Do people think before they speak or act? One would assume so, but that's not always the case. At the very least, it can lead to some entertaining moments!
People on Reddit share the dumbest person they've ever encountered. Content has been edited for clarity.
“They Should Be In Cages!”
“I used to work in Banff National Park. One day at the end of the tour, I was driving some guests back to their hotel and a woman was adamant that Banff was clearly a very dangerous place to visit since we ‘Just let wild animals run around everywhere! They should be in cages!’
Had to fight the urge to throw her off the bus pretty hard.
Some other gems that came up in the past include a guest insisting he needed to change money they got in BC to Alberta currency (not a real thing). A man arrived very irate that the entire Trans-Canada highway was not lit with proper street lamps every 100 yards (that would be a stunning waste of energy, not to mention probably cost more than our national budget… and you car has lights on it!). More than a few have grossly underestimated the distances involved in a country like Canada.
No, you cannot drive from Calgary to Toronto and back in the same day for lunch at the CN Tower.”
“Can’t Even Find The Logic In That”
“When my daughter was born, we had to see the hospital pediatrician before we could switch to our usual one. We’re in a tiny exam room, and he’s going over the dos and don’ts for new parents. To precede this, he’s an older southern man.
‘And I assume she will be sleeping in a crib in the nursery?’ he asked.
‘We have a bassinet set up beside the bed to make night feeding easier,’ I explained.
‘She can’t sleep with you!’ he said, in shock.
‘She won’t be in the bed, she has a bassinet beside the bed,’ I replied, bewildered.
‘If she sleeps in the same room, there will be too much carbon dioxide and she’ll suffocate. That’s what causes SIDS,’ he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘… then isn’t this exam room unsafe?’ I deadpanned.
We put in a complaint with the practice and the hospital. That’s some ridiculously incorrect information to be spouting off at people, especially parents who take everything a doctor says as gospel. I can’t even find the logic in that.”
“60 Seconds Is A Lot”
“I’m a physician. Eye doctor specifically. I will tell you that the longer I work (now 15 years), my standard for the ‘average’ person continues to decline. Case in point: Thanks to the awful information filtering out there, I had a patient just last week who read that vitamin D helps you resist a infection. Well, he had also read that you can get more vitamin D by getting more sun. So he wanted to ‘collect’ as much light as possible with his eyes. As a result, he stared at the sun for a solid 60 seconds, and burned holes directly into his retinas permanently reducing his vision with no chance at future improvement.
All eyes are equally susceptible to sun damage by staring at the sun. This is a litmus test for intelligence more than it is physical or genetic susceptibility. Looking at it for a fraction of a second won’t do it but, a solid 60 seconds is a lot. Everyone can pass their hand through fire for a fraction of a second, but holding it there for 60 seconds would be idiotic.”
“Both Of Us Were Trying Not To Laugh”
“Many years ago, I was applying for a job at an office. There were fix or six of us there in the waiting area, and the receptionist handed each of us a clipboard with an application and a sheet of paper under it. The application was straight forward and simple. The second page was where things got interesting. It was a list of 20 numbered instructions.
The first line said ‘Read this entire page before doing anything on it.’
The second line said ‘Print your full name and today’s date on top of this sheet.’
The next 17 lines were instructions that got more ridiculous as they progressed. A few of them said to write things on the paper, while others instructed them to perform physical actions. There were guys standing up and saying their name out loud, hopping on one foot, spinning in a circle and scribbling all over the paper. All really dumb stuff that had nothing to do with the job but they were doing it.
As this was happening, I made eye contact with the receptionist and both of us were trying very hard not to laugh. Apparently, I was the only one who read the entire page as instructed before beginning.
The last item simply said ‘Don’t do anything on this list except for number one and number two.’
It was obviously a simple test to see how well we could follow basic instructions. I got the job but so did a couple of the others who didn’t do so well on that test. I wondered if they administered the test just to amuse themselves because it didn’t seem to have much bearing on who was hired.”
“Someone’s Hacked My Account!”
“I used to work for a chatbot app. Our app would text our users every morning with a greeting in a different language, i.e. Hola, Bonjour etc. One day we got blown up by a user saying their account was hacked.
She said, ‘My name is Kim Smith, not Kim Konnichiwa, someone’s hacked my account!’
When we explained that our service has been clearly saying hello to her in other languages every day, and ‘Konnichiwa’ is hello in Japanese and her account was fine, she went on a rant and said Disney was behind the destruction of America. Yep.”
“They’re Obviously Different”
“I used to manage a retail store that sold teen clothing, so as expected, I primarily had teens working for me.
One employee came to the back room while I was on break, and asked what I was eating. Somehow, the topic turned to how I should’ve brought chicken for lunch, because she wanted chicken. I told her I was vegetarian and therefore don’t eat meat.
She tells me chicken is NOT meat. It’s ‘poultry,’ and vegetarians can eat poultry? She said at the grocery store the aisles list ‘meat’ and ‘poultry’ separately so they’re obviously different. We argued for a couple of minutes before I finally told her to go back to the sales floor. She didn’t last long at the job long, but dang.”
“They Stood Dumbfounded When They Looked At The Clock”
“My previous employer used a 100-minute clock for the time clock. This meant if you arrived in time, your punch would read 8:50. The manager of the department assigned time keeping to another person, because he knew he didn’t understand it. After several weeks of everyone punching in at 8:50, we all got called in for it. First, we were all salaried, except one person, so the time didn’t really matter in terms of the law. But it kept the peace, so no one complained.
We all got ripped up one side and down the other, and no one was allowed to speak. Not that any of them tried, except me. When the manager and the timekeeper finally shut up, I pointed out that the clock runs on 100 minutes, not 60, therefore we were all on time, or early. They stood dumbfounded when they looked at the clock and it literally showed an analog clock with 100 minutes.
So then I took it further to point out that as salaried employees, none of this matters, and that none of us ever left for lunch, giving them nine hours instead of eight. And that they walk in at 8:30 and we are already there, so how could we really be arriving at 8:50?
They understood, and removed the stipulation that salaried employees need to use the time clock.”
“But It’s Not American Money”
“I once was working at a Renaissance Festival in South Florida. I was just barely 21. I had gone down there for the winter to help out a musician friend, and was living a very frugal lifestyle. I don’t think I even had a debit card at that point, and my cell phone was pay-per-text at like $.10 a message.
So anyway- I would totally get paid for booth-sitting for some artists after the weekend. But by Friday, I was pretty broke. I had about $7 in gold dollar coins- because that’s what I liked to keep on me at faire to give out as change. I had the remains of the $20 I’d taken in coins, and other than that, I didn’t have any other cash.
We had a kid’s day at faire- where schools bring kids on school trips, and so I needed to grab some food and get back to Deerfield Beach Park. So fully dressed in Renaissance garb, I ran into the Taco Bell. I figured my cash would go the farthest there.
I ordered my food, and when I went to pay, the girl behind the counter LAUGHS and goes: ‘Uh- no. I need REAL money,’
I looked at her, confused, ‘These ARE real money, they are gold Sacajawea dollars.’
‘Yeah, we only take US cash here. I need actual money to pay for the food,’ she rudely told me.
Now the line behind me is getting antsy- but the girl at the register is getting really mean and I’m like – what the heck do you do when a business won’t take your payment? It wasn’t like I was trying to pay in nickels. I had $4.– worth of food and tried giving her $5 in coins.
I’m like, ‘This is all I’ve got on me… I don’t know what to tell you- but it IS legal US tender- see right here?’
And I’m trying to show her the coins- and she’s yelling like I’m trying to pay her in monopoly money.
The guy behind me stepped in, saying ‘yeah, those are real coins,’ but I don’t think he wanted her anger turned towards him- so he wasn’t very forceful.
I asked if she could get a manager and she said, ‘I’m not going to waste his time with this nonsense. You either pay in real money, or leave.’
Then, she grabbed my bag of food so I can’t go anywhere. I take out my wallet- remembering the two lucky $2 bills I had carried for YEARS- folded up in the back pocket. I unfolded those- and she takes one look at the $2 bills… And I’m sure you can predict what happened. She BLEW UP.
Next thing I know- she’s screaming for the staff to call the cops and telling ME not to go anywhere. It’s because I’m trying to rip her off and pass off all this ‘fake money’ and she’s ‘going to see me get sent to jail!’
Meanwhile, I’m hungry, tired, and now very irritated- and that’s when a cop car pulls up. They weren’t responding to the call- I don’t even know if the store HAD called. I was ready to walk out, nearly in tears – when the two cops come in and all eyes turn to them. There’s about ten people now in line behind me- and everyone turns to look at the cops who very clearly have a What the heck is going on- I just stopped to get food look on their faces.
That’s when the obnoxious register girl, and two co-workers she called over- start waving my money around (that was the best part- she took my money and was refusing to give it back OR to give me my food), and the cops go to the counter to figure out what she’s freaking out over. At this point, the manager heard the commotion and joins the two guys and the register girl. The three teenager employees are all going on and on about ‘the girl in the costume trying to give them fake money trying to rip them off,’ and the cops VERY quickly put an end to that.
The one cop holds up the two $2 bills, and my gold dollar coins- and he tells the staff that BOTH are- indeed- actual REAL money. The girl is still protesting, saying ‘Yeah but it’s not America money and we only take America money.’
Then, the manager finally realized what happened and apologized. He started telling the teenagers – who look to be completely in disbelief – that yes, the coins AND bills are BOTH really, United States money.
The manager offers to personally remake my meal- and the cops as well – apologizing for everything. I’m REALLY late at this point, and I didn’t really trust them to make my food, even if the manager was being really nice.
But the cop said ‘I’ll tell you what- I’ll come back and get your info while you make our food. How about that?’
So he accompanied the manager back white he washed his hands and made our food. The other cop gave me my money back, and took my info.
As I was FINALLY leaving with my food, the guy behind me jokes with the cop ‘I think I’m going to pay with a handful of half-dollars I’ve got in my car. What do you think?’
I was SO floored that anyone could be SO ignorant… And not just ignorant, but completely and utterly unwilling to realize or to recognize that they had made a mistake and were wrong. All she did was double down- insisting we were ALL wrong and I was just a thief.”
“He’s A Freaking Mouth Breather”
“A man I worked with, 23-25 years old, was absolutely positive that the TechRax video (the one where he drills a hole in a iPhone 7or 8) to make the headphone jack was 100% real. He was convinced they did it to hide it from customers, and this was a hack to find it.
I’m a techie, I built another person’s computer, and he argued with me for 25-45 minutes about this. I pulled up diagrams, explained he was drilling into the battery, and even named TechRax when he couldn’t name the video maker (he saw it on Instagram). I told him if he could do it, I’d pay for the iPhone in full if it works. He was literally shopping around for it, when another one of my coworkers who was watching this argument approached us. He was siding with this man, despite knowing I’m a techie. He even trusted me to build him a computer worth almost $2,000!
My coworker said, ‘oh my brother just got that phone,’ and they called him.
His brother goes, ‘Nah that’s fake.’
That was it, they believed him! I showed them schematics and breakdowns of the phone, and that wasn’t enough. For some reason, ‘nah it’s fake’ was?
He’s a freaking mouth breather.”
“The Principal Was A Good One”
“My ex had a student, one who occasionally misspelled his own name, turn in a very well written essay that just so happened to be clearly printed off the internet. It included the URL at the bottom. He gave the kid a zero. Kid’s grandmother came in to the office completely distraught, because she knew her grandson wrote that essay. Her proof? He said he wrote it. When it was shown to her on the internet, she insisted that he must have written it and put it on that website himself. Thank goodness the principal was a good one and let her know she didn’t buy that for a minute.
Also, when I was a teller, I asked a man for ID. He showed me his personalized belt buckle. When I said that wasn’t enough, he offered to go get his sister from the car; she could tell me who he was. He didn’t understand why neither of those would work.
‘Who else would wear a belt buckle with my name on it? Why would my sister lie to you? She doesn’t want any money.'”
“The Land Across The Ocean!”
“When I was a sophomore in high school, a classmate asked to borrow a pen, and I lent him one of mine that had the Eiffel Tower on it. He asked where the building was from, and I said Paris. He gave me a confused look and asked where Paris was. Was it further away than Chicago? Now it was my turn to be confused. We were in high school, how the heck did he not know Paris was in France? But whatever, maybe he’s not the brightest. So I inform him that Paris is in France.
But he still looks utterly confused. I assume he misheard me, so I started explaining it.
‘France, you know, like, FRANCE. From history class? World War II, Napoleon… that France,’ I told him.
He said he was bad at history, and had never heard of France before. He then asked me if it was another state, or was it like a region of our state.
Utterly baffled at this point, I tried to explain that it was another country entirely, and it was in Europe.
Exasperated, I remember saying'”You know, Europe?! That other continent?’
He still looked confused, so I added “The land across the ocean!”
Finally, there is recognition on his face. He tells me he heard of oceans before, he thinks he understands now.
I remind you that this encounter, with a student who didn’t know what Europe was, took place in high school.”
“Should Have Done Some Math”
“I was at my job at the time, a buffet place that has decent prices considering they serve steak on the bar. You can get a lot of expensive products for about $17 per adult, and had a younger couple come in during the weekend. For context, the prices at this place were a bit higher during the weekend because that was when they would pull out the bigger stuff, like prime rib. They ask for two dinners and two drinks, so I punch them into the register, and tell them the price – after tax, maybe $35 or so. They look a little apprehensive at the price, and ask if they can think about it.
Well, there was no one else in the line waiting to eat in, so I say, ‘Sure! Just let me get this gentleman’s to go order while you do.’
They’re fine with it. So I ring in the guy’s to go order, and since the to go prices were determined by weight, if you got a reasonable amount of food for a human being getting to go was usually cheaper than dining in. So they hear that this guy pays maybe… $10? Or something in that area, and say ‘Well, we’ll just do a to go order because it’s cheaper!’
So I tell them the process for getting a to go order in this place, and they go and start filling their containers. A while later, not exactly sure how much later off of the top of my head, they come back with like five or six containers of food. All to go. I get them rung in and the price is at least $15-$20 more than if they had just paid and eaten in, and they came back the next day to get more They paid at least $15 more every time they came in than they would if they had just eaten in and paid that freaking price for all the food! They really should’ve done some math.”
“What Does ‘Sooo’ Mean?”
“Years ago, I had to apply for some kind of government program. I had just closed the doors on a dismally failed business, which was why I was applying for the program. They had me fax all of my earnings and bookkeeping paperwork, most of which had zeroes or negative numbers on them. The person on the phone was looking at the papers I faxed them the day before.
Finally, the guy said, ‘Sir, I’m going to go ahead and transfer you to our financial expert.’
He used that word, ‘Financial Expert/’ (Remember that. It’s important.)
After a brief 40-or-so minutes on hold, I was talking to the ‘Financial Expert.’ We went back and forth for a while and she was obviously confused as heck. (My paperwork was as simple and basic as you can imagine, mind you. Like first-lesson-in-high-school-accounting simple) She sighed with frustration. Oh, really? You’re frustrated, lady?
Here it comes:
After 20 minutes or so, she asks me, ‘What does ‘Sooo’ mean?’
I get confused. I look everywhere. The word ‘Sooo’ is nowhere on the papers.
I say, ‘Ma’am, you’re looking at an exact copy of the papers I’m holding in front of me. The word ‘Sooo’ isn’t on any of these pages.’
Well, to make a long story slightly less long, it took me another 10 minutes or so to realize that she, a supposed government agency ‘FINANCIAL EXPERT,’ was mistaking the numeric designation for no money (‘$0.00’) for the word ‘Sooo.’
A Financial freaking Expert… didn’t… know… what ‘$0.00’… meant. Financial expert.
That was the moment I realized that George Carlin was being generous when he said, ‘Picture how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are even stupider than that.'”
“The Patient Was Confused”
“Shadowed a doctor for a premed program, had one patient that raised the bar for me.
Newly diagnosed diabetic. The doctor prescribed the patient a low dose of insulin to see how they handle it, scheduled a follow up around a week later, demonstrated how to inject the insulin and sent them on their way.
The patient comes back for the follow-up reporting no change. The doctor check their blood glucose and it’s pretty much exactly the same as last time. Even if the patient had been diabetic for years while it got more severe and only just found out (they hadn’t), there should have been some reaction to the insulin. So here’s the thing- the doctor used an orange to demonstrate how to inject the insulin, rather than administering it to the patient. He was very clear about where and how to use the insulin. The patient, however, was confused.
They had been injecting their insulin into an orange and eating it. Insulin. One of the most well known and commonly used medications in the world.
Never thought ‘Huh, if I was supposed to eat it, wouldn’t it be a pill? Maybe I’ll call the doctor and ask, or just do a Google search, because it seems like needles are used for injecting not ingesting.’
Be honest with your doctor people. If you’re this dumb, trust me they’ve already realized. They aren’t cheap, use their time while you have it.”