Have you ever been in a situation where someone very wrongfully assumed that you were as dumb as a rock, only to make themselves look even dumber in the process? No, and we’re not talking about cases of mild miscommunication or slightly funny contraventions. We’re talking about good ol’ cases of stupid people thinking they’re the absolute best and enjoying undermining others with absolutely no right to do so (no one ever has the right, though, to make things clear here). Right, so if you know what we’re talking about here, you’ll find these dumb people stories we’ve gathered from this awesome Reddit thread hit home. And if you’ve been lucky enough so far not to have an encounter of this kind, it might be hard for you to believe that some people are stupid. Just stupid.
The best part, though, is that in these stories, the underminers usually got their justice served for their horrible behavior and wrongful assumptions. If not then and there, then later on. But you know what they say - revenge is best served cold. Although chances are, the nutjobs in these unbelievable stories did not understand what came after them; we’re pretty certain the original posters did get their well-deserved satisfaction.
Either way, treat these stories as cautionary tales - no one can know when they’ll encounter one of these holier-than-thou people. However, you can prepare yourself mentally by checking out how the people in these stories reacted and what course of action they took to show ‘em who’s really dumb there. So, scroll down below, enjoy the ruthless table turning in each of these cases, and share this article with your friends, too.
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"I'm not one much for "dressing" up with a big bushy beard and bald head tattoos Any way I was in church one Sunday and I sat in some lady's "seat" lol I moved up a row and apologized trying to be nice and she turns to the lady behind her and says I really hope this junkie doesn't steal the offering and chuckles turns and looks and me and says I'm just goshing and tries to fire up a conversation asking if I'm a truck driver just visiting About then the assistant pastor announces the new Sr pastor and asks them to stand and greet him The look on her face when I walked up to the podium and greeted them was priceless."
"Interrupted a group of Chinese girls on the subway in Beijing when they were saying some rude things about foreigners. A 6’ ginger-haired white girl speaking Mandarin was clearly unexpected."
"At work one day writing a menu board for lunch specials. A couple comes in and starts chuckling behind me. The lady gives me this snide look and says “What’s a SAND-wich? It’s spelled SAMWITCH, honey. Hahaha, she wrote SAND, like in the desert!” I just smiled and didn’t even correct her. That cocky stupidity was truly a sight to behold."
"A group of college students from an obscure Christian cult stopped me during my run to “evangelize” to me. Unfortunately for them, I am a Ph.D. student in theology. They started asking me if I was familiar with certain things in the Bible, and I responded by quoting chapter and verse, poking holes in their logic, and asking to follow-up questions. The poor girl obviously had a script to stick to because she did not engage any of my questions but just kept repeating that scripture clearly shows that their church is the only one in the world that actually knows the truth, even though I demonstrated why that makes no sense."
"I’m profoundly deaf, so couldn’t use the telephone to ring the bank (this was pre-internet banking), so all my banking had to be done in person at the counter. One day I went to the bank to change my address and asked the assistant to please look at me while she was speaking as I was deaf and a lip-reader, then explained I needed to change my address with the bank. She looked at me, tutted me, and said “You could have done this by phone.” We stared at each other for a few seconds before I said “That would be a very one-sided conversation.” She went bright red and changed my address."
Today I relearned the word tutted after not hearing it for over 20 years, and will henceforth be using it whenever I can
"A guy tried to tell me that the Civil War was not about slavery and I needed to get educated on the subject. I teach US history in college and actually wrote my dissertation on the subject - so I let the moron have it."
"When I was in the Army, I and a group of specialists were standing in a circle, taking a break in the motor pool. A lieutenant came out and said he needed a forklift driver, went around the circle, pointed at each male, and asked them if they had their license. None of them did; he huffed and walked away. He had clearly, obviously skipped over the other female and me in the circle. That was fine; we were the only 88M (heavy vehicle operators) and forklift-licensed people there; the dudes were all paralegals and HR specialists. Everyone laughed. What an embarrassing moment for him."
But us women can't possibly be licensed for something like that, where would we find the time between filing the men's papers at work and cooking/cleaning/baby raising at home???
"I made vegetarian nachos with fake mince in front of a bunch of friends for a party. Another friend showed up late and, unprompted, started trash-talking vegetarian food because the nachos were so good he could never give up meat. One of the other guests eventually corrected him."
"Not me, but my favorite example of this is when US congress invited Dee Snider, lead singer of Twisted Sister, to testify at the PMRC hearings. They expected a dunderhead, and he calmly and intelligently ripped them a new one."
If you haven't seen this, it's worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pmrc+hearings Frank Zappa is great too.
"I was a service desk technician at a hospital helping a doctor reset his password. He kept misspelling the temporary password (it was welcome12345). Turns out he thought welcome has 2 L's and freaked out at me citing his education and my (at the time) lack thereof as evidence that he was right. After going back and forth he got frustrated and handed me off to his nurse and left, she got it on the first try and then apologized to me for her boss's behavior. The funniest part was as she was hanging up I heard her talking to another nurse saying "yeah Dr. Dumba*s couldn't spell welcome again"."
Was he thinking of the pharmaceutical company called Burroughs-Wellcome, perhaps? Of course, the Wellcome part is someone’s name, not the greeting.
"I had a boss who thought everyone was an idiot. One morning, the computer in the office wasn't working. She asks me if I know anything about computers. I tell her that I've used one before. She tells me to check the computer in the office and see if I can figure out why it stopped working. I press the power button and she calls me a moron, telling me that she had already tried that herself. I get under the desk for a moment then come back up. I tell her to press the power button again. It comes right on. She asks me what was wrong with it. I tell her it was unplugged."
Have you tried turning it off and on again? Are you sure it's plugged in?
"The corporate trainer came to our offices to provide training. I popped into the room to say hello and see if she needed help. She was having trouble setting up the projector before the session. I started trying to help but I’m not really savvy with projectors. She was getting frustrated with me as she assumed I was the IT dude, and obviously not a very good one. We eventually got it fixed, and I offered her a coffee. She was a bit rude to me at that stage. I got her one anyway. Fast forward to the session itself, and I introduced her to the room of 40 people and thanked her for coming. She realized I was the head of the division and was the one paying for her to be there. I felt very smug at that point."
"Had a friend in college who was VERY full of himself. One morning while eating breakfast in the cafeteria someone said, "I wonder how bagels are made." I said, "I'm pretty sure bagels are boiled." The pompous friend then said, "What are you stupid?! Bagels aren't boiled. That's f***ing ridiculous." Someone did a quick Google search to find that bagels are, in fact, boiled. People seemed genuinely intrigued by this information."
I love these kinds of situations. Don't get me wrong, some people do come up with dumb explanations, but when a little tidbit like this comes up, I will always look it up afterward to check whether it's true. Furthermore, thank you for educating me on one of the steps of how bagels are made!
"I was working as a teller at the bank years ago, and Karen was complaining about how slow and sh*tty my computer was... If I had been using an IBM she'd have been out of there already. She works at IBM, they only make the best, fastest bank equipment. Blah, blah blah. I slowly, deliberately turned my slow, sh*tty IBM computer for her to look at. Not another word."
"While building a wall with a new Forman helping him out for extra hours I noticed that my doors were bigger than his so I say what's going on why are your doors so small than he starts a little rant about reading the blue print right the proper spacing so I grab the blueprint and red 2 foot 6 inches than he measures his door and says 26 inches made me realize I don't want my name near anything he worked on."
So dummy didn’t notice the space between the 2 and the 6 had a ‘ for feet in it?
"I was checking out at a store once and paying with my debit card. I proceed to use my finger to press the touchscreen buttons instead of using the stylus. The cashier says “You shouldn’t do that, so many people touch it and it’s gross. I use the pen.” So I say “People use their fingers to touch the pen too...” And then his face fell and he looked like died inside as he realized how stupid his comment was."
"My wife and I were traveling with a couple we worked with in South Korea. We weren't best friends with them but they were nice enough so we rented a car and traveled around the island of Jeju. Now, this is a small island and you could drive around it in 4 or 5 hours but we were taking our time seeing the sights. The guy was a bit of a know-it-all but they had been in Korea 6 months longer than us so I always tool his advice. Anyways, I'm driving the car and we are trying to find the place that we want to eat, I say something like 'we are going the right way' and this guy responds with 'no we are going south, trust me I majored in geography.' I look straight ahead into the setting sun and respond with 'weird we found the one place on earth where the sun sets in the south.'"
"I film and edit promotional videos, then post them on my company’s YouTube channel. The day after I uploaded a particular run-of-the-mill video, my manager calls me into his office because one of our douchebag directors (who hates our department and loves undermining me in particular) sent an email to my manager and a few higher-ups. In the email, he stated that I had messed up the promo video because there were “all of these other disgusting videos attached to it.” As proof, he included a screenshot of the end of the video, where all of the recommended videos appeared to star scantily-clad Asian women in suggestive poses. Neither he nor my manager knew how YouTube algorithms worked, and that the videos were suggested because he (or someone on his account) viewed that kind of content before. I have no idea how my manager explained this to him."
"Once at a game night, someone made a comment about an aspect of languages. The comment isn't really important. The point is, they were vaguely wondering about a thing, and I answered the question. They had just met me, and so tried to rib me by laughing and saying I was wrong. I said, no, pretty sure that's right, and this is why. He scoffed and said, "It's not like you have a degree in languages or something." Everyone else immediately dissolved into giggles as I informed him that actually, I had just moved back from grad school after getting my second linguistics degree. The bright pink look on his face was wonderful."
Good. Mansplainers should ALL be publicly embarrassed by genuine experts who also happen to be women.
imk said:
"I am an application developer in the public sector. I have made many of the computer programs where I work such as Human Resources, incident reporting, and some case management systems. Several times I have had people try to tell me, wrongly, how to use an application that I made. I especially like it when they tell me I should “ask the people at the company” uh, what company would that be? I tell them that it is very flattering that they think that the software was made by an entire company instead of by me alone in my office."
vtpilot replied:
"Haha. Reminds me of the time we had a PM and his crew come in and brief our group on a migration they were about to do. What he laid out made no sense to anyone and I figured Id ask a few questions to maybe help him see the error in his ways. He got all pissed off that anyone would question his wisdom and asked who the hell I thought I was. The look on his face when I said the author of the procedure and code they were using was priceless."
"When I was in 6th grade our science teacher asked what is the shape of the rainbow I instantly answered by saying it's a circle then the so-called "topper" of our class looked at me and laughed and did some trash talk afterwords when the teacher said circle is the correct answer whole class laughed at her."
"Was talking about binary star systems at a party, when suddenly, my ex says "That's not what binary is, are you dumb?" Then another friend looked up the word binary and read it out loud to him, his eyes bugged out. I told him: "Stop pretending to be an expert on things you don't understand. It makes you look like an idiot." My ex was thinking of binary computer code. He didn't consider that other things could be binary too."
"Some years ago some guys were talking about cars and engines and I don't even remember what. One of them was really condescending to me (F) and said, but you probably don't know anything about that do you? My husband set him straight and said, "she knows more about cars than I do so don't be so sure." Then of course he tried to prove he knew more. He did not. I grew up around race cars, and auto mechanics, who also thought everyone should understand their own car. I have to admit I know less now that they are all electronic and computerized. But this was back in the day."
"A tour group had a dad in it who insisted on trying to give his 2 cents on my animals and proceeded to put his fingers in the tank (despite my warning and practically yelling at him not to) with our stunted gators saying how hatchlings couldn't hurt a human only for the male to shoot out of his favorite hide and latch onto his hand... Yea I had to bite my tongue to stop laughing."
"I have a great one. I was once brought into a film company that was trying to start up. The head honchos decided for whatever reason that the only value I served the company was as a bargaining chip to get my dad's help with some investment stuff. Dad wasn't investing money, but he was still helping out in other ways. These guys totally jerked me around. They wasted a year of my life writing a script they had no intention of doing anything with, took me on a business trip to Cannes to supposedly mentor me and dismissed me, and ended up leaving me in a restaurant while I used the bathroom. They wasted my time for a year and a half, all because they thought I was a total idiot. They ended up funding another filmmaker's script later that summer... And the sh*t bombed to the tune of half a million dollars for a small-town production and bankrupted the company. Meanwhile, I took the story I wrote and am currently using it to pay for my law school!"
What a bunch of jerks. Don't waste people's time, whether it's in their professional or personal life. It doesn't matter how useful or useless you think they are.
smolestfox said:
"Brought my 6-speed car into a tire shop to get a new set. The guy at the desk (who didn’t see me pull up) assumed my car was the one parked next to mine because I’m a small mid-20s Asian woman and he didn’t expect me to drive a sports car. He asked for the keys and then fumbled over himself as he asked me to move the car into the waiting area because he couldn’t drive stick."
CrowWarrior replied:
"He works at a tire place and he can't drive a stick? I had to find a new place to get my cat groomed because the old groomer left and they hired someone who was allergic to cats so they wouldn't do mine anymore. I'm sure I had the same shocked/are you serious look on my face that you had on yours when he told you he couldn't drive a manual."
I did have to show my local garage how to operate all the things they test for the MOT on my classic the first time I took it to them to be tested. Having the headlight dip-switch on the floor was a new one on the guy. Indicators on a toggle-switch in the middle of the dash was another. Most other things are where you'd expect to find them. LOL
"A Dutch couple visited my workplace (tourist visitor center) and insisted that the French translation on our map was wrong. The reasoning was that "Groenland" shouldn't be there because it was the Dutch word for "Greenland", not the French one. I told them that "Groenland" was also the French translation, to which they chided back, "And how would you know?"
"I'm bilingual. I speak french." I informed.
"Clearly, not very well!" they insisted, then proceeded to ask for the wifi so they could use google translate.
Well, I gave them the wifi, and to google translate they went. Sure enough! "Groenland".
They didn't even apologize, they just said "I guess the map is correct then" and left."
"I had a paper returned to me this morning because I didn't write out all the names of the authors in the manuscript. I took a screenshot of their submission guidelines detailing AUTHOR NAMES MUST BE FORMATTED WITH THE FIRST INITIAL FOLLOWED BY the LAST NAME and sent it back. Got an apology e-mail and a "submission received" notification a few minutes later. Academia, I swear to God..."
"When I worked as a cashier in a grocery store people would always want to argue about their produce. They would bring up heads of iceberg lettuce and then argue with me that they were green cabbage or vice versa. I would always just smile, void the product, and then charge them for what they thought it was. The best was seeing people come back later pissed that their cole slaw didn't work.
The best, though, was the "sweet potato vs yam" argument that I would have with people several times during the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Most of what we sell in the U.S. are sweet potatoes, though some sweet potatoes grown in one state (Louisiana?) are the "yam" variety of the sweet potato. But people often call them yams and will fight you over it, even though true yams are hard to find unless your store stocks stuff for Latin American customers. We did, but yams were rarely in stock and always more expensive than sweet potatoes.
Anyway, sweet potatoes would go on sale for the holiday and people would buy lots of them. Every time I rang them up, I would get told that they were yams and that I was dumb for not knowing that. So I would void them and ring them up as yams for four times the price. When customers would want the sale price I would kindly remind them that I had tried to give them the sale price but that they had asked me to ring them up as yams instead."
I can't say I ever had customers like this in the time I worked at supermarket in the UK. I could recognise most things, but had to occasionally ask what variety of apple or whatever they had bought if they were not obvious or had no label. I did however manage to ring some piece of fruit or veg up as a greenhouse for one customer. It was immediately obvious, as it was 100x the price. LOL.
"I'm currently a junior in college and a couple of weeks ago when the semester started dying down I left the dorms to come back home and finish things out online. I also started working at the local grocery store as well. Around a week ago as I was checking out two customers when they told me they wanted to pay 50/50 with two cards. Our system requires us to manually enter the price so I did and the lovely gentleman told me my math was wrong and said he was a sophomore engineering student at a school nearby to help justify why he was correct. I respond "Oh cool. I'm actually a junior at (insert much much better engineering school). What are you studying?" while also pulling up a calculator and showing him he was wrong. Everyone always assumes the workers here are dumb so it's always nice to show them otherwise."
"I work at Starbucks, and I am a bilingual native Spanish speaker. Even though my English is not as good as my Spanish, it’s pretty good, but some people think I have a speech impairment. One time I was talking with my coworkers and forgot a word in English. I just stuttered and honestly seemed pretty dumb at the moment. One of my coworkers laughed and started making fun of me. She was a transfer and didn’t know I am a native Spanish speaker. A few minutes passed, and she was taking a drive-thru order which had a Spanish speaker that didn’t know much English. She had a lot of trouble taking the order, and no one knew what she was saying. I immediately took over the order talking in fluent Spanish. Since that day, she keeps being hesitant to look me in the eyes."
I was speaking with my mom in our Native language at a grocery store and some dude made a racist comment about immigrants not learning to speak American. My English is flawless, “Sir, we each dpeak three languages and I’m learning a fourth and fifth. How many do you speak?” That shut him up real fast.
"Didn’t necessarily make anyone look dumb, but certainly made some people feel bad. I lived in Germany for a year after high school as part of an exchange program, and there were several times when I had to make phone calls. I had to call doctors, employers, program coordinators, etc. so I got fairly used to the whole telephone garb in german. I could speak pretty fluently on the phone, but since it’s not my native language I would of course make small grammatical errors and stuff like that. This led to the unfortunate situation where people would assume I was german when on the phone because I spoke well enough, but since I kept making mistakes I was also stupid. People were quite rude to me over the phone, assuming that was due to the assumed stupidity. After revealing I was actually a foreigner they always sounded so surprised and complimentary of my German and were much more helpful and polite afterward."
I was mistaken for being Danish in the office as I could muster a decent "G'morn" (spelt godmorgen). It was immediately obvious that I didn't speak Danish when I just stared back blankly at them, before having to say I'm sorry, but I don't understand. They were a lovely friendly bunch though. Literally anyone who passed you in the corridor would speak. :D
"My best friend at the time assumed herself as the smarter one. In Math class one day we both came to different answers to a problem so she starts to explain where I went wrong. Eventually, I said to her we should check the answer in the back of the book, only to find out that my answer was correct. She was not happy & it sparked the beginning of the decline of our friendship."
"Moved to a new city for work after graduating from university. Figured since I was sticking around for a while, I'd check out some local bars for extra, low-stress work. The hope was to work as a dishwasher for beer and meet people between dish loads. I actually pulled it off too, score! Well, one of the cooks had hate for dishwashers and just kept bad-mouthing me every night. Calling me dumb, and useless, will never amount to anything. I really didn't care as him running his mouth didn't phase me while I made good money at my day job. Figured he was projecting more than anything. Finally, the main cook with who I became good friends overheard jerkoff running his mouth again at me and told him all about my day job, graduating from university, and only working for beer and meeting people. Once he heard all that, he never came back after that shift."
"My boss asked me a basic question in French when I brought him a report- 'qu’est-ce que c’est ca', which basically means 'what's this?' I speak passable French, so I answered him in French. Yeah, that was his only fancy French phrase. Very very awkward situation."
"When I was in 8th grade, we’d just learned about the seasons and the earth’s rotation and all that; to my surprise, my teacher taught us that the Earth is actually closest to the sun during winter! But it’s cold because of the tilt on the axis, not because of proximity to the sun. The tilt determines the seasons. And then soon after that I went to math class and my math teacher said something about how it was freezing because we are so far from the sun. And of course, I piped up to tell him he was wrong according to what Mr. Science Teacher had just taught us. My math teacher went off ripping into me so hard in front of the class! (It was lighthearted— he was known for being funny and making fun of kids all the time). He and I were going back and forth for a while, and I specifically remember him saying “oh yeah, cuz when I’m cold I move away from the fire!! Yeah, that makes perfect sense!” And I kept arguing “No no it’s because of the Earth’s tilt!” And so finally he googled it and I was right! He at least gave me credit and admitted he was wrong after that lol."
"High school economics class. The teacher asked about a specific lottery jackpot and if you should take the lump sum and invest or take annual payments. I said take the lump sum and a girl in class said, "ha, for once jitsrotu I'm smarter than you!" The teacher then went on to explain why taking a lump sum was better. Didn't talk to her for 10+ years... Got married 8 years ago. Funny how life works."
What's the point? Did you get married to HER? It just says you got married.
"In Scrabble with my pompous ex-stepdad. I told him "yew is a word, it's a type of tree." I was 14, but I had learned it from playing on a MUD and general dorkery. He laughed and acted like I was a liar, so he got to consult the dictionary and he stfu (naturally with no apologizing or admitting he was wrong)."
TIL yew wood should not be used for firewood: 1) hella rare and expensive, 2) toxic.
"A director at work did this recently. We work with various agencies. He tried to rat me out in front of the other direction and our boss by saying I wasn't providing services to 2 places, one of which I claim I am. I told everyone why the one site didn't get any services. The site wasn't eligible for the services he was talking about. It was a zoom meeting so I asked to share my screen. I showed them the proof that this site wasn't eligible. I then asked why he thought they were, why he felt it upon himself to check in on my office's sites, and why he felt the need to make sure I was doing my job with he wasn't my supervisor, or director, and didn't work in my office. Come to find out he decided to check to see if they were getting their needs met because he had learned I also wasn't providing services at another site I claimed was getting services. I was easily able to prove that they indeed did get the services and that he was talking to the wrong person. In the end, he looked like an a*s who was overstepping and possibly trying to get me fired or steal our funding, and I looked competent and professional. People are still pissed at him for this and no longer believe anything he says."
"It was more along the lines of underestimating me in sports. In high school P.E. I was treated pretty badly by many classmates. I'm small, quiet, and passive and it made me an easy target. We were playing baseball one day and it was my turn at the bat. They all scooted in real close, shouting stupid remarks. I bit my tongue and blasted that goddamn ball out of the field. I walked my way around the bases and tried to hide my smile. I played some softball when I was younger and was fairly decent at it. And if I was pissed when I played, that ball would leave town. Worked pretty well for me that day."
This happened to me once. Picked last, had to be forced by the gym teacher to put me to bat. Angry and well versed in baseball by having an older male cousin that lived next door (we played a lot until he got "too" old), I cracked that ball way out, farther than any of the actual guys could. They had to run to chase after it and I calmly walked the bases and sat back down where they'd regulated me, far away from them all. Sadly, they looked at me as more of a weirdo after that and there was no cheering or anything of the sort.
"My best friend and I were hanging out and wanted to watch a DVD on her family's XBox. We got power but no video or audio, I looked behind the TV and found the cat chewing on the AUX cable (he was noted for doing this.) I reached behind the TV and blindly plugged everything back in from what I could see. Still nothing. Her brother comes home and she asks for his help. I explain I had plugged it all back in after the cat pulled them out but still nothing. He tells me (with great authority) that I shouldn’t have bothered because as a girl I would never understand how the complexities of a game console worked. It was called an Xbox because only men have the X chromosome. It’s been 20 years and I still remember the smug look on his face because only men have X chromosomes. You’re and idiot and a chode Matt. An idiot and a chode."
"Was working part-time as a cashier while doing a Master's in Computer Science to pay for the groceries. Had a rude lady with her two kids get mad at me for some "not on sale item" and explain to her kids why they needed to do good in school so as not to end up like me. One of my professors was behind her in line, wanting to ask how my unpaid Machine Learning internship was going..."
Gotta wonder about those people who absolutely NEED to feel superior to other people... and especially try to use others as some kind of twisted 'learning moment' for their crotch goblins (I say crotch goblins instead of kids, because the kids of these types are typically little monsters themselves).
"I was arguing with someone over the delisting of wolves. It eventually lead to the dude accusing me of blowing smoke out of my ass. Said I needed to educate myself. So I sarcastically said, “What exactly do I need to educate myself on?” While uploading peer-reviewed studies and official government data that backed up everything I had said. I then commenced to follow up with “I’m studying wildlife biology and own a wildlife rescue. I specialize in wolves and coyotes”... I wasn’t really accused of blowing smoke out of my a*s after that. In fact, the entire tone shifted, I guess they didn’t want to admit that they looked like a tool."
I always come across these. Someone trying to tell you what you said is wrong about a topic you've researched. I just chuckle and leave it there.
"My sister-in-law used to make fun of my English all the time, whenever I mispronounced something she would start laughing and telling everyone "she's so cute, she can't pronounce this or that" I always considered her just a mean girl trying to keep the attention to herself but the English thing really bothered me. One day we were drinking and she started laughing at something I said, I lost it. I told her I speak 3 languages while she can barely speak English. We kept arguing until I said fine let's prove it. We took a mock-up English test online and I got a perfect score! She got 8/12. That was the last day she laughed at me. I just like to share this story to remind people to be kind and patient with others, speaking English doesn't mean you're smarter than everyone else.
Some background for the story, I'm originally from Colombia but now I live in Canada, I speak Spanish English, and French. To everyone that said I tried learning a second language but it's too hard, try again! It's worth it, and yes it will take years and effort but it will open your eyes to a whole new world."
When I was in the US Navy I was stationed at a base where foreign students came to be trained on the equipment they bought from us. When they arrived, I had to give them an English language proficiency test (which should have been given in their home country). Out of curiosity I gave that test to the US Navy students in an upcoming class, with no names on the papers, to avoid embarrassment. The US Navy average was about 88%. A German petty officer coming in for that class got 100% (to mitigate, he had lived in Virginia for three years in high school when his dad was at their embassy there).
"I used to be really into Warhammer. At some point, I went into the store to get something and some young guys were painting models. I walked over to see their work and they kind of sneered at me, a woman, in a male-dominated hobby. When I wanted to lift a model one said: don't, you'll break it if you don't know how to hold it properly. After that, the owner of the store walked in, greeted me as an old friend and we got into a conversation about how the new paints hold up to the old ones. You should have seen their faces."
Why are girls getting into male dominated hobbies like video games and TTRPG, they just ruin it... \s
Pale-Yam8117 said:
"Yes. As a single parent that has pink hair and facial piercings, I’m often treated either like trash or like an idiot. I’m neither. I actually have several degrees and graduated summa cum laude."
AllyBeth replied:
"Hello from a fellow pink-haired pierced girl! I have a degree in childhood education and taught 4K for two years!"
Stop. Judging. People. Based. On. Appearance. A lot of people will give you plenty of reasons to judge them, but appearance should not be one of them!
"I was explaining how Dyson fans work to a customer before. When I got to the party where the technology compressed air in smaller and tighter areas of the fan allowing it to blow cooler air, he yelled at me and called me an idiot and how he was an engineer and that’s not how it works. I simply asked him to blow air with a wide mouth and again with tight lips and asked him which one was cooler to the feel. He got upset and walked away."
"Was asked by my brother and girlfriend which planet is first starting from the Sun. Was then belittled for twenty minutes after answering Mercury because they were adamant it was Venus. I was just disappointed because we are in our twenties."
Ought to tell them it's Uranus, because that's clearly what they are thinking out of...
"Many times. My favorite though was when my neighbor where I live now went into great detail about the Pendleton Round-up when we were talking about going to a local rodeo. How big the arena is, and how famous it is when it first started. He told me about all the events and how they work as if I had never been to any rodeo. Then he ask me where I grew up. Pendleton, Oregon."
Pitiful_Pride8813 said:
"When I was studying for my horticultural certificate, there were some males in my class that thought I was nothing but an airhead. I studied hard and flogged their sorry butts in exams and assignments and they realized very quickly that my looks are very deceiving. Funny thing is, the ringleader in all of this never finished his certification whilst I passed with flying colors."
Varth919 replied:
"Went to school for woodworking. On the first day, the teacher let us know that sexism is not gonna be tolerated, especially since we had a woman in our class. Didn’t need that lecture though since she topped the class on day 1. Very skilled."
"Many times. I do business through my social media for fun and I work doing makeup. Some people just want to pretend they're intellectually from 'higher spheres' than me and they start bullsh*ting on things they have no idea actually. They can't imagine I do all this just for fun, that I was a scientific researcher until I decided to stop it, and that I have a Ph.D."
jooby-the-nooby said:
"Our school's schedule got revamped which meant that one of our classes that was two periods long was cut in half to accommodate for all the changes. When I brought this up to the teacher I was co-teaching with, she called me an idiot and told everyone sitting in our table group that I wasn't very good at math and everyone laughed. A few minutes later, the principal cleared up the new schedule, only for her to realize that she was wrong in the first place. Felt so good to see the look on her face when she realized she was the dumba*s and not me."
McPoyle_milk replied:
"What kind of teacher calls someone an idiot and continues to make fun of that person? What a horrible person. Glad she had a reality check."
"The day after graduating from high school, my brother, who had just learned to drive a stick (manual transmission), took me to go look at cars. The very first one he drove, an old Ford Explorer, wouldn't shift into fifth gear, at which point I said to him, "I don't think you should buy this one, something's seriously wrong with it." He told me to shut up, asked me what I knew about cars, and immediately bought them. A week later, the transmission dropped. Me, the day the transmission dropped: "What do I know about cars? Not much, but obviously, more than you!" It's been almost twenty years, and whenever he gets too full of himself, I remind him of that. (Note: I still know almost nothing about cars, except they go "vroom" and get me places. I've never had a major repair like a bad transmission, in a little over fifteen years of driving and owning cars.)"
I’m sorry but the last bit made me laugh so hard… “they go “vroom” and get me places” 😂
"Some guys came through my line a few weeks ago at the store and I asked for their IDs for the beer. One guy showed him I'd but for the rest of the transaction tried to argue with me that I only need to see the I'd of the buyer (it's any viable person I think may have some, in my state) and after they paid and left, the guy next in line informs me that he was the regional guy who checked and made sure stores followed alcohol laws and that I was completely correct on what I said."
"I was in my 3rd year of a marketing degree. At our Uni, it was mostly client work and the “prof” was a mentor. The usual prof that taught this program was on sabbatical, so this other monster of a prof took on the course. About 36 hours before the client presentation, this prof yelled at us in her office and told us we were going to embarrass the school. We won the competition."
Not sure if I should upvote for you being right or downvote for the $hitty prof.
"Oh working in retail has those moments constantly. People don’t read the signs right and one guy didn’t get the right chips for the deal and was getting mad at me and told me to come and he’ll show me the sign. I had already dealt with people not reading the fine print on that deal so I told him “I’m not going to look at anything, you can go look for yourself and read it then come back with the right product”. He came back without an attitude because he knew he was wrong and from that point on I always had my guard up when I saw him come in and I was ready for a fight each time."
Guy made a mistake. Perhaps he was rude about it, but no reason to look for a fight every time you see him.
"While still enlisted in the army, I worked in the maintenance field. Basically, if it had moving parts I knew a little bit about it. Now every year my unit goes on Annual Training. And this particular year, we got six brand-new generators. Now the section they belonged to was headed by a sergeant who had over 15 years of service and knew his job inside and out, backward and forwards. And then decided that I didn't know how to do my job. In his wisdom, he decided that the fuel cans for his new generators would be set next to said machines. All was well and good until I told him they needed to be placed on a secondary containment to prevent fuel from spilling on the ground, cuz we can get in huge trouble for that. He disregarded what I said with some idiotic excuse, don't rightly remember what, and went on his way. So naturally, I reported the violation of orders to my superior. Within five minutes there was an a*s chewing and the fuel cans were put on a secondary containment."
"I’m a liquor broker with professional beverage certifications who also happens to bartend a couple of nights a week at an upscale hotel bar and I’ve had many a patron try and tell me (incorrectly, often) the differences between different whiskeys, how they’re made, etc etc. I just smile behind my mask and nod and carry on."
"We were on state benefits as my kiddo is terminally ill and needs care 24/7, so I am unable to work. I had to call and speak with his benefit caseworker who asked if I wanted an opportunity to go to college and have it paid for. I asked if they'd pay for my doctorate, as I already have 2 Masters' Degrees. They would not."
Pretty presumptuous of him to assume that just because someone is on benefits it means they are uneducated
"I worked with someone for three years, a colleague who did similar work and was in my hiring interview, asking if I had ever considered doing a master's degree in our field; a coworker overheard and told them I already have a master's degree, that’s why they hired me."
"A few of us in the office were talking about calories and weight loss. An opinionated guy states ‘You’re all talking sh*t. On the packet, it says ‘Kilocalories’ which is thousands of calories. So that low-fat yogurt you’re eating is 70,000 calories, and you’re only allowed 3000. You’ve just wasted over 20 times your daily allowance on one yogurt.’"
"I had a coworker try to convince me that nuclear power was bad because it harmed the environment. I tried to explain that most of the bad press was due to knee-jerk reactions and over-inflated press funded by big coal. He replied, "What about the radiation in your house?" I had no clue what he meant. He then tried to convince me that radiation can and will leak out of power sockets from the walls. It almost seemed a lost cause at that point, but I threw out my crazy theory about heat exchangers and steam power."
"One of my clients filed a frivolous lawsuit after I refused to give him free services or a refund for his dissatisfaction with a service he had absolutely no reason to be dissatisfied with. During the deposition, it became clear that both the client and his attorney made the mistake of assuming I was just a meathead. The attorney ended up so flustered that he lost his composure, insulted me (always a clear sign that the other person has literally no factual argument) and we had to recess. After he apologized, he asked a couple more questions and ended the deposition. Insurance ended up settling the claim for almost nothing, just to avoid civil trial."
"I was in Mock Trial in high school, and my role was as the sysadmin for a college's computer network. The case was for a cyberbullying incident, and as an expert witness, I had some freedom to speculate. We were up against a fine arts school in the first round of the state tournament who were probably being graded on their performance, and they were working on the assumption that I didn't know anything about computers, so when their lawyer tried to cross-examine me, he tried asking technical questions. The smug grin on his face vanished once I told him that http: stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, and their bench looked at each other with expressions that clearly said, "He knew that?!" We still lost horribly, but making them look bad was worth it."
Imagine thinking that you'd make someone look bad for not knowing what most folks don't probably know. Ugh.
shagcarpet1970 said:
"Happens a lot in my family. They all bring up a topic around me and end with “you don’t know anything about that though.” Then they’re surprised when I do. Not sure what is expected of me."
92taurusj replied:
"Sounds like they're expecting you to be dumber than them so they can feel good about themselves tbh."
Oh I f*****g hate those type of people that can't own up to their mistakes. Never assume anything you know is 100% accurate. Always carry a little doubt in your mind just in case. It keeps you humble. Even if when I'm almost 100% certain about something I'll always say people to just double check the info in case I'm wrong.
Unless it's like "what's 2+2" but the answer to that is an empirical fact lol.
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Oh, the retail stories with customers and reading signs wrong. I had a regular who only came to my line because he thought I might be easy to scam but the real kicker is I put up price labels a few nights a week and can immediately find the correct product to prove his claims wrong. His orders always took a long time to go through since he insisted on wrong prices for each item. I had enough after three years of this so one busy day + his BS I yelled at him (all while giving him correct change, marking his receipt of the items he questioned about) and had to run after him with his forgotten wallet 'cause he was nearly out the door in a huff so fast. He told me he was glad that I still looked out for him even if I was mad and that everything would have been so bad for him if he left and lost his wallet. Since then he still goes to only my lane but with little fuss and "you actually know prices. everyone not as nice about it" since I can and will point out sales relevant to his items.
In my twenties, I worked nights as a forklift driver and generally looked like a dirtbag. A stepsister-in-law admitted to me that she'd assumed I was developmentally disabled, until she listened to my dad and me discussing the Chinese Civil War and Maoism, the French Revolution, and similar topics.
Oh I f*****g hate those type of people that can't own up to their mistakes. Never assume anything you know is 100% accurate. Always carry a little doubt in your mind just in case. It keeps you humble. Even if when I'm almost 100% certain about something I'll always say people to just double check the info in case I'm wrong.
Unless it's like "what's 2+2" but the answer to that is an empirical fact lol.
Load More Replies... Oh, the retail stories with customers and reading signs wrong. I had a regular who only came to my line because he thought I might be easy to scam but the real kicker is I put up price labels a few nights a week and can immediately find the correct product to prove his claims wrong. His orders always took a long time to go through since he insisted on wrong prices for each item. I had enough after three years of this so one busy day + his BS I yelled at him (all while giving him correct change, marking his receipt of the items he questioned about) and had to run after him with his forgotten wallet 'cause he was nearly out the door in a huff so fast. He told me he was glad that I still looked out for him even if I was mad and that everything would have been so bad for him if he left and lost his wallet. Since then he still goes to only my lane but with little fuss and "you actually know prices. everyone not as nice about it" since I can and will point out sales relevant to his items.
In my twenties, I worked nights as a forklift driver and generally looked like a dirtbag. A stepsister-in-law admitted to me that she'd assumed I was developmentally disabled, until she listened to my dad and me discussing the Chinese Civil War and Maoism, the French Revolution, and similar topics.
