People Share Dark Secrets From Their Profession The Public At Large Doesn't Know About
Pulling back the curtain isn't always a great idea. Just ask the curious cat. Oh wait you can't... they're dead. Sometimes secrets are the integral part in making the magic. Many professions withhold truth from the public. Now somethings we might be better off knowing, but then the status quo will never be the same. Do we really want to know how the donuts are made?
Redditor u/CircleBox2 was wondering who felt like shedding some light on a few things we as the people are in the dark about by asking.... What's a dark secret/questionable practice in your profession which we regular folks would know nothing about?
Jeweled.
Pretty much ALL the high-end handmade in Australia jewelry in Australia is made at a secret factory in Bali. All the clients have to show an established business and sign confidentiality agreements.
"body brokers"
There is a problem in substance abuse treatment in the United States called body brokering. Substance abuse treatment can be very expensive and insurance companies pay A LOT of money for a patient to be there. Treatment centers will hire "body brokers" to find addicts with the best, highest paying insurance and entice them to check in to the specific center, the treatment center then gives the broker a commission from the insurance money.
This can go as far as body brokers literally putting more drugs in to the hands of some addicts before they come in, bc the higher level of drugs in your system upon admit, the more and longer the insurance company will pay to the treatment center.
Brokers will also hire other addicts in a pyramid scheme type way to check in to the treatment center, make friends with the other patients, and upon discharge encourage relapse so they come back to treatment.
Submission.
Have you ever started filling out a form for a quote on something (insurance website, or literally anything) and then changed your mind and said "nah, I don't want to give them my personal information", and then abandoned the form before pressing "submit"?
If you think that stopped them from getting your personal information, it didn't. Most companies looking to capture leads will capture your info in real time as you enter it into a form. The submit button is just there to move you to the next step, not to actually send your information to the company.
The Honor System.
Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through.
They're Guessing.
You know the people who write instruction manuals or user guides in things you buy?
Half the time, they've never even seen or touched the product. Some dude just sends us pictures, a rough description of how it's supposed to work, and that's it.
ETA: Wow this took off. To all the IT dudes of reddit. I actually browse the brand specific subreddits to figure out what to add to my user guides because that's how little info my company provides me. Thanks for making my life easier!
Actor Issues.
I work on on a popular teen TV show. All the lead actors do cocaine regularly and they often come to set high or show up to set late because they chose to party on a Monday night.
People always complain that Disney (in example) always hires old as hell people for their roles, I mean would you hire a teenager for a show that might either have a pilot and one season or maybe run for years if it's successful? I mean, would you really? You don't remember when you were a teenager all the stupid crap you did? Now add fame and income.
Mama Mia!
At a very large pizza chain restaurant that remains widely popular, we had these perforated pans for thin crust and stuffed crust pizzas. They'd get washed in the dish washer by the hundreds per day and at least half would still have burnt cheese on them. Well they were just stacked to dry.
When making new pizzas in those pans, sometimes the pans that were left to "dry" overnight grew bits of mold around the burnt cheese. We were told just to put the dough on top because otherwise we'd never keep up with the orders if we rewashed everything. The manager said, "don't worry, it gets cooked."
Buttless....
Minor League Baseball (all minor league sports?): the attendances figures are bullcrap.
And I don't just mean "they announce tickets sold instead of butts in seats." No, they just make it up. Teams purposely inflate attendance figures to attract sponsors. ThatUncertainFeeling
Be Announced.
If it has to be accessed regularly in an IT setting? It's not secure. Not unless you're in an industry that actually polices it.
Yes, people are dumb enough to pick up USB thumb drives they find on the ground. The nicer and newer it is, the more likely it'll get plugged in.
Also, if you're looking to verify the security of your vendors, don't announce your visit.
Ghosted
Not currently my profession but ghost writers in fiction. John Grisham, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, Janet Evanovich etc., all those big names with an NYT bestseller every year use ghostwriters who are are never credited or mentioned. It's barely even a secret.
"There's a big difference..."
Whether it be due to being extremely busy, not caring, not knowing, or the "correct" way just being so damn impractical....you'd be shocked how many corners are cut in every part of the healthcare system. There's a big difference between how nursing/medicine is taught vs how it's practiced.
"Only a few..."
As an exotic dancer; we talk about you in the back. And we laugh and make fun of you. Only a few customers get any kind of praise. Those are the ones who listen to our rules and tip well.
"In the auto industry..."
In the auto industry, mechanics are paid for how long it takes to complete a repair. Makes sense, right? Except that at dealerships, the auto brand has determined how much time can be charged for a given job; so if the tech does it in less, they get paid for the full time and the customer gets charged for the full time - no matter how much time it actually took.
Let's say a simple headlight bulb change. Pop the access cover, take the old bulb out, throw the new one in, turn it on and off to make sure it works. Takes two minutes. But the customer gets charged for thirty, because apparently that job is worth 0.5 hours.
It seems pretty insidious to me.
"Obviously..."
It's possible that this is commonly known, but in America pet food that has expired is legally required to be thrown out. Dry and canned pet food of course can last for months after expiration and be perfectly safe. So not only is it not donated to animal shelters, most pet stores actually tear open the bags and open the cans so that dumpster divers can't use the food for their animals. When I was homeless and had a dog I tried to find stores that didn't open the containers they threw out. I was usually not successful.
Obviously the same thing is done with human food, but I've heard in some places the laws are changing for that and they are allowing stores to donate semi expired food to food pantries. I go to food pantries myself often and I'm grateful for this slow but hopefully steady change and how we handle food "waste". The USDA says approximately 12% of all Americans are food insecure, which means they may not know where their next meal is coming from. About a third of all food produced in America goes uneaten which is something like a hundred and sixty billion dollars. Sometimes it all just makes me want to cry.
"No wonder..."
The insurance industry, at the corporate level, is all about wining and dining the consultants of huge companies that do nothing but act as a middle man between companies looking for insurance and the companies selling insurance. I've seen THOUSANDS spent on getting the opportunity to bid on a contract. No wonder health insurance is so expensive. The money spent is enough to stock a soup kitchen for years.
"I give the worst deals..."
I give the worst deals/worst service to rude guests, and upgrades/vouchers for free food/special discounts to nice people who don't yell at me when something goes wrong with their rooms.
"I've been working..."
I've been working at a Safeway grocery store for a while now and I am on the "sanitation team" because of the coronavirus. This consists of me holding a rag and a spray bottle and mindlessly spraying and wiping the entire store for 8 hours a day. And because of an apparent cleaning supplies shortage, we had to use the same rag all day for everything. Cleaning toilets, sinks, and then the conveyor belts, self check out stations, and everywhere you touch and set your groceries in the front!
"Most general duty officers..."
Police officer in Canada.
Most general duty officers despise doing traffic, and they will not write tickets if they can avoid it. They love warnings because you can't dispute a warning, and there's no chance of court. Many don't know the elements of mundane-seeming offences, and would have a hard time giving evidence in court. If they're going to write tickets, they'll write for administrative violations that can't readily be disputed (no insurance, expired drivers licence, etc) and give you a "break" on the actual driving offences.
But god help you if a traffic unit gets you.
"As much as it's discouraged..."
As much as it's discouraged, most teachers talk/complain/laugh about their students and their families in the staff room.
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"People die everyday..."
People die everyday because of doctors' handwriting and wrongly prescribed drugs. And yet I rarely hear any doctor go to jail because of it.
Also, if doctors make mistakes, they would devise a narrative that removes the blame from themselves, and pin the blame instead on nurses, residents, etc. And usually, patients wouldn't even realize this because doctors are so good at hiding their mistakes.
"Ethically..."
I'm not sure how dark it really is but as a network admin, if your company has an email server, we read them. Ethically it's a gray area without a good reason but legally we are 100% allowed to do it and a lot of us probably do, just for fun. So just never send anything personal from your work email.
"I've learned this practice..."
The Netherlands. But this counts for a lot of the EU.
For us it is common practice that the grave diggers are also the people escorting the casket. Many gravesites here use sand with a top layer of about 30cm of dirt as it helps the rotting process and the gravesites are mostly constructed artificially with a big layer of sand with dirt in top.
We don't add extra sand, we use the sand that already was there, the entire graveyard is build on a big layer of sand. Again this is common practice to help the natural process.
We have to stand on the coffin to get in the grave to remove the chains and remove the iron sheds preventing the grave to collapse. There simply is no other way. But when we fill a grave the family is never present.
Our cemetery doesn't have a crematorium so I wouldn't know about that.
I've learned this practice with our national education for grave yard employees and spoke to many grave diggers from all around the Netherlands. The practice is mostly the same everywhere I describe with the biggest difference being that some sites use the krane to remove the Sheds from the grave.
"I work in a distribution plant..."
I work in a distribution plant for the U.S. Postal Service. Putting "FRAGILE" on your package won't actually make us treat it any better; it's all going on one of the sorting machines anyway. While we do our best to prevent it from being crushed by other, heavier, packages, it's nowhere near guaranteed.
What should you do? Pack it FULL of soft things like bubble wrap or packing peanuts.
"I'm a low paid junior tech..."
Your internet service provider knows what kind of porn you watch.
I'm a low paid junior tech, and if you're not using a VPN, I can pretty much pull up the complete web browsing history of anyone in my service area.
"We'd go to power plants..."
Past profession. Environmental engineer. We'd go to power plants and such and make sure their emissions fall within epa standards. Well guess what happens if they fail an emissions test? They keep us on site while they change the settings and have us run tests until they pass. Not illegal apparently.
Gee, I wonder what happens as soon as we step off the property. Not like they'd change the settings back to what it was before, certainly not.
"I work in IT security..."
I work in IT Security and I gge paid to advise men how to hide their porn and side chicks. I also advise how to protect companies when their employees use porn or hire sex workers using company assets.
"As an example..."
The auto industry has a bunch of them. Find a shop that you trust. Dealerships tend to be a little less shady than independent shops, but they're not immune.
As an example, one of my friends works at a dealership and he said if they find an electrical issue that's likely caused by a battery they'll attach a bad battery's test results to sell a new battery.
"It required more training..."
It required more training for me to get my food handler's permit to make pizzas as a teenager than it did to be able to drive an ambulance. How much training (beyond proving I had a normal driver's license) did the latter require you may ask? Hint: it starts with a Z and ends with an ero.
"The most common of which..."
Most people would be amazed at the amount of health code violations that take place in restaurants. The most common of which is in fast food where items that are supposed to be labeled with hold times are just given new labels when they expire. As long as an inspector didn't see it never happened.
"I used to work..."
I used to work with a nonprofit organization that cleans up plastic bags and other litter and turns it into art or other items. Specifically, plastic bags would be washed, sanitized, and crocheted into different items like bags, coasters, etc.
Well, turns out that is how they marketed it. But in reality the artisans that made the crocheted pieces would buy the plastic bags in bulk, and crochet from those.
"That being said..."
I work as a welder/fitter, mostly on structural steel, and for the most part we do everything right because lives are literally on the line.
That being said, sometimes, by chance, and totally not because we know the beams will only be primed and then covered with concrete/more steel/walls/ceilings, there might be a slight chance of dicks being drawn on in oil markers designed to bleed through the paint. Oh, and that handrail almost definitely was not made with "schedule 80 posts" because the engineer is a dumbass and the rail is blocking you from falling into a wall on a stairway with 3 steps.
Also, its almost a guarantee that every time something isn't done by when the customer wants it, the foreman will blame it on the detailer or engineer not getting us prints soon enough, but it's almost definitely caused by the foreman forgetting when the job was due and not requesting prints, or forgetting we had prints until about a week before the job is supposed to be installed, especially if theres 40 tons of steel that hasn't even been ordered yet, and has to be galvanized.
"When meat falls on the ground..."
I'm a butcher.
When meat falls on the ground we pick it back up dust it off and put it back on a tray. The older butchers joke about it being "seasoned" before putting it back on a tray. Also flys are usually an issue in warming meat coolers, two of the places I've worked in the past had massive maggot infestations and fly's constantly landing on meat before it gets wrapped.
"It's very easy..."
I cut hair for a living as a Cosmetologist. It's very easy to harvest blood and hair (obviously) from clients and I know of one or two who make/have made voodoo dolls of clients.
Schools
Teachers heavily influence your child's future when they're in elementary school via a practice called tracking.
It's technically illegal, but it happens anyway. Basically, a student establishes their behavior and intelligence within the first few years of school. Teachers notice who has "promise" and talk about them with each other (not as a conspiracy, but just as interesting lunch conversation). Then, when students progress to the next grade, and the administration is putting together class lists, they group those smart students together. But teachers also pick out the troublemakers, and they get grouped together too. Have you ever wondered why your teacher had that one class they hated to teach?? That's why. It was the low tracking class, and it was packed full of the kids that were estimated to amount to little.
And it continues on through the grade levels. The smart kids who were identified in elementary school continue to get smarter because they're put in the best classes, typically with each other. They're pushed by guidance counselors toward AP courses and college credits. Meanwhile, lower tracked students, who weren't in the best classes, are pushed toward vocational and technical schools.
There's a correlation between socioeconomic status and a student's likelihood of being low tracked, but that's a much deeper and complex problem.
"When the butchers were grinding beef..."
I used to work at a butcher shop in a grocery store. When the butchers were grinding beef, they would add fat to the grinder if they needed a less lean product. One day I watched a butcher take pork fat out of the garbage and add it to ground beef.
I hope nobody with dietary restrictions buys food there. All I could think was "that's not kosher."
"To be fair..."
Pressure from higher-ups, on quality control, to sign off on welds that do not pass, at a nuclear power plant. To be fair, it isn't widespread, and is very illegal. But it does happen.
"All tenders are decided..."
I'm a distributor of a famous laboratory equipment brand made in NL in a South East Asia country. Everybody is corrupt here. All tenders are decided before they're even launched. We bribe the potential buyers to buy our product. And most of our salesperson markup that money to take some for themselves too. It's effed up. We buy from NL around 50k euro and sell it here for more than 200k.
"Their field teams..."
I used to work multiple jobs- from a babysitter, assistant in a long range telecommunications company, to a cashier at a gas station.
As a babysittern - some kids I used to babysit were about 10-12, but they always knew about all the s*** I didn´t want to show them. Sometimes, these kids talked about serious topic (like alcoholism and drugs), or in one instance, gore. Some of them didn´t have a problem in Cuphead COOP, Fortnite, or some other games, and were able to play these games pretty well, so when I was babysitting two siblings, we used to play a lot of Portal 2 and COOP games.
As an assistant in the LR telecomm company – we used to work along large telecomm companies. Their field teams had no clue about what they were doing - most of their experienced staff (that was out of the company) had already set up most of the stuff. We were usually contracted to do their stuff for large teams, even if there were only about 7 people on our staff traveling all across Slovakia (including me). We had a lot of disputes with Telekom, Orange, and the third largest internet provider in our country.
As a cashier at a gas station - expired food wasn't usually disposed off in the recommended way- sometimes we ate the food after the date of expiration where cameras and people couldn't see us. The only thing we've always got rid of were baguettes. I ate a ton of expired expensive yoghurts, hams, salamis and other stuff while on a lunch break. Also, when our bosses weren't present in the place, we used to make "illegal hotdogs", which were crazy combinations of stuff we had (vegetables & sauces that we had too much of, or all ingredients combined).
My coworker also usually gave me 4-5 overcooked sausages to take home, since their expiration period was only few hours long. One coworker took the expired food home with her to feed her chickens. Also, when the customers left the special points behind, we kept them to ourselves, and put them into the point collection cards. So, after each shift, I left with at least one six pack of beer, or a bottle of sparkling wine (special promotion for buying a cleaning program).
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Dating and the search for love and companionship... What a nightmare.
This journey plays out nothing like in the movies.
Every Prince or Princess (or everything in BTW) seems to have a touch of the psycho.
The things people say during what should be simple dinner conversation can leave a dining partner aghast.
Like... do you hear you?
Redditor detroit_michigldan wanted to discuss all the best ways to crash and burn when trying to make a romantic connection. They asked:
"You're on a date and it's going really great. What can another person say to ruin it completely?"
I once had a guy ask me if I was willing to follow him into the woods, depending on the price of the meal.
Yeah. No steak is worth that.
Plans After...
"Thanks for the ride but I have a date with someone else, I figured you wouldn't drive me if you knew I was going on a date with someone else and I really needed a ride."
"Online dating, talked to her for a while, finally got the courage to ask her out and then she said that as we got there."
iareyours
Mirror Image
“'You look just like my wife!'”
catalinachild
"I did have a guy tell me I reminded him of his son. I don’t believe English has a word to adequately describe my feelings at that time."
UnicornMagicRainbow
"That would definitely do it."
chaotica78
Third Wheel
"'Hope you don't mind if my mother joins us.'"
ofsquire
"Actually had a girl do this on a first date because she had anxiety issues. Honestly wasn’t bad except that 90% of the time she was silent and her mom talked over her."
"I didn’t mind that much and wouldn’t have minded trying again when she was more comfortable except that she was let go at the company we worked at and she deleted her social media profiles and she never responded on her number. Ah well."
Seightx
Liar
"'Hey bro aren't you gay? I made out with you last night.'"
"Random dude I've never seen before in front of my (f) date."
JHXC16
Was he lying though?
Filter Issues
"'You looked better on Tinder.'"
waqasnaseem07
"Isn’t it basic knowledge that everybody looks slightly worse than the worst picture you can find?"
no_user_ID_found
The Past
"'My ex used to do that too.'"
xxIvyOF
"Yep. I’ve definitely had two otherwise-decent-guy date-situations sour because the ex-comparisons just would not stop flowing. No woman wants to be seen as interchangeable—I’m not here to perfectly fill that ex-sized hole in your life. Focusing on the present moment and a future we could build together is a courtesy we need to grant each other in earliest dates of dating."
LarkScarlett
Powerless
"'I'm an alpha, you cant handle my top energy.'"
Midnightgay28
"I actually left a dude in the middle of dinner, in part, for saying this. I ordered an Uber under the table while pretending to listen to him. Went to the bathroom, and never came back. That was when I was young. Now I’d just say, 'How about we enjoy this meal in silence, before we head our separate ways.'”
UnicornMagicRainbow
Mommy...
"'Mother says I should be back by 9.'"
"Saying 'mother says' just feels weird."
bunnyrut
"That gives me Norman Bates vibes."
Werewolf_lover20
"'Mother says alligators are aggressive because they have an overabundance of teeth, but lack a toothbrush.'"
sodaextraiceplease
Obvs...
"'If you were going to be murdered, what method would you prefer. Purely hypothetical. Obvs.'"
Specific_Tap7296
If it looks anything like a Dateline NBC episode... RUN!
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Despite the advancement of technology rendering people left to their own devices–literally–to entertain them, there are some leisurely activities that will never go out of style.
Or so you would think.
Do people still knit to pass the time? Are people actively collecting stamps?
It depends on who's asking.
Curious to hear about hobby trends, Redditor gizehgizeh asked:
"What are once popular hobbies that are slowly dying these days?"

Before we've become conditioned to living on our phones, these activities used to keep people occupied.
Before Texting, There Was This
"Letter writing."
– littlekingMT
Literal And Tangible Joy
"Well the internet killed pen pals for sure. I do remember I had a Japanese girl for a penpal maybe back in 2007 or so. I honestly don't remember how it started, pretty sure some website, but that was a fun experience. But now I can just straight up talk to foreign people real time, lol. But yea getting a physical letter that someone took the time to write and mail still is hard to beat feelings wise."
– skyburnsred
Model Trains
"When I was growing up, every town had a model train store in it. Now I have one in region and everything else has to be bought online."
– Hairy_Effective1172
Pretty Rocks
"Don’t see anyone playing marbles anymore, I had an awesome collection in school."
– sheeple85
"I had some marbles as a kid in the 90s. My grandma got them for me and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them. I always imagined them as a thing kids in the 40s played with."
– Ryoukugan
People Were Moving Canvases
"Paintball has been dying a slow death since 2006. Sad, really."
– hobo_recycler
Before the general population began hating clutter, collecting was once a "thing."
Precious Coins
"Coin collecting... I'm a silver/gold nut and I'm always hunting for precious metal coins. whenever I go into a shop they get all excited because 'no one under 70 collects coins anymore.'"
– ThatFishySmell99
Post It
"Stamp collecting."
– spooky_scully_mulder
"Collecting in general, really. Of course there are still prominent collectors but it's slipped more into enthusiast and niche territory than being a popular hobby that you might expect anyone to have."
– iuytrefdgh436yujhe2
What A Gem
"Rockhounding was immensely popular back in the 1950's and 1960's. Personally, I think it's a fascinating and fulfilling hobby, but when I go to a meeting at a rock and gem club, I'm usually the youngest one in the room by several decades."
– filthy_lucre
People once enjoyed making things.
Admiring The View
"Stained glass. I learned how to make it from my old man, and my junior high art class teacher also taught it. Very few artisans are still around."
– brobeanzhitler
Metal Vocation
"Black smithing."
– kenworth117
"I bought a forge to try. It’s insanely hard work, and crazy expensive. I still haven’t finished a piece."
– DSentvalue
Scrapbooking
"Yeah. I'm watching the arts and crafts stores around me completely uninstalling their racks for specialty paper. Now the only thing they have is mega packs of repeating colors/images. To boot all the inclusions like papercraft/die-cut things, washi tape, scissors, stickers, etc have gotten so expensive I would rather go buy $5 bags at value village to get an assortment of things versus buying anything new. I really, really miss yard sales for the same reasons."
– Phantasmai
I envy people who have jobs that are basically their hobbies.
Not everyone gets paid doing what they actually enjoy and have a profound level of passion for.
If they do, kudos to them.
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When we first meet someone–whether through mutual friends, at school, or in a new work setting–we generally feel people out to determine if they're worth getting to know.
While the process could take time, some people make our jobs much easier after spotting instant red flags.
Curious to hear about our general radar of people, Redditor xxFluffie asked:
"What is something that makes you immediately dislike someone?"

Some people just think they are absolutely hilarious and never realize they're the only ones laughing.
Next In Line
"They laugh about having screwed someone else over. If you think you're not next, well, you'll learn."
– whiznat
Unfunny
"when you mention you don't like a thing and they immediately do that thing 'as a joke.'"
– wayfinder
Playing Devil's Advocate
"Kneejerk contrarians. People who, no matter what you say you like or believe, just have to dismiss it and say they like or think the opposite."
– BubbhaJebus
People who put others down get slammed here.
Bad Parents
"When they treat their kids sh**ty in public. I don't mean handling tantrums, setting a rule, having to hurry to the train etc. I mean perfectly normal-behaved kids getting in trouble for trailing along peacefully, looking at things, asking questions etc."
"If you don't like tiny humans who learn the world, why have them??"
– raxeira-etterath
Public Humiliation
"Treating people sh**ty in public for laughs. Like being rude to service workers because they think it’s funny. Big red flag."
– Ok_Personality_1080
Simply Uncalled For
"Someone who is a d*ck to other people or animals for no reason."
– xebt1000
Those with ulterior motives rubs people the wrong way.
The Scheme
"If they try to get me to join their MLM scheme."
– spazmcgee1
Hard Sell
"A guy I used to be friends with in high school reached out a couple of years after graduating about a business opportunity he wanted my opinion on because 'you've always been smart', then he set up a Skype call and brought some other dude into the call and they started trying to sell me on what was clearly an MLM scheme. The guy went from friend to 'I'm never talking to you again' in a matter of 10 minutes."
– Mental-Afternoon-164
A Timeline
"Good gawd, this! I've had more than one exposure to this abject bullsh**tery..."
- Back in the late 80's/early 90's I was invited to a meeting of literally the OG "Pyramid" where you're recruited to pay in, and then you go out and recruit others to pay in, and the last in line got f'kall.
- In 1995 I had a coworker try to reel me into Amway, which was a hard no.
- In 2000 it was Pampered Chef, though to be fair they did have useful products.
- In 2009 a coworker tried to get me into some stupid video calling service that was obviously stupid from the description. He even got offended when I called bullsh*t.
– Mystical_Cat
Too much ego is a no-go.
I Can Do Better
"Being a b*tch just to stroke their own ego."
"We get it, you can lift 5lbs more than the 12 year old, you don't have to rub it in their face just because you're slightly better"
– Livia_Pivia
Can't Top This
"Oh, you did <story that's been told>? That's nothing! I did <implausible story>.
"I get the whole empathy through relating common experience, and I'm someone who does that (which drives some people crazy on its own), but there's a big different by empathising through common experience, and one-upmanship."
– Tisarwat
Lacking Conversational Etiquette
"Starting to talk over me when I was already talking."
"Stop it you rude, arrogant jerk."
– R33Gtst
If one or more of these traits sound familiar to you, you're not alone.
We don't have time for braggadocios, pyramid-schemers, and conversation interrupters.
And that's just for starters.
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Children tend to believe just about anything they hear.
That there are monsters under your bed, watching too much TV will make your head explode, and silly faces will be permanent if you make them too often.
The sky is truly the limit when it comes to silly things that children will believe.
Some call it naivitée, other's youthful innocence.
But it's hard not to look back with embarrassment on certain things we believed as a child, that today might simply seem dumb.
Redditor Disastrous_Toe_6548 was curious to learn the multitude of silly things people believed when they were children, leading them to ask:
"What's the dumbest thing you believed as a kid?"
Pleading to deaf ears...
"My dad told me he had hearing loss and couldn't hear me if I whined because my pitch would get too high."
"Would completely ignore me until I asked him questions in a normal voice."
"Trusted him implicitly until I was 12 and he yelled at my younger brother for whining."- Tyrion_Stark.
Get it while you can.
"That they took everything off the shelves when the supermarket closed."- fgyfddg.
Silly superstitions.
"My grandfather used to tell me that if I played with the fire, I'd pee the bed."
"I believed him for a while, until I got older."
"I think he was just trying to protect me from the fire."- teddypa1981.
"Rain, rain go away..."
"That if it was raining where I was, it was raining everywhere in the world."- morningshartz.
Age is just a number.
"My parents used to seem really old to me, so much so I believed they grew up like cave people as children, wearing giant leaves for clothes and what not."- Laleena_.
So that's how they're made!
"That smokestacks from the power plant created clouds."- Scaniarix.
An instant cure.
"The sun gives you sunburns, therefore, moonlight should heal them."- velocipeter.
Better safe than sorry.
"Don't drink and drive meant all drinks."
"My dad was super confused when I told him he wasn't allowed to have any soda until we got home."- hulagirlslovetoparty.
Don't believe everything you see on TV.
"There was an episode of Mickey Mouse where Mickey couldn’t reach something at first, so he tried again and somehow his arm was long enough to reach it."
"As a small kid I believed that if I couldn’t reach something, I should just try reaching for it again and my arm would then somehow be long enough to reach it."- That-Dutch-Person.
The miracle of childbirth.
"That babies are pooped out."
"When I was like 7 I was listening to my aunt as she explained that childbirth was pretty intense and painful for her, and I was all solemnly like, 'yeah, sometimes just my poops are painful, I don’t think I could get a baby out' and she went 'um, WHAT?' and her reaction made me realize real quick that I had f*cked up somewhere and I tried to change the subject while my mind was just reeling lol."- thesoundingfurrows.
Oh to be a child again.
And to believe literally everything you're told.
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