up with this brilliant argument ending line:
‘Magic is like electricity. No one knows how it works, it just does.’
At that’s when I realized there was no further point to continuing the discussion.”
“We Grew Up In The First World!”
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“I live in London as a welfare rep for American students. Knowing that American college costs a bundle, and the programme to come over costs a load too, these students tend to be the richest and whitest of suburbia.
One day the WiFi went down and I may as well have told them that there was no drinking water in the UK.
About 40 students were knocking on my door telling me it wasn’t acceptable and that they were calling their ‘daddys’ to sort it out. ‘My daddy is a lawyer, so if you think you’re getting money for this accommodation when I haven’t had WiFi you’ve got another think coming,’ that sorta thing.
I tried to calm them down, let them know it would be back on in an hour or two when one of them said the following line:
‘You can’t blame us for being upset, we grew up in THE FIRST WORLD!’
I was flabbergasted, not only did she talk about being from ‘the first world’ (who does that) like that is something to be proud of. But her entire argument was, ‘Everything in my life has always been easy and perfect, how dare you take away the most minor of utilities for 3 hours.'”
Someone Please Help This Confused Grandma
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“I was 15, and working at McDonald’s. I was at the back window where you take people’s money. A customer came and blew past the back speaker where you order. That was pretty typical, so I figured it was just a normal mistake.
When they get to my window it is the very old lady. She smiles at me, holds a grocery bag up with frozen chicken and a two liter of soda. She holds out a $20 bill and asks, ‘How much for the chicken and soda?’
15-year-old me didn’t have the coping skills for this. I stared at her for what felt like forever. Finally, I said, ‘Uh, I think you’re confused…’ She drove off, with her car halfway over the curb.”
“I Guess Our Maid Must Have Always Taken Care Of That.”
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“I was a field engineer on the construction of some very large expensive dorms (University Center) at High Point University. Dorms included a three-story waterfall, sports bar, steakhouse, arcade, free movie theater, etc — very fancy. We kept a small staff to help the University with the first student move in. Students were really pampered, but this was the worst case I remember.
One girl called for help because the power wasn’t working in her dorm room. Our guys got there. None of her stuff was plugged into the outlets! We explained–you have to plug things in for them to work.
Reply: ‘I guess our maid must have always taken care of that.’ She did not know how to plug something in! When we showed her, she still stood there expecting us to plug in all her stuff!”
This Sibling Says Their Sister Is “Just Not A Thinker In General”
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“My sister was the usual rich white party college girl, always complaining that she was broke and didn’t have time to get a job because she was so busy all day with school (only took 4 classes) and generally being a dumb spoiled girl. Come her 4th year when she’s supposed to graduate and she suddenly springs it on my dad that she can’t graduate because of a terrible GPA, and at the same time my dad had lost his job, so he just cut her off completely financially. She fell apart, couldn’t deal with it, moved to Florida with her mom, took out loans until she was 10k in debt, took a year and a half extra to finally graduate, and suffered from substance abuse. Then she did so many pills she had a seizure, moved back in with my dad, and then had an early life crisis and up and moved in with a friend in Colorado talking about how she had free rent and would figure the rest out when she got there and yadda yadda.
She has a bachelor’s in business, supposedly doesn’t want an office job of any sort. Her friend moved away suddenly to Washington to chase some boy she had a crush on. Now my sister is begging ME weekly to let her live with me in my apartment for free because she doesn’t want to live with my parents, and she asked me to get her a job at my work, and she bought a dog for no reason and can’t afford to raise it. I am ranting, but my sister is not a forward thinker – actually, she’s just not a thinker in general.”
This Stepmother Has Some Interesting Ideas On The Origin Of Fossils
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“My stepmother (really nice lady, but very tightly wound) told me Satan put the dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us.
I asked her why 1) God would let Satan mess with his creation, and 2) Then why did she let my dad keep a whole shelf of fossils in the living room if they were literally created by the devil.
She went and had a meltdown in the bedroom, yelled at my dad for a bit, and I got sent to my room. A little while later my dad came in and said he’d been told to have a serious talk with me.
Then he said ‘Stop torturing your stepmother.’ He tried to look stern, started laughing, and had to wait till he could get his face under control before he left the room.”
Age Is Just A Number, Right?
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“I have a co-worker who once got visibly upset because I said he was about the same age as my parents.
He’s 51, my parents are 53.
I’d like to point out that I didn’t just say this out of the blue. He asked how old my parents were, and I knew his age, so I made the comparison. He also said things like, ‘I work out you know, I’m stronger than guys half my age,’ very much a man child in denial. I also used to catch rides with him after work and had to stop after a few weeks because he was violating me to the point I wanted to jump out of the car. He really thought he was entitled to my romantic interest, a female coworker half his age.”
Who Wants To Carry Around Useless Change Anyway?
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“My brother’s best friend married a pretty rich girl. He said the first time he saw her do laundry she was going through her pockets and throwing her loose change in the garbage. She had no idea that people kept their change. Genuinely thought everyone just threw it away.”
This College Girl Figured Someone Would Pick Up Her Mess Eventually
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“I went to school at UBC for a year and lived in the dorms. One of the super rich Chinese kids that populated my school lived on the same floor as me. Her first day there she took a shower in the public bathroom and then just left all her clothes strewn about. She assumed a maid would come pick them up and wash them.”
This Man Believes There’s Definitely Life In Outer Space And The Reason Is Crazy
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“I used to work in a pizza place and my boss (the owner) was one of the strangest guys I’ve ever met.
He used to tell me that the world was run by ‘reptilian aliens’ and that the moon was their base. He knew this because NASA once hit something off the moon and it ‘sounded like a bell’ and thus must be hollow and full of lizard people.
Left that job after 3 weeks.”
This Manager Doesn’t Believe People Can’t Just “Make More Money” When They Run Out
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“My company is switching its non-exempt employees from a bi-monthly pay schedule to a bi-weekly pay schedule. Because of the reduction in per-paycheck pay (salary is divisible by 26 weeks now, versus 24 previously), payroll is offering a one-time advance payment of the third paycheck in the upcoming three-paycheck month so that employees who live on a tight budget can divvy that up for bills or payments or whatever to transition to the impact of their new paycheck being slightly reduced. You have to notify payroll if you want to take this option. One manager couldn’t wrap their head around the existence of people living paycheck-to-paycheck. They asked, ‘Couldn’t they make more money? Couldn’t they learn to save?’ Problem solved, duh.
Funny thing is their nanny, whom they rely on for everything, is quitting because they aren’t paying her enough, and the cost of living here is too high.”
Advertisers Are More Delusional Than The People Who Fall For Their Ads
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“I work in advertising. Lots of creatives and producers in this industry who are SUPER out of touch with reality. Mostly it manifests itself in people taking credit for huge societal fads just because they used it once in an ad. So for example, let’s say we used the word ‘epic’ in an ad at some point- that creative will believe that they are responsible for how often the word epic has been used since then. Occasionally it will manifest itself in crazier ways. I once had to try to explain to a creative why a radio spot couldn’t detect a listener’s name and then automatically insert that name into the VO. The impression that I got from the particular creative that wanted names in radio ads was that he assumed that the same technology that uses cookies to target web ads could be transferred to FM radio.”
This Rich Girl Couldn’t Believe Parents Don’t Pay For Everything
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“I had a friend who was going to Greece with her family and asked me to come. I told her, ‘Sorry, I’d like to but that’s too expensive.’ She responded with, ‘Just ask your parents to pay, I’m sure they will.’ I could not for the life of me convince her that no, my parents would not pay to send me to Greece. She literally could not wrap her mind around the fact that some people’s parents would not pay for them to go on vacation.”
This Woman Had To Sit Her Roommate Down And Have A Certain “Talk” With Her
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“When my mom was 18/19 she joined the military and as soon as she was able, she moved off base into a cheap little apartment with another girl the same age that she had met in basic. So one day my mom is alone and cleaning up their place when she notices this smell coming from her roommate’s bedroom. She figures it’s old dishes or food and goes to check it out. The room is spotless but it reeks. My mom walks around trying to figure out where the smell is coming from. Finally, she looks under the bed and pulls out this box. It’s dozens and dozens of bloody underwear. Her roommate had no clue about pads/tampons and her own mother never told her. She would just change her clothes and toss the nasty panties under the bed. My mom had to sit down and have a talk with her.”
The Lives Of The Haves And The Haves Too Much
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“So I used to work at a machine shop owned and ran by a family. All their kids worked there with their spouses and were probably the most selfish, self-absorbed, jaded people I’ve ever met. So the owners had a very nice house, which they let one of their children and family live in with them. Their old house was given to another child and her family. A third house was purchased and given to their last child and family. All of these properties were being paid for by the parents, as well as all of their salaries and benefits. Also, they each had new company cars every two years. Who needs a company car when they work in an office? Also, when they carpool together and leave some of the new cars at home every day?
The parents are very nice people and very giving. The children and their families, however, are such jerks. Every day after school all of the grandkids would come in the shop and run around and were always getting into something. This is a machine shop, heavy machinery constantly running. Don’t let your kids shoot stupid nerf guns at each other while I’m running a hydraulic press.
So one day at lunch, I hear two of the spouses and one of the owner’s kids yelling at the owner, like, screaming. Why, you ask? Because the owner didn’t want to purchase season tickets three rows closer than what they had already for our local NFL team.”
She Didn’t Understand The Pay Scale
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“Some years ago, I worked in a mailroom. The boss of my boss was talking about one of her family members who had some kind of emergency and had to come up with $30,000. She said to my boss and I, and I’ll never forget this: ‘I don’t understand the problem. I mean, who DOESN’T have $30,000 saved for an emergency?!?’ Woman, I work in a mailroom.”
One Group Of Students’ Trash Is Another Student’s Treasure
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“Chinese students at my small state university in the Midwest tended to all buy really nice bicycles to get around since a lot of them didn’t know how to drive. At the end of the semester, they would just abandon their bikes. Eventually, the university put a cutoff date where any bikes not re-registered with their system would be taken by the university police. Eventually, we discovered you could grab all of the obviously abandoned bikes and then sell them so the university didn’t just toss them. Good money for drinks and for those of us who stayed on campus over the summer.”
This Girl Didn’t Want To Go To School So Her Parents Decided To…
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“I knew a girl who didn’t want to go to school in the 8th grade, so her parents paid her. $400 a week just to show up to middle school. She’s now suffers from substance abuse addiction and is not going to college.”
“I Got All This Food, But It’s Free, Right?”
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“When I was a kid I was on the swim team at an athletic club in a primarily rich area with us being middle/lower class. The athletic club had a grill and I saw people all day going up and getting food just by showing their access card. I asked them what they did and they said ‘Just scan your access card and you get food.’
Of course, in my mind, that meant it was complimentary, so I started getting all sorts of food and snacks: frozen yogurt, slurpees, chicken fingers, cheese fries, smoothies, etc.
Come the end of the month my parents get our membership bill and start freaking out. I didn’t hear the beginning of the conversation and walk in just in time for them to wonder where all these food charges came from. I, in my naivety, said ‘I got all that food but it’s free right?’ They told me it all had to be paid for.
When I asked the other kids, they all said ‘No way it’s free, I never have to pay.’ Turns it their parents were just so loaded they didn’t care what the bill was it just got paid and they ate whatever they wanted, however much.
It was around that time I realized just how ‘out of class’ I was compared to them.”