You ever just hear someone ask a question and immediately facepalm?
And then you make the grown up choice to take pity on them and explain away exactly what it is that made you facepalm in the first place. What a nice person you are.
u/jojoboz123 asked:
What is the dumbest thing you had to explain to someone?
Here were some of those answers.
It Don't Take A Jean-ius
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The difference between genes and jeans.
One gets handed down by your parents, the other gets handed down by an older sibling who outgrew them.
Not Understanding Literally Anything
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.
Going After The Ignorance
I used to run a lot of credit checks in my old job. For some reason, people from a specific country failed them about 95% of the time, everyone knew they did. I got really curious one day as to why especially these people are almost always failing the credit checks. i delved deep into google and literally found a published government study, looking into why these specific immigrants were having financial trouble more than any other group.
Turns out, credit, the idea of money other than cash does not exist there. so they have no clue as to how bank credits or credit cards etc work. They don't know about interest etc.
They think someone is just giving them money. And when they come to our country, private moneylenders go after these people specifically, and tell them its almost free money. So they keep getting into huge debt without realising. Government was trying to curb predatory lending and create educational opportunities for these people.
It sounds wild that someone thinks credit cards are free money but apparently there is a whole community out there, completely oblivious and end up getting the worst kind of wake up call after their lives are ruined due to bad credit scores.
...And Sometimes Ignorance Is Bliss
"Why don't, like, North Koreans vote for, like, a better government?"
Back when Kim Jong Il was alive I asked one of more clueless friends if she knew who he was. She responded with "Yeah. He's that asian guy from the Hangover movie." When I bust out laughing she doubled down with "I don't follow pop culture." I had to explain to her that he was the dictator of North Korea which then lead to a follow up explaination that yes, there is a north and a south Korea and no, they are not like north and south Carolina.
We were 25 at the time.
This Is How Keys Work
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: nobody ever told me that you had to turn the key.
Sloths ARE Real, Brenda
Just because you only have ever seen a duck in the water; doesn't mean that ducks don't fly.
She was 28, and didn't think that sloths were real either.
Angelica, Eliza...And Green Peppers
That the pizza place that I worked at sold pizza... 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.
Per My Last Email
Me to security guard: "Hi, I am from (Companyname) to do (job). May you contact the Super/Building Manager to let them know I am here?
Security Guard: (Stares blankly for almost 10 seconds.) "Who are you and why are you here?"
Me: (Repeat same greeting word for word.)
Security Guard: (Radios Super/Manager) "(Not the company name I said) is here."
Super/Manager: "Who? I didn't call for them!"
Security Guard to me: "He says you have no business here."
Me: (Internally explodes.)
Some people are just stupid beyond help.
Deleting Major Pieces Of Infrastructure
That you cannot "delete the internet" (I've posted this before.)
Coworker: Can someone come look at my computer? I've deleted the internet.
Me, thinking I'm being trolled: Hur, hur. That's impossible. But nice try.
Coworker throws a fit about how IT people never take him seriously, blah, blah, blah. I go over to check his computer and find he'd deleted the Internet Explorer icon on his desktop.
This Is Why You'll Never Hear The Wolf Cry To The Blue Corn Moon
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Pocahontas wasn't created by Disney. This dude was a history teacher.
Most Disney movies, especially the classics, are kid-friendly retellings of old fairy tales that were super not kid friendly to begin with. Little Mermaid is an excellent example of this. The real ending is horrifying.
Don't Tell Him About Pasta
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.
Punxsutawney WTF?
That the groundhog doesn't actually make the weather get hot or stay cold.
It was groundhogs day that week. She said "I hope the groundhog doesn't see it's shadow because I'm sick of this cold weather." We had like a 30 minute conversation about how that was just a tradition and didn't actually change the weather. She did not believe me.
I also had to tell this girl (a mother of two who has been pregnant more times than that) about menopause and how you have no choice to go through it. "I'm not doing that." was her response.
....Photography
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Friend of mine started working at a garden center. She said she learned that you water the dirt, and not the leaves, she always thought you had to water the leaves. I said, well yeah, photosynthesis. She replied "well sorry I didnt take photography in school like you did!"
.....we were in our 20s.
It Only Takes A Moment
I once had to show a 23 year old how to use a screwdriver. Not an electric, A normal flat head screw driver to take an outlet cover off.
She didn't understand that you have to keep it straight on...
I was in shock, though I tried to hide it. I got the impression that she grew up in a traditional household, where women cook and clean and men did anything mechanical (mow lawn, fix things, hang pictures etc.)
This, But East
Eastern Europe.
Me, college freshman: "My family is from Eastern Europe."
Partygoer: "where's that?"
Me: gestures with hands "So this is Europe"
PFG: "okay"
Me: gestures with right hand "This is Eastern Europe"
I Wasn't Born Yet, So, No?
My dad died in 1989, when I was seven. He was very old, born in 1920, and had served in WW2, something I was pretty proud of as a kid. Several years go by and I end up with an atrocious fifth grade teacher. I wrote a paper about my dad and had to very slowly explain out to her how it was possible that my father was a World War 2 vet. She ended up calling my mom to confirm and still seemed to have her doubts in the classroom. But this wasn't the stupidest thing. One day, during class, she asked me if my dad had died in the war. The war that ended in 1945, a little over three and a half decades before my birth, that war. I explained to her that he had passed away from cancer a few years ago and gently reminded her of my age. And I silently thanked her for telling a classroom full of vicious children that my father was dead, arming the bullies with some very potent taunts. Great work.
You were the absolute worst, Mrs Glodt.