Have you ever looked at someone after they've asked you a question and wondered How have you managed to live this long? It hurts even more once you realize they're not pulling your leg.
I wish I could say this hasn't happened to me more times than I can count, but the human race has a way of disappointing me in ways nothing else can.
After Redditor melanayyylmao asked the online community, "What's the stupidest question someone has asked you dead seriously?" people shared their experiences and got to relive the annoyance!
"What made it particularly weird..."
"Do you have Christmas in the UK?"
What made it particularly weird was that we'd literally just been discussing the movie Love, Actually, which is both very British and very Christmas-y.
"She then immediately stopped..."
I made an offhand joke about how you shouldn't shake a USB stick, because then all the files would be mixed up.
She then immediately stopped, put the USB down on the table and with a horrified look said, "oh s***, really?" She was in her 20s.
"Naturally I refused..."
Once had a boss ask me if I was willing to take a $5k/year pay cut because things were slow and they needed to scrimp and save. This was stupid for two reasons:
- I knew how much we pay for some of our materials. In a single week we might pull in upwards of $100,000 worth of parts for production. Me taking a $5k/year pay cut is not going to impact that.
- I'd only been at the company five months. Taking a pay cut because I like the place requires a two year minimum.
Naturally I refused, and he said I wasn't being a team player and got really snotty with me. I put up with it for another week or two before I quit, lined up another job for a month later, and took a nice vacation.
"I was not able to convince her..."
But why do you eat apples? You're a vegetarian, you can't eat that.
I was not able to convince her that being vegetarian doesn't mean to only eat roots.
"I'm a flight attendant..."
I'm a flight attendant and while waiting to deplane a passenger in the back of the aircraft asked me if I worked the flight. Being that I was in the aft galley and literally had no way of magically appearing on the plane I was pretty confused.
"Our intern..."
I once told my co-workers that me and my girlfriend saw a skeleton of a dinosaur at a museum in Berlin. Our intern, looking dead serious, asked if "we actually believed that dinosaurs were real."
"I lived in a seaside town..."
I lived in a seaside town when I was a kid, and one day I was messing around on the docks watching the boats come in, and a tourist couple wandered up, watched with me for a while, took pictures, and asked me what was in the "great big basket things." I told them they were crayfish. They watched them clambering all around dripping sea water and climbing all over each other for a minute, and then the man turned to me and said, "Are they fresh?"
"I was talking to my nephew..."
I was talking to my nephew about how Albert Einstein only started talking at the age of two. He then looked me in the eyes and asked me in an adorably serious manner, "Did Albert Einstein invent words?" I forget how smart 11 year olds are meant to be, but it made me chuckle.
"A customer once asked..."
A customer once asked, "Why is it so dark in here?"
I replied, "Maybe because you're wearing sunglasses."
She really thought I was a genius.
"Oyyyy."
Worked at an upscale Italian steakhouse where the lounger servers were hired based on... well not their serving skills.
After training a particularly young and inexperienced cocktail girl for a couple weeks, she asked what kind of silverware should be put out for someone who ordered Creme brûlée. If that had been the first time she had asked someone, it wouldn't be as bad, but she asked many people on a few separate occasions. They thought she was kidding.
The answer is a spoon.
Oyyyy.
"A woman asked me..."
A woman asked me if the Golden Gate Bridge is actually gold.... She's at least 20 years older than me, keep in mind.
"I was hospitalized..."
I was hospitalized for a really severe E. Coli infection when I was 14. I told my friend I had E. Coli, but she is really dumb (I still love her though) and got E. Coli mixed up with Ebola, so my entire class thought I was dying from Ebola. When I got back to school, a classmate asked me how I got Ebola if I was white. Half the class still thinks I had Ebola.
"Born and raised in Wyoming."
Born and raised in Wyoming. Took a trip to Texas. Chatted up a cute girl at a party. After learning where I'm from, she asked me, completely un-ironically, if we had 'laghts' (this confused me...turns out this is southern for electricity) and if the Indians were still shooting arrows at us.
"Not sure whether we convinced him or not..."
Many years ago, a guy at work (Dave) came up to me at my desk, and asked me "The earth's orbit isn't really square, is it?"
I saw the guy who he had just been talking to, he rolled his eyes at me, so I said "Yeah, didn't you know that?"
He went around the office, asked all of us the same question, and we each figured out that someone had started pulling his leg and he didn't have the nerve to call bullshit.
By the end of the day, without ever getting together to coordinate it, we had all told Dave that the earth's orbit is square, and many people had elaborated with details like "notice how abrupt the change of seasons is?" and shit like that.
Not sure whether we convinced him or not, but he didn't try contradicting anyone on it.
"If my two daughters..."
If my two daughters were identical twins. One is a redhead, one is brunette. One is big-boned, one is slight. If they entered a store 45 seconds apart from each other no one would assume they were related. Since they are twins, however, the question arises. Less as they get older and less identical, even though there was never a Xerox moment where we could possibly confuse them.
"I have twins..."
I have twins, and when they were babies people would ask how I could tell them apart.
They are boy/girl twins. So I said that one had a penis and one didn't so it was super easy!
"In college..."
"How do you make green?" In college, during my animation major. Thank god I left and became a barber instead lol now I just get asked how to do skin fades and i'm happy to help!
"I work in fast food."
I work in fast food.
Our restaurant (previously 24 hours) began closing at midnight so we could clean up the place after a couple over-nighters got themselves fired.
Person runs over the orange traffic cones blocking our drive-thru order board, and asks if we're open.
"We're in the United States..."
"Canada is above us???" We're in the United States, and one of my 50-year-old coworkers legitimately DID NOT KNOW that Canada is north of the United States (sans the part south of Detroit). When asked, she explained that she thought it was somewhere off to the side, or maybe below us.
"My family..."
My family used to own a coffee shop. One day a lady walks in and asks my sister about our bagel sandwich.
"Are the eggs free-range?"
"Um, the chickens are if that's what you mean."
"No, are the eggs free-range?"
"...........Yes."
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