These Redditors took to the site to share the dumbest and funniest things they’ve had to explain to people, from employees to family members and beyond. Don’t feel bad about what you don’t know; just laugh at what others don’t—maybe you’ll even learn something! Here are 42 of the dumbest things people have ever had to explain.
1. License Plate Letters
A few weeks ago, I had to explain to my wife that the letters on her license plate were part of her “license plate number". She got a ticket at her university for parking without payment. The payment kiosk makes you enter your license plate number when paying for a day of visitor parking. She was ranting and raving about what bullcrap it was, so I asked her to show me the receipt she got when she paid for parking.
Sure enough, she had just entered the numbers and not the letters. I don’t know how she made it into her mid-30s before learning this.
1. Do You Even Lift, Bird?
The dumbest thing I had to explain? That birds do, in fact, have muscles. Seriously, they were asking how birds can fly if they don’t have muscles. I didn’t manage to convince them.
3. Language Not Included
That her adopted grandbaby from Korea wouldn't just grow up automatically knowing Korean or have a Korean accent.
4. Paper Trail
I once had to explain to a colleague that she did not have to print and file every single email she received. I couldn't believe it. She claimed she was concerned about making sure we had written records in case the computers stopped working. She was almost 70 when I told this to her and she had been doing it her whole career since email was introduced.
Literally every single email got printed. If there was an addition to an ongoing thread, she would print the whole darn thread again for every new email. I’m pretty sure this woman is responsible for at least one entire forest of tree loss. Nobody thought it was weird that her department was spending the most on toner and paper.
She was also head of the department, so maybe her subordinates were scared to say anything.
5. Washington D… Ooooh
I work in customer service for a cell phone company so every day I hear the dumbest customer I've ever heard—but this one call was just unbelievable. A customer called complaining about international numbers calling and soliciting her. I asked what the number was and she gave me a standard 10 digit number. I asked why she thought it was international to which she said: "Because the caller ID says it's coming from the District of Columbia".
6. Greedy, Greedy Never Gets
I was in a group setting up a raffle for the staff. The folks helping me set it all up kept asking if they could rig the system and make it so they would win the prize themselves. I had to explain to them that we couldn't do that and that even if we pulled our name out of the hat, we'd have to redraw so that we had the image of being fair. That we needed the staff's trust if we were to make this group work.
They said it was unfair and that because we put so much work into it, that they deserved to win the prize anyway. But that was just the start of their stupidity. Here's a list of what we have:
Renting out a cruise ship for the entire company. (Note that our budget is like $100 or so, all raised on our own through fundraisers.) Making a literal lottery (I had to explain gambling laws and such). Wanting to sell booze to everyone (I had to explain to everyone that we couldn't do that at our workplace for... so many reasons). Being asked if we could just take the money we raised as our own. Using the money (which once again was around $100 at the time) to buy a car for our own use. I had to ask them why we even needed a car and how we would even raise the money for it, but they kept insisting on it.
I was the youngest person there, by the way. It was insane how immature these people were! After a while of being in charge of that, I told my boss that it was taking too much focus away from my actual work and we disbanded.
7. We’ll Pay Later… Promise
This happened just the other day...Two middle-aged women come up to my counter and order their drinks. After ringing them up I tell them their total and they tell me that they're going to wait for their friend to pay. Perfectly fine, I tell them their drinks will be waiting for them when they're ready. I finish making their order pretty quick and place their drinks by the register.
Five minutes pass and they come up asking if their drinks are done yet. I said yes, just been waiting for them to pay and they proceed to FLIP OUT saying how they were just planning on coming back and paying with their friend. So essentially they wanted me to give them free drinks and trust that they'd come back to pay. I do not think so, crazy eye patch lady and co. I do not think so.
8. Crystal Scientist
My sister always says she is a scientist and does things based on facts. She also says she is way above average intelligence. I told her I was having more instances of sleep paralysis. She told me I should get some crystals. I told her thanks, but I made an appointment with my doctor and did a sleep study instead. She has an associate degree in nursing.
I also once had to explain that direction is a fixed thing and that it is our position that changes. She insists that in front of her is always north because it is HER north. My husband tried to explain she was wrong. My engineer dad who also says he is so smart backed her up, but I suspect that has more to do with making me wrong. She tutors in science and math.
9. Blended Chicken Anyone?
I had to explain eggs to a coworker once. Like, the concept of an egg. She thought scrambled eggs were made by cracking them open and pureeing the baby chickens in a blender. I don't know man, to this day I'm still not sure she wasn't hosing me. But she was kind of dumb about a lot of things, so.
10. Instructions Are for Losers
When I was working internet tech support I had a customer call us up because his net wasn't working. He said he hooked everything up but "the darn thing just won't let me email". He then said: "The cable you sent me was too darn big". I told him that shouldn't be the case, and he said he had to re-size it to make it fit into his computer.
After a little more questioning, I found out he just took the box that had his network card, his modem, and most importantly that CD with a huge red sticker on it that says "RUN THIS FIRST BEFORE SETTING UP EQUIPMENT," and chucked all that stuff aside. He then took out the ethernet cable, tried to plug it into his 56k modem, when it didn't fit he took a knife and carved it down to make it fit.
I just kind of sat there as he was furious because his service didn't work and we sent him useless equipment. When he finally let me get a word in, I told him he was supposed to run the CD and use all of that other equipment. He said he didn't want the service anymore and told us to cancel it, but I told him he signed a contract and I could set up an appointment for him for a technician to come out. He wasn't interested.
I hated that job sometimes.
11. The Big Toilet in the Sky
My friend thought the holes of the airplane toilets were an opening to the sky. She insisted that her pee went straight out of the plane and evaporated in the air, same with poop. "It's true! I saw the clouds, too," she'd say. Worst part of this is that I told my mom later that day and she had the same reasoning. Had to google it just to make sure I wasn't crazy.
12. Rollercoaster Hack
I had to explain to my sister how you don't get a longer ride if you sit at the back of the rollercoaster.
13. Electricity, Sorcery, Same Thing
I had to explain to a friend that Amish people know electricity exists, and that they just didn't believe we should use it. I also had to tell her that we generate electricity in power plants and that it doesn't just float around in the air.
14. Big Refund, Big Refund
A friend of mine got a large tax refund every year, so one year she changed her withholdings to take less in taxes out of her paycheck. Come tax time she didn't get her usual large tax refund. She was furious! I kept explaining to her that since the IRS took less out of her paychecks, there wouldn't be as much overpaid to them to refund back to her. She didn't get it.
I asked, "Did your take-home pay increase after you changed the withholding?" "Yes". "And it went up because you weren't paying as much in taxes?" "Yes". "And you get a tax refund when you've paid more to the IRS than you owe them?" "Yes". "And if you didn't pay them as much this year, then they didn't get as much extra money from you?" "Yes". "So that's why your refund is less this year?" "No! I changed my withholdings because I get a big refund".
I think she thought she got to reduce her withholdings because she gets large tax refunds, like it was some special bonus program she'd qualified for. I even showed her how the extra money in her paychecks all year added up to what she usually got refunded. She still didn't get it.
15. Kayak Car Hat
I worked with a guy who kept his kayak tied to the roof of his car all the time because he said it increased his fuel economy. I had to explain how it wasn't "creating more downforce to reduce friction".
16. Infinite Pancakes, Please
I didn't have to deal with it, but it was amusing listening to a waiter at an IHOP try to explain to a customer why they couldn't order "never-ending pancakes" to go.
17. A Crucial Mishearing
I'll never forget when I had to explain that gonorrhea is not a country, it’s an STI. A student walked into my history class and said: “My mother’s boyfriend is from gonorrhea!” I asked her to repeat herself thinking I had heard things wrong...but she said the exact same thing. We had just finished a unit on Ghana. She thought we did a unit on the country of gonorrhea.
I only had one question: Was the boyfriend was from Ghana, or did she hear them talking about an STI? I never found out the answer.
18. Just Borrowing
I had to explain to my then 26-year-old sister that my infant niece was not, in fact, allergic to corn because it showed up in her poop. She didn't believe me. Or our mother. My niece is four and has not had corn since she was a baby because my sister is still convinced that the corn not being fully broken down means she can't eat it.
HOW, woman? H. O. W?
19. Glass Cleaner
I have been a waiter for years but by far the stupidest thing I've ever had happen to me at work happened when I was just starting out. I was waiting on a family of four and they all ordered ice waters. I brought them their drinks and then a few minutes later the mom waves me over. She says, "The outside of my glass is wet".
I stare at it and see the beads of condensation on the outside of the glass. "Yeah, it's called condensation, it’s what happens when you have ice water in a room temperature glass". She stares at me like I'm a freaking alien, and then I realize that this was my future as a waiter: Dealing with freaking idiots. I took her drink and wiped it off with a towel and handed it back to her.
20. I Can’t Even
This may be hard to explain, but there was a lever in my mother’s house that controlled the water. If the handle pointed down to the floor the water was on. If it was lifted and pointing at you it was off. One of the pipes had a leak, so my stepfather said to leave it off when not in use until it was fixed. When my mother gets stressed out she shuts down.
She insisted she wouldn't know what to do. I explained it to her multiple times. It's just lifting one lever. It was to the point where I had to write signs with arrows and I'm still not sure she got it. I was freaking furious.
21. The Angry Ones, Please
That the pizza place that I worked at sold pizza...The name of it was ____ Pizza. Also one time a guy was ordering a cheesesteak and said he wanted peppers. I said ok, we have hot, sweet, and green peppers, and asked him which he would like. He responded, "angry peppers". I do talk fast so my words tend to blend together sometimes, but it took a good two minutes to explain that there was no such thing as an "angry pepper," and that I was really saying AND GREEN peppers.
22. Hold Your Blood
I had a sergeant in the army (definitely over 30 years old, married, and had two children) who would get insanely angry when the females in his platoon had to use the restroom or be excused from formation to tend to period stuff. He had only worked with infantry units before transitioning to a mixed-gender training unit and a female NCO had to pull him aside several times to explain that we couldn’t physically control our flow.
“JUST FREAKING HOLD IT, SOLDIER!” was screamed at us a lot.
23. Free Pet with Purchase of Grapes
I worked at a Stop and Shop in the produce department part-time for a few years. There was a kid in there named Bobby who sold illicit substances but had a really good sense of humor. One day we get a call from a customer saying she found a spider in her grapes. He handles it properly and explains that sometimes bugs do come in on the fruit and that he was sorry that happened.
She, however, says that she's bringing it in so we can test whether it's poisonous or not. Problem is, we don't do that. It's a bug. Kill it. She comes in 45 minutes later with this spider in a tupperware container and starts asking me what we're going to do with it. As I'm backpedaling my way through the conversation Bobby walks up saying, "OH YOU'RE THE SPIDER LADY!"
He grabs the container and notes how big the spider is, which freaks her out a little bit. She asks him what we are going to do with it and with the most serious tone on he just says, "Probably going to shake him up and see if he'll fight the other ones we have out back". Then he just walks away. Lady went ape on me—but it was so worth it. I lol'd.
24. Hacker!
I work for a bank, and customers will sometimes call to ask how they can access their account online and do online banking. I told this older woman to go to bankname.com. She started yelling and cursing at me that I made her go into her email and that she can't believe I'm reading her emails. I tried explaining to her that I can't see her computer as we're talking over the phone, and she probably just got into her email because it was her homepage or the last page she viewed.
She wanted nothing of it. No matter how many times I kept asking her to find the address bar and type bankname.com...she said that it kept bringing her back to her email. The conversation lasted 45 minutes. She was yelling the entire time. I pretty much wanted to shoot myself in the head.
25. The Garlic Bread Revelation
We have a college intern who apparently never had anyone cook for him, so he was confused when I said I made garlic bread for dinner the night before. I explained that if you buy bread, garlic, and butter, you can put them together to make your own garlic bread at home. He was flabbergasted.
26. Raising the Roof
Working in hotels I have met quite a few dim bulbs. One night a woman stormed into the lobby screaming about how our parking garage did not have enough clearance for her jacked-up hummer. I explained that there is an uncovered parking across the street, and if her hummer did not fit in the garage she could park there.
She got irate about how it was unsafe and demanded I (this is a direct quote), "Go outside and raise the parking structure with a stick or something". I politely explained that was physically impossible for me to do, and she said, "Well, then you shouldn't be working with people!"
27. Internet Magic
I work in IT and a lady got married over the weekend (I didn't know or care). She called me that Monday and told me she could not log into her account. I pulled up her info and said, "Well, you aren't locked out. What username are you using?" She gave me her first initial and a new last name. I said that's not your account, where she proceeded to tell me how she got married etc.
Woman literally thought that when she got married all her accounts ever associated with her name changed. Automatically.
28. A Change in Perspective
Not me, but I witnessed an argument among my floormates freshman year of college, UC Santa Barbara (geography factors into this). One guy, who grew up in SoCal and who allegedly had a pilot's license, was insistent that when you look out at the Pacific Ocean from our campus you're looking west. Check a map of California—the coastline angles northwest from Los Angeles to central California.
On the coast in Santa Barbara, you're facing straight south. A bunch of them held a map up to the wall to show him. He walked up to them, rotated the map about 45 degrees clockwise and said, "No, you have to look at it like this". I could barely contain my astonishment.
29. Bad Chicken, Worse Person
I work in a grocery store. We once had a sale on a big thing of fresh chicken. The wings were $9.90, and the thighs were $9.95. Weird pricing, I know, but the signs clearly labeled them correctly. There was also a display for close-dated chicken that was $3 off, and these were also clearly labeled. This guy comes up to my register with three chicken packages and throws them down on the belt.
I smile and say hello, and he says, "How come you're charging me more for some chicken than the others?" I tell him because the chicken with the red label is close-dated, and management needs to sell it quickly, therefore making it cheaper. He then started getting more aggressive. "Why in the heck did you put out bad chicken? You an idiot or something?"
At this point, I'm a little shocked, but I grab the chicken and ring it up. "Now wait a minute, I never said I wanted that chicken you're tryna poison me with". I ignore him, void the chicken off the transaction, and ask him if he needs help with anything. He retorts, "Yeah, ya dummy, ring up my chicken". I'm starting to lose it a little, but I grab the first package of chicken, which happens to be close-dated, and scan it.
I look up and he's giving me the dirtiest look I've ever seen. I grab the second package, the $9.90 wings, and scan it. Immediately, "You overcharged me". I show him the sign, and the label, but he still rants on about me "overcharging" him. Ready to get this guy out of my hair, I grab the last package of chicken, the $9.95 thighs, and scan it.
Shockingly enough, he thinks I'm making a conscious effort to rip him off, yet again. "Who do you think you are stealing my money like that?!" After a solid 45 seconds of screaming, he finally pays the total and storms out. The story doesn't end there, however—it gets worse.
My dad is the manager and he swung a pretty nice deal on gallons of Simply Lemonade. He bought an incredible amount of lemonade, and put them for sale at $1. Still in a bad mood from the night before, I'm mad when I see this same jerk strut up to my register the next day. He throws the gallon of lemonade on the belt and gives me the glare. I make sure not to greet him this time. I scan the lemonade and tell him the total, $1.07.
As you might expect, "You over charged me". I reply, "No, I didn't". He goes on to tell me I'm a dummy as the sign says $1. I have to explain to him that his total is $1.07, because juice is taxable unless it has more than 70% fruit juice, and Simply Lemonade is only 11% lemonade. His reply?
"You're an idiot. You're the reason this country is going down the crapper. I don't want your dang lemonade". He proceeded to grab the bottle and throw it at a display of paper towels nearby, causing quite a mess. He stormed out, screaming, "I'm never spending a dime here again!"
30. Build More Cloud Factories
A friend of mine once told me that all clouds in the sky are made in factories. He once saw a picture of a cooling tower of a power plant. I tried 10 minutes explaining how that’s not true for many reasons, but I eventually had to give up. So now I guess I know why poor countries have deserts and rich countries can pay for rain factories. Me and him both have a technical degree.
31. Let It All Out
No, Paris is not the capital of Germany. No, we can't just land on the sun and live there. We can't just drink the extra water caused by global warming. And we can't load it onto a rocket and shoot it into space. The sun isn't yellow because it reflects off the moon, it's a star, so it's burning.
Dad, the reason you're having so many issues with your computer is that you can't remember your passwords or write them down and keep them in a secure place. It's unreasonable to get mad at me if I can't sort this for you, when I don't know the password for your email address. Around 90% of your problems are caused by this.
Mum, please don't take my pads out the bin and have a look at how heavy my period is so you can try to win this stupid competition of who has the worst periods. I don't care that yours were worse than mine. Stop making it a "Who has it worse?" competition. They're called Ferrous Metals, not Ferris Metals.
Yeah, I'm surrounded by idiots.
32. Celsius Gang Represent
Once I had to go on a car ride with an uncle and his two kids who were roughly my age. It was late fall and the temperatures were dipping into the low thirties. I remarked that the roads might be icy and the two kids said that was impossible because it wasn’t below zero. I told them that water freezes at 32 degrees and it was currently 33.
They insisted that water froze at 0 degrees. I explained that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 0 degrees Celsius. We’re Americans, so we use Fahrenheit. They were not having it and they said I was stupid. I looked at my uncle hoping he would jump in, but he remained silent. And that’s how you can be right but still lose an argument if everyone else in the room is a freaking moron.
33. Adulting or Fun
Lots of stuff regarding working/parent support. When I was 18, I was on my own. Most of my friends lived with their parents, and didn't understand why I "wasn't fun anymore". No, I can't just ditch work to come to a party. No, that card your parents gave you isn't a magic pass for free gas. They are paying for it. No, I don't want to have a party at my house. Yes, I know that I don't have parents to worry about.
Yes, I work full time, but no, I don't have, "like, tons of money to buy whatever I want". I have bills to pay.
34. The Big Island Things
I was in seventh grade in the US. I told a classmate my family was going to France over summer break, and he asked where that was. I said Europe and he asked me how far away that was. I thought he misheard me so I said, "You know, Europe, the continent". He didn't understand what continents are. I pointed at the world map that was in the classroom and told him, "You know, the big island things on the map. Like we're in that left one called North America, and Europe is across the ocean, etc."..
He just nodded and said he thinks he gets it, but he didn't look entirely sure. I was utterly dumbfounded. Obviously, we'd had years of history and geography lessons by seventh grade. Like Jesus, I knew he wasn't the smartest kid, but how do you make it to your teenage years and not have even the basic understanding of what the world looks like?
35. Computers? Back in My Day…
True story. I once had a boss who couldn't understand how a computer worked. She would always ask me to copy letters she typed onto the companies letterhead. Almost every day she would email me a letter to copy and paste onto the letterhead. I would literally copy + paste, save, and email it back to her. Then she would read the letter over and compare it to her original letter.
AND THEN, she would email it back to me to print. Needless to say, I showed her how to do this and I walked her step by step through saving a document onto the desktop, opening the document, and then typing directly onto said document. Then, there was that time I spent half an hour explaining the difference between desktop view and mobile view.
For some reason, she couldn't understand why websites looked different on her phone than on the computer. The concept of a larger monitor and image sizes blew her mind. A little bit of context: She is in an executive-level ($$$) position where most of her job entails using a computer. She refused to take a Microsoft class and wouldn't attempt to learn this very needed skill.
36. Birds Fly, Duh
I work at the Philadelphia Zoo. One day, I was carrying a chicken to the exercise yard. A man was eagerly following me waiting to see what animal I had inside the carrier. The chicken was reluctant to leave her carrier at first, and when she finally exited the carrier I said, "Good bird". Then the man asked me, "Why are you calling it a bird if it's a chicken?"
I didn't know how to respond without making him sound like a moron.
37. QWERTY Conundrum
Many years ago I worked for a local internet provider's dialup and eventually DSL support. The amount of stupidity that job provided was massive, though most of the time it was pretty funny, such as the time some old man called in about 5:30 in the morning, obviously drunkish, and hedging around not being able to access his pornography. Then he fell asleep.
I put him on speaker as it was fairly slow at that point in the morning, and we listened to him snore for a good 10 minutes on speakerphone before I hung up on him. The WORST, dumbest client ever was this lady who could not at all in any way type out her username, which was just her first and last name... I had to try to walk her through where the letters were.
“Okay Mary, type ‘M’. ‘M’ is in the lower right-hand side of your keyboard, just above the space bar, okay? You see an ‘M’? Great! Next type ‘A’; ‘A’ is on the far-left side of the keyboard. Okay, you see 'ma' on the screen? Perfect! Now ‘R’, the ‘R’ is on the row right below the numbers and is in the middle left of the keyboard. Okay, what do you see now?”
Mary: "I see 'm' 'a' 't' 't' 'f' 'f' 'q' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r' 'r'…”
I literally banged my head on my desk, I was so frustrated.
This literally went on for ten minutes with all sorts of horrible mistakes, the worst being her forgetting where the letter(s) she just typed 30 seconds ago were, and her inability to just delete one character before she got very frustrated, said she would just make her kids do it, and hung up on me.
38. Water Wing Safety
I worked as a lifeguard at a public pool last summer. We had a strict "No water-wings" policy. Those little things are death traps. So this woman is putting water wings on her kid next to the pool, and I politely inform her that we do not allow water wings, and have life vests available for free literally five feet from where she's standing.
She becomes so infuriated that I would "dare to dictate how she treats her child" and tons of other nonsense. So I call my supervisor over, and as he arrives and is speaking to her, the kid jumps in the pool. Water wings slip up his arms, and he's suspended underwater. Jump in and pull him out. Woman is furious that I would "have the nerve to touch her child. How dare I?!"
39. But… What About Obama?
I worked for the Department of Vital Statistics for a year and a half, and have handled 100-150,000 birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates in my life. I'm an "industry expert" in this bullcrap field. Birthers ticked me off to no end with their bullcrap.
I. A short form is just as valid as a long form.
II. Everyone only gets a certified copy of the birth certificate. The original is the property of the state. They keep it sealed in a vault, so they can issue you a(nother) certified copy when you lose yours.
III. The paper with your footprint and gold sticker and doctors’ signature isn't a birth certificate, it’s just a memento.
IV. President Obama spent $0 "hiding" his birth certificate from the general public. Birth certificates are secured from everyone, by the state, free of charge.
V. To that point, birth certificates are NOT public record. You can't randomly order mine. I can't randomly order yours. You also can't randomly order the president's "even though he's the president".
40. Lighter Beats Match
Dumbest thing I had to explain? How to strike a match. My lab partner was 18 and had never in her life encountered or used a match. I had to teach her not only how to strike it, but also to not drop it as soon as it’s lit. I tried to teach her to blow it out, but the fact the flame moved freaked her out so much that she’d drop the match. I had to plug our sink’s drain with a bunch of paper towels and fill the bottom with water so she’d have some way to extinguish the match.
Suffice it to say, I was the one doing the majority of the lab work that semester.
41. Just Turn it
My company leased a space to a daycare center that came with a storage shed for outdoor toys. One day I got a call from the new manager of the daycare stating that we gave her the wrong keys for the lock on the shed. I was surprised, as we hadn't had any complaints from the previous manager. I told her this and asked her to try them again.
She called back the next day and said that the keys weren't correct and she needed a new lock. At this point I decided to drive across town and check it out. When I got there she was in a bad mood and started complaining about how she shouldn't have to deal with things like this. I apologized for the company and asked her to hand me the key so I could try.
She insisted it didn't work, but gave it to me anyway. I walked over to the unit, inserted the key, turned it and the lock sprang open. I actually wasn't expecting this so I just turned to her. Her response made my jaw hit the floor: "Nobody ever told me that you had to turn the key".
42. A Nearly Fatal Mistake
In high school, I worked at a local hardware store. We also refilled propane tanks for gas grills. After a summer or two of doing 10 or more tanks a day you get good at guesstimating how full a tank is just by picking it up. One particularly hot day a customer comes in and sets his tank down next to me and asks for a fill-up.
I pick up the tank and inform him that the tank is full and does not need a fill-up. He looks pretty agitated already with this short exchange and says that he checked that it was empty and would I just fill it up. To this, I inquired how he checked. There are several ways to check, one being by the weight of the tank, another is the thermal strip on the side (which his tank did not have). The other is to pour hot water down the side and feel where it gets cold.
His reply gave me chills—this blithering idiot lucky to be alive. He said he checked it by holding his lighter in front of the valve and opening it. To this I replied: "You ought to write to your congressman and representative, because they saved your life today. This tank has an OPD safety valve on it that prevents the gas from coming out without anything attached".
He walked out without another word and with a very red face.
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