People Share The Dumbest Ideas They've Ever Had That Actually Worked

"But I got the discount."

In my freshman year of college, my grades were really not great. And my parents were really strict about getting good grades. When my dad asked to see my grades, I panicked and did the inspect command on the computer where you can change type faces on the screen to read different words and letters. I changed all of my shitty grades to good grades. My dad was so happy that I did "good" my first year of school. He asked me to print my results. I did, and turns out he had to send them to our car insurance company for a "good student discount". Ultimately, I committed insurance fraud by accident. But I got the discount.

DreamRader

"So it was my mom's birthday..."

So it was my mom's birthday: we're barbecuing and we got her to stay inside and prep food so we can decorate the front with balloons and streamers and what have you. Well we got the whole thing done in secret as hoped, but then we realized there was no way we could get all the left over decoration material and balloon pump inside without her noticing.

Now there are two ways into our house: the back door that leads into the garage and then into the kitchen where mom was, and the front door which is visible from the kitchen sink. So, I told my brother I would go in from the back door and distract her while he brought the stuff in through the front, and down the hall past the kitchen

Once i got in the kitchen it had occurred to me that I had no plan of attack so i legit just said "hey mom look at this dance i made" and started like swaying and bopping up and down and doing jazz hands and going "lalalala". Mind you, im like 17 years old in this scenario.

So she's just watching me and when bro comes in and is sneaking through the hall behind her with all the stuff, i keep telling her "wait it's about to get good" and she kept watching in confusion. The second he was in the clear, i stopped and said "ok that's it" and that was that. We succeeded.

the-mystery-whale

"One time..."

When I was like 7 years old I was playing in my back garden with those incredibly bouncy little balls you got, just bouncing them high off the house and letting them bounce randomly before trying to catch them, as you did.

One time I went for this huge throw off the wall and it bounced crazily off various surfaces so fast I completely lost track of it. So my 7 year old logic was to stand back in the same place and throw another ball the same way.

I watched it bounce this way and that about 10 times before finally hitting a plant and coming to a rest in a flower bed. I went over to pull back the foliage and sure enough there were both balls literally lying touching each other in the mud.

At the time I was like "yep, makes sense..." but over the years since then I've often thought about it and how the hell it worked!

c0p0u7

"I did it..."

Wearing a motorcycle helmet while snowblowing. I did it because i missed riding, it kept my face warm and when snow would fly back at me the visor would protect me.

Fortknoxgaming

"When I was younger..."

When I was younger I got called into HR because I drew a very detailed picture of a penis. It was really really good.

The HR meeting happened like a week after I drew it and my only defense was " I dont recall doing that, do you happen to have the picture? It might jog my memory." They didnt have it of course because I had it, and because I didnt confess they couldn't do sh!t.

Investigation results inconclusive, have a nice day

Flynn_10

"Worked like a charm."

Our power was out due to a storm.

I had a camp stove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour-thru, but I couldn't use my electric grinder for the coffee beans.

I tried fashioning a mortal and pestle but it was taking too long.

So, I put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags, placed the bag right behind a car tire, then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans. Worked like a charm.

EugeneStargazer

"I forgot to bring my resume..."

I forgot to bring a resume to a job interview, but I had an index card in my bag. I cut the index card in half and wrote my name, my contact info, and "creative problem solver" in my best handwriting, and gave a copy of my "business card" to both the interviewers.

I got the job.

kayification

"A friend and I..."

A friend and I once snuck 15 people into a Warped Tour by giving them some bracelets from a party supply store and clipboards full of paper. Walked up to the side gate and said we were with Rock The Vote. The security guard waved us right in.

GoodgoodGodgod

"When I was young and broke..."

When I was young and broke I bought a sofa from a used furniture store. I had no way to take the sofa home. I went to a used car lot a couple of blocks away and took a truck for a test drive...

luckyhenry

"Childhood really is..."

"I'm stuck on a cliff, but if I jump at a really sharp angle at that gravel field, I could just slide down there and be fine, just like in TV!"

Every time I think about this I am amazed I'm not either flattened by a rock, or impact against something.

Childhood really is just the tutorial level sometimes.

UndeadBBQ

"In my senior year..."

In my senior year if high school, I took the second portion of a required Spanish track. Now I realize my mistake and regret this now as an adult, but I HATED learning Spanish in high school. I just wasnt interested I learning, perhaps because my brother was going to college for Spanish interpreting and I had to deal with him blabbing in Spanish and spanish television and film and I was an edgy annoyed high school kid.

Anyway. Point is that I never studied and was only really able to maintain a decent grade because i was good at the written work.

But of course, Spanish is a spoken language. So when the final exam came around, my teacher informed us that the majority of it would be a spoken examination.

I was petrified. I could not speak a lick of this language despite getting a's and b's through the majority of the junior and senior year track.

So the day of the exam comes. We are all going to the computer lab. And with headphones on this little program will allow use to hear what the teacher is saying, and then it will record our responses In 1 minute segments. After the minute, we hear the teacher speak again - conversational stuff we are supposed to respond to - and the. Rinse and repeat.

Well I know I am going to fail this. And I'm really anxious about speaking in general. So the teacher speaks into the headset and i just freeze. Wait...what did she say? Uh..uh...shit shit shit i think to myself. She said hola.. um...

I panic silently until there is a click. The minute has passed...and then I get my brilliant idea.. during the next response time I wrap up the microphone and stuff it in my pocket.. then sit there silently for 45 minutes.

The teacher is stuck at her computer asking questions. And there is mo one else in the lab. So I sit there without saying a single word for the entire duration of the oral exam, at the completion of which I submit 30 or so minutes worth of silenced broken intermittently by muffled static from my pocket.

I worry for a week about how my play will pan out until she pulls me aside one day. My behind puckers for a moment until she begins the conversation by apologizing to ME.

She tells me she is sorry to say there was some technical problem and my oral exam doesnt seem to have saved properly. She then asks me how I think I did, and if i thought tracking the grade with my overall course average would be acceptable. "I know you probably did fine since all your written work is always so good."

I actually felt quite bad and asked for a slightly lower mark, admitting to her that I struggle less with written assignments than I do with the oral stuff. She still tracked my grade with my average.

It worked exactly how I hoped it would, and I felt like a real piece of crap about the whole thing.

apricohtyl

"The one time..."

The one time I've ever impressed my girlfriend was when they forgot to give us forks so I used two straws as chopsticks for my coleslaw.

[deleted]

"We stopped..."

This wasn't my dumb idea but rather, my wife's.

We were at a Lego show recently in a fairly small hall with about 200 other people. After a couple of hours it was time to go and as we approached the exit my wife gasped and said she'd lost her diamond out of her ring. It's a small diamond but it was her mother's and has great sentimental value.

She wanted to go back into the hall full of people and look for it. I told her she was crazy. The hall was both carpeted and crowded. And she didn't even know if she'd lost it here.

But I let her go back in for the clearly futile search and settled in for a long wait.

Less than a minute later she came back holding the stone between her fingers. She had actually seen it glint in the carpet beneath the crowd. The entire drama, start to finish took less than two minutes.

We stopped at the local jewelry store on the way home to have the ring fixed.

OUSOB

"The gas station attendant..."

My local grocery store has a rewards card that lets you earn money off gas at their affiliated gas stations with certain purchases. It lets you add up the rewards too like up to $1.50 a gallon, but the rewards expire within 30 days of earning and can only be used on a single gas purchase

So, my mom had earned like a dollar off a gallon one month and we both needed to fill our cars. So we drove to one of the participating gas stations and parked on either side of the one pump they had that didn't make you prepay/pay with card.

We choose the 'Pay Inside' option then I filled up my tank and instead of putting the nozzle back, we were able to pull the hose around to fill her car tank as well. Put the nozzle back, went inside and had them scan the rewards card and paid. It saved us like $13 total which is really good for gas.

The gas station attendant did not even care.

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