One of the reasons that observational comedy is so popular is because it points out those things that we all just know, but don't really think about. We all experience certain everyday situations; at the shop, on a bus, in the office. There are hundreds of small, mundane occasions when we all pretty much think and feel the same way, we just don't realize it.
We here at Bored Panda have collected a list of just these kind of occasions, and there are sure to be plenty of them that'll leave you nodding along in bemused recognition. Scroll down below to check them out for yourself, and add your own in the comments!
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Keeping track of your passwords can be difficult, it's a fine line between good online security and being able to remember the damn things. And it's only getting more complex. Capital letters, numerals, but don't you dare try using that dash. Just coming up with a decent one takes a certain talent!
This is the perfect time to test out your neutral face, look straight ahead, maybe whistle a bit, relax. It can get awkward though if there's no exit except at the checkout, and you have to squeeze your way through, drawing the attention of everyone...
Thank god for the autosave. This one seems more of a 'retro' experience for me, however those easy excuses for not handing in an assignment are long gone.
Word is sh*t if you want to add images. There are two tricks you can use: 1. Insert a table, one column, invisible borders, and insert the image inside the cell. You can even add another row below for a caption or explanation. It always stays centered! Something similar if you create a "text field"? ( I use Word in Spanish and don't remember in English), if you insert the image inside a "text thingy" you can move it easily, although it sometimes moves the text around it. My advice if you work a lot with text and images is to get Microsoft Publisher. It's much better, and it saves hours of work, and your mental health.
I regard heavy machinery as anything heavier and more complex than the remote. I'm high, unpredictable and a risk to everyone. Now leave me alone.
As life gets easier, the easy things seem harder. Whereas we used to happily traipse up and down the high street for our shopping, the act of getting up off the couch to grab our credit cards now feels like a major inconvenience. If this is you, try saving your card number and expiration dates on your browser, and if you can summon the effort, memorize those 3 little numbers on the back. Good luck and Godspeed!
This is an awkward one, because once you are past a certain point it becomes desperately impolite to ask. As an Australian you get a slight pass because you just call everyone 'mate' anyway, but eventually you're gonna get caught out!
But why do we forget people's names? The simplest, and most brutally honest reason is that we're just not interested. We are much better at remembering things that we are motivated to learn, so if somebody keeps forgetting your name, they probably just don't really care about you. Sad!
Every single time! Meeting new people makes me anxious so all my attention gets focused on "don't be awkward" and I forget to listen to their names. What's weird is if they tell me a story, I'll hear and remember it just fine, but any name they give just whooshes past my brain. And every single time I tell myself, I'll focus next time...
Once you talk about it and people feel free to admit, you realize that this is very common, we just talk about it because it's seen as impolite. I have friends who took ages to remember my name and vice versa. Names aren't as important as the rest of the interaction... that's the main reason for forgetting, imo. I once had this girl from another class I talked to everyday at school and even went home together sometimes, but after like 2 weeks of getting along super well, we realized we actually never told each other our names, and only because I had to call out to her and didn't know how.
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Totally my problem. Also, I have very bad memory when it comes to connecting name with face. I was in group with only 10 other people. It took me four months to start recognizing them all.
Since we all suffer this problem, no one should mind when we ask them to repeat it. Then tell them ours again.
Delores is the only name you need to remember, especially if you are Jerry
Hey! All you social kids that talk to strangers before the bell rings, are you guys always that outgoing or just putting on a show while ur at school
In the southern US, it is acceptable to call everyone "Hon"(honey, "Sug"(sugar), and "Sweetie". These are gender neutral terms. Everyone is friendly to everyone down here, and it is impossible to remember everyone's name.
It takes at least 16 times for me to pick up on a person's name and actually remember it.
I just ask what their name is again then when they tell me, i say "No i meant your LAST name" works everytime. plus you get their last name
If I meet someone, that I know that we will be friends, I either get their number or add them on FaceBook. That is the only way I will remember.
I'm terrible with names. And until I learn a bit about the person, I actually have a hard time remembering them at all - so when I started the job I have now, it took me several months to learn everyone correctly. I met most of the people on the same day, so I just mixed them up. My memory just needs some personal background to file away the name and face correctly.
I can't remember names (for real) but I can always remember a face. It can be very awkward as my husband learned. At least my kids got used to me going down the list of names, or just pointing, whichever worked.
I usually make a joke of my name and people rarely forget that it's "MORE een" (not less). My husband (father of my beautiful son) has an unusual name in the US (he's Italian, named Guido. When they get father and son's names mixed up I usually say "Father Guido" like Sarducci, from 70's SNL. And For my son, I gave him an unforgettable and friendly name, "Cosmo". EVERYONE knows at least one dog/cat named Cosmo... and now they know a person too. It works so well that when we're out in public I often feel like I'm with a celebrity- because everyone who ever met him will greet him by name.
I believe it is a cognition problem. In your memory the name of something is linked to your memory of that thing. When you first meet someone, your brain doesn't have a memory of that person to link the name to yet. A good indication of this is how much easier it is to remember someone's name when you hear it a while after you meet them. Also your brain is heavily tied up with social analysis & presentation - working out 'who' they are and conveying who you want them to think you are.
I never try to learn new employee names until they make it past my self imposed two week probationary period . 'The new fella ' is easily understood when gossiping .
You are not alone. The best way to remember the name is to repeat it. Just say hello Jennifer. Jennifer being the name you are said.
I am terrible with names, i always have been, this is me.
You have my sympathies. I am TERRIBLE at remembering names, and often, faces as well. It is humiliating!
I was a bartender for many years and could rarely remember a name but never forgot what they drank. Sometimes I'd see a customer in the supermarket and they'd say "Hi, idrow" and I'd say, "Gin and tonic" and they'd always say, "Great memory!" When in reality I have no idea what their name is even though I know I've been told multiple times.
I work in sales and have to keep a little notepad/black book to jot a name as I saunter off after greeting someone. If we make conversation after the name(s) I'm totally screwed.
A good way to actually remember someones name is to think of someone you know with the same name. If someone says their name is John you can think "That's the same name as one of my boxing instructors" or "I went to school with a John with a similar haircut". You will still forget the name but then you can try to remember who you were thinking of when he introduced himself. It works.
If I did not choose my kid's names myself, I would most probably still don't know them. I am terrible at names!
Only 3 years? And here I am stressing out about the time I crapped myself at Jake Mcgrath's 5th birthday party. Sadly, some things will just never leave you.
We grab our phones multiple times a day, often for no reason other than habits based on addiction, for pleasure, and obsession, for relief from the anxiety of 'missing out.'
Writing in Psychology today, Dr. Larry D. Rosen believes that your motivation for constant connection is a combination of pleasure and anxiety. "How much of each, I believe, is based on the individual," he says. "Personally, I would say I grab the phone about 75% of the time for anxiety reduction and 25% of the time for pleasure. I watch others and when I see some smiling as they tap keys and await return missives, I assume that they are feeling pleasure. Most often, I don’t see them smile at all, but maybe express an almost a visible sigh of relief." How about you?
Yup. And the other similar thing is when I'm cooking something that has recipe on the package and I read the recepie and then throw away the package. And next minute I have to take it out of garbage - sometimes several times.
Who pays attention to single minutes? Most of us know more-or-less how long 10 minutes feels. "I'll be with you in 10," yeah, you pretty much know what you're getting. But a single minute can be taken for granted, that's like, no time. Except at the gym.
"Hold that plank for one minute," somebody tells you. "No problem," you think. "Piece of cake." It's only then do you realize how excruciatingly long those 60 seconds can be. You watch in creeping horror as the seconds slowly drip by, oblivious to your shaking, sagging ordeal, before you collapse around the 40 second mark in a quivering sweaty heap. That one minute is now your personal Everest.
this is true! in my head I'm thinking 30 seconds has pass, look down and nope....14 seconds
The term 'voice confrontation' is used to describe the phenomenon of not liking your own voice, and comes from the false expectations you get from hearing yourself 'internally' most of the time. Because we hear ourselves through our bone structure, we are tricked into believing our voices are deeper and richer than they actually are.
Speaking to The Guardian Dr Silke Paulmann, a psychologist at the University of Essex, says, “I would speculate that the fact that we sound more high-pitched than what we think we should leads us to cringe as it doesn’t meet our internal expectations; our voice plays a massive role in forming our identity and I guess no one likes to realise that you’re not really who you think you are.”
Yes, this happens all the time. Some people just give off that vibe, don't they? The best way to deal with it? Just walk away my friend, unless you wanna get peri-annoyed and post-annoyed too.
We all have those engagements where you'd rather be absolutely anywhere else in the world but there. In these cases, the period beforehand needs to be savored to its fullest, like every sweet minute on your snooze alarm.
Sometimes something as simple as sitting half-naked alone in a towel can be the sweetest thing, because you are not THERE. Or maybe you're just a bit of a space case and zone out from time to time.
Packing is never fun, there's always the temptation to take more than you need. That's never a good thing, as it makes your bag heavier, stuff is more difficult to find and you're essentially just taking items of clothing along for the ride.
So why do it? Well, it's in our nature to delay decision making, so if we just pack it all and decide what to wear later, our lazy brains are happy. Underwear is different because it's small, so you feel like you can throw in plenty and it won't matter. Plus, putting on a fresh pair of boxers always feels better than fresh pants, or a jumper. Doesn't it?
This phenomenon is known as a 'mondegreen,' which The New Yorker explains is a "misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but is, in fact, entirely incorrect."
It has all got to do with the way your brain processes the sounds you hear, and is governed by things like knowledge and familiarity. For example the classic 'excuse me while I kiss the sky,' is often misheard as 'excuse me while I kiss this guy,' because kissing guys is a common occurrence, kissing skies not so much!
Another situation where you truly embrace every minute. Even though you know that these three minutes aren't gonna make the slightest difference to your level of morning freshness, you are gonna savor them, drink up every second of sweet, cozy sleep. Aaaaand it's over in a flash and you're getting up anyway. Was it worth it? You bet it was!
I kinda miss the days when we had four channels and that was it. For dinner you had news, news, soap opera or The Simpsons, easy choice! Now it's at least an hour of fraught decision-making, eventually resulting in a complete lack of commitment to anything. Gah.
Or: Step 1: Parcel loaded in van. Step 2: Driver will be with you in 5 minutes. (Me waiting at the door.) Step 3: You weren't home.
Are you still afraid of the dark? Kids are hardwired to be afraid of the dark, evolutionarily it made sense, as we are exposed and vulnerable when we can't spot potential danger.
Thomas Ollendick, professor of psychology and director of the Child Study Center at Virginia Tech explained why to Live Science. "Kids believe everything imaginable, that in the dark robbers might come or they could get kidnapped, or someone might come and take their toys away." Essentially, their fears stem from "the unexpected," he said. While kids grow out of such fears, if the anxiety reaches extreme levels and is considered a phobia, called nyctophobia, Ollendick says that can last through adulthood if left untreated.
You can bite your tongue and not give that person a piece of your mind, you might even be able to stop yourself giving a frustrated or sarcastic sigh. But keeping a good poker face takes discipline and practice, one social skill that I'm just gonna have to keep working on.
Everybody loves the horsies! I guess if you grew up around horses though, the excitement probably would be reserved for something more exotic. "Oh look, mooses" would be my version of that.
Speaking of mooses; if goose is geese, why isn't moose, meese?
This. Then you make the mistake of going on to Google to search for 'liver pain,' and five minutes later you have convinced yourself that you now have hepatitis. Good times.
The best phone convo I ever eavesdropped on was a woman telling her husband off for buying a roller coaster. "You BETTER be joking. What are we going to do with a whole roller coaster?! I don't care if we'll be the coolest grandparents ever! Well, I hope it's comfortable because you'll be sleeping in it!!" And all I could think was that I hope they get divorced.... because I want to marry a man who owns a backyard roller coaster LMAO
Some people just reach in front of them and get what they want. No reason why two people can't get to the same item.
Judging the line at the supermarket is one of those handy skills that can get you ahead in everyday life. Sure, that guy might have a small basket, but they are all fresh goods that need to be weighed and typed in manually, That lady has a trolley full of cans but they are all the same, and will pass through with a single scan and a quick count. Tactics!
But what do you do when you're toward the back of a line, and you sense a new checkout is about to be opened. Do you make the move? Skip the queue and get in to an undeserved lead? Or fairly and politely let the people in front go, as they have waited longer. What's your strategy and etiquette?
This happens too often to be a coincidence, there must be an explanation. According to an article by Lucas Reilly in Mental Floss, your body adapts well if you have a good sleep routine, and tries to preempt the stress of your dreaded alarm.
"Your body hates your alarm clock. It’s jarring. It’s stressful. And it ruins all that hard work," he writes. "It defeats the purpose of gradually waking up. So, to avoid being interrupted, your body does something amazing: It starts increasing a protein called PER and stress hormones earlier in the night. Your body gets a head start so the waking process isn’t cut short. It’s so precise that your eyelids open minutes—maybe even seconds—before the alarm goes off."
Some people are receipt keepers, while others aren't. What am I gonna do with a grocery receipt from last week? Claim it back on tax? I'm definitely in the no-receipt camp but it's true, sometimes a random urge does strike and I find myself running through a few "what if just in case" scenarios.
But yeah, like this guy these feeling are based on absolutely nothing. Still beats having a wallet full of Walmart receipts from 1996.
Why do we get this collective feeling of the years going more slowly than they actually do? Perhaps it's because we haven't embraced the 'style' of the most recent decades yet, because we are still close to them.
The 70s 80s and 90s all have a definitive feel to them, and for me anyway, the 90s still feel close by. The 2000s and 2010s haven't yet been defined in my head, so it all kinda feels the same. 2014 could've been yesterday as far as I'm concerned. What do you think?
I loved these! But am I the only one who is annoyed by all of the summaries written about each tweet? It makes it more funny and relatable if you just leave the tweet without adding to it.
Yeah I agree it's like over-explaining a joke or a pun
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or the small panic attack you get when the trainconductor comes around asking for the tickets although you have one
Another one: The frustration you get when you text someone and they take A WEEK to reply
When you feel like taking a hand sanitizer bath because you're on the toilet in a public restroom, hear a person come in, use the toilet and then exit without the sound of running water to confirm they've washed their hands. That's when I wish I could scrub up and glove up like I'm prepping to perform surgery. So gross......
When you are trying to look up the name of a certain classical piece. Normally with a pop song you could look up the lyrics, but you can’t look up the lyrics if there are no lyrics.
Or if the lyrics are in a foreign language (like Latin) and you can barely make them out. (Looking at you, Carmina Burana.)
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I loved these! But am I the only one who is annoyed by all of the summaries written about each tweet? It makes it more funny and relatable if you just leave the tweet without adding to it.
Yeah I agree it's like over-explaining a joke or a pun
Load More Replies... or the small panic attack you get when the trainconductor comes around asking for the tickets although you have one
Another one: The frustration you get when you text someone and they take A WEEK to reply
When you feel like taking a hand sanitizer bath because you're on the toilet in a public restroom, hear a person come in, use the toilet and then exit without the sound of running water to confirm they've washed their hands. That's when I wish I could scrub up and glove up like I'm prepping to perform surgery. So gross......
When you are trying to look up the name of a certain classical piece. Normally with a pop song you could look up the lyrics, but you can’t look up the lyrics if there are no lyrics.
Or if the lyrics are in a foreign language (like Latin) and you can barely make them out. (Looking at you, Carmina Burana.)
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