People are wild, y’all. We meet each other, have conversations, pass like ships in the night, and yes, make assumptions about others we know hardly at all.
Sometimes we assume correctly, sometimes not, but before you assume the person you’re speaking to is stupid, you might want to consider how that assumption might blow back on you.
Just as these 17 folks, who ended up looking dumb themselves. Oops.
17. No big loss.
Guy tried to tell me he knew my job more than I did because he “went to school to be an engineer” and I just sell the machines.
Emailed him info directly from the manufacture on why he was wrong. He’s not my client anymore. Don’t care, Eff him and anyone who uses education as a reason to be a jerk.
16. That had to feel good.
I just started to work on the production line of an auto parts manufacturer. I was hot pressing rivets into the base plate of an emergency brake base. According to production logs, a days run was 300 pieces. Acceptable errors were 3.
I worked there for two weeks before the line supervisor advised my managing consultant that I was not meeting production requirements. According to my logs, I had zero errors and exceeded my 300 quota every day.
Another line supervisor confided in me that I was being replaced with my supervisors cousin, just arrived from The Philippines. I did not argue or protest. It would have done me no good. The managing consultant knew as well but had no pull.
After re-examining my resume and seeing I had a degree in computer science and certification in technical manual writing, I was brought back to the very same production floor in a different role. As part of QA compliance, every workstation needed the production one-offs documented with illustrated inspection reference guides.
When I arrived at the office, my former line supervisor demonstrated the quadruple take. Patrick Stewart had nothing on her. No one told her what my role was. My presence there resembled that of a site inspector. I walked the entire floor borrowing templates, taking measurements and photos. Looked very official.
My former line supervisor thought I was put on her production line as a ringer to inspect her. She worked every day worried I was preparing to give her the axe. She shared that concern in confidence with others who knew better. No one corrected her. Just told her not to worry.
15. No one feels sorry for you, sir.
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 too) with our stunted gators saying how hatchlings couldn’t hurt a human.
The male to shoot out of his favorite hide and latch onto his hand…. yea I had to bite my tongue to stop laughing.
14. This assumption always makes me cringe.
This didn’t happened to me but to someone else My step mom used to be an occupational therapist and would help the elderly in the hospital.
One patient she had to work with was Vietnamese so he didn’t know English. He came with his son so my Stepmom decided to ask him about his father but her coworker interrupted her saying “I don’t believe he speak english”.
This whole time the son hasn’t said a word while my stepmom was working with his father. When they were done the father and son left and as soon as the were at the door, the son turned around and said “Remember, I don’t speak english”.
The coworker was dumbfounded when he said that and all my stepmom could do was laugh.
13. Color me surprised.
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.
12. Both sad and hilarious.
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 then apologized to me for her boss’s behavior.
Funniest part was as she was hanging up I heard her talking to another nurse saying “yeah Dr. Dumba$$ couldn’t spell welcome again.”
11. At least he could admit it.
When I was in 8th grade, we’d just learned about the seasons and 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).
Him 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.
10. You always check the plug. And the power strip.
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.
9. Bless teachers.
We had the 17 year cicadas making an appearance where I live and I was explaining to my science teacher how I had tons of seagulls by my house, eating the cicadas.
She proceeded to tell me over and over that we do not have seagulls in our area because we do not live by a body of water. Lake Michigan was 45 mins away. I said, well I definitely have seagulls in my yard eating cicadas.
A week or so later, she comes back with a newspaper with a big picture of Seagulls on it. They were hanging out in the suburbs to eat the cicadas. She admitted she was wrong. But like, my entire life… cicadas or not we’ve had seagulls in parking lots… this lady must not have been from around here. We just had more because of the cicadas…
8. It doesn’t get more cringe than that.
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.
7. So gross.
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.
6. What possessed her to comment?
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 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.
5. This makes me uncomfortable.
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 where 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 afterwards.
4. She just had to wait for it.
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 as 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 dummy and not me.
3. Very little satisfaction if you ask me.
I used to work at a courtyard Marriott hotel, which is a hotel oriented for business people who have to up early and work late. You know, real work horses and road warriors. The hotel was a sprawling 5 stories tall with around 200 or so rooms. It was also right next to LAX so we always got a lot of business people flying in thinking they were hot sht because their company flew them out to do business in LA. Whatever.
This one day I’m working front desk and it’s kind of late, around midnight maybe, and one of our guests comes in kind of drunk and asks for me to reset his room key before he heads to his room because, “ we always do them wrong”. So I’m like yeah sure thing not a problem, have a good night!
He comes back down 5 min later, visibly agitated and says “ what the heck man? I thought I told you to remake my keys. Can you Do your fcking job right ?“ and In the hospitality industry you’re not allowed to talk back, raise your voice, or really stand up for yourself. your one and only goal is to make the guest feel welcomed.
So, I apologize, take the blame and say it won’t happen again, and make him an extra key. He snatches them from my hand and storms off to his room. 5 minutes later he comes back down, again! “ what is wrong with you ? Are you stupid? Are you wasting my time on purpose? I’m heading to my room and you better come up with working room keys!” And he throws his keys at me.
My manager sees this all happen and is like you know what, let me handle this – you deserve a break. I’m fuming of course, I go to the break room and just pace ,wondering what gives people the audacity to act like that. My manager eventually comes back, he enters the break room with a smile and clearly something to report.
He says, “ he was going to the wrong floor. His room was actually one floor up. He said he’s sorry.” I WISH I COULD HAVE SEEN HIS FACE.
2. A scary comeuppance.
As a lifeguard we had a rule that young kids needed an adult in the water within arm’s reach.
I saw this mom and her 5 year old walk in. Mom is wearing jeans and on her phone, clearly not planning on swimming. I anticipate the issue and go to talk to her before the kid gets in.
I explain our policy, that the pool is 4 ft deep minimum and that the policy is for the safety of the child, that having a parent close by who can respond in case of drowning immediately is by far faster than relying on the lifeguard to get down, jump in and swim all the way out for a rescue.
She says it’s a stupid policy, that her kid is a fantastic natural swimmer, that they take him to the lake and he swims just fine, that I’m just harassing her, that I just don’t want to do my job, all the classic offended parent BS.
Literally while she’s telling me this, the kid runs and jumps into the pool, dog paddles about 10 feet away from the edge, and then goes into active drowning, requiring a rescue from my other lifeguard, who thankfully was basically already there to catch the kid.
She signed the refusal of care and left quicker than anyone I had ever seen. Felt bad for the kid, she seemed almost mad at him for making her look like an idiot.
1. Don’t drink and hotel, friends.
As a very young woman I was staying in a cheap hotel with my underage sister overnight after a concert when a very drunk and belligerent man began pounding on the door demanding to be let in. It was maybe 3 or 4 am and I called 911 when he began screaming threats of violence if I didn’t open the door. The operator could over hear it and promised an officer quickly. Suddenly the man disappears, pure silence for maybe twenty or 30 minutes. I’m falling back asleep. Suddenly I hear the door handle jiggling and the lock unclicks.
It’s the hotel concierge, unlocking the door and he’s got a tool to open the weird bar inside door lock thing as I’m screaming bloody murder. He tells me to “let my drunk brother sleep it off” and suddenly I hear Police don’t move, there’s a commotion, the police tell me to close and lock my door and we won’t be bothered again tonight. The concierge assures everyone there was a misunderstanding and I’ll be comped in the morning.
The next morning at check out the front desk claims no knowledge of this and tell me there’s no way I’m getting a discount, again I was young and just accepted that at the time, but older and wiser I now wonder if they were working together, if it was an honest mistake and what the hell would have happened if I hadn’t called 911.
Seriously, maybe just give people the benefit of the doubt. Yeah?
Do you have a story that would fit on this list? Share it with us in the comments!
