People Share The Worst Examples Of "We've Always Done It That Way" Fails--And We're Fuming
Why are people so incapable of adapting to change? We get it--change is scary. But more often than not, it's a necessary step to growth.
u/shaky2236 asked:
What are some of the worst examples of the "We've always done it that way" mindset?
Here were some of their answers.
One Little Adjustment
A Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis ran experiments in 1846 that indicated that if doctors washed their hands before helping women give birth it would reduce the death rate from 5 to 1.
That said, he was rather strident in how he voiced his support for hand washing and doctors disliked the idea. As a result, women continued to die at the higher rate due to infections for decades.
Impolite
When I moved from PA to Washington, I had to register my car. No biggy, except the title was still held by the bank since I was making payments on it. Now for some reason, even getting a copy of that title is a bit of a shit show, involving quite a few fees and a long wait time.
I didn't want to deal with that, especially when PA's DOL and the bank with my title we're making everything difficult. So I went to my local (Washington) DOL and explained the situation. They looked up the process and said "well this is dumb... let me take care of it. We just need a single number off that piece of paper anyways. Should take like 5 minutes. What state is your title held in?"
"Pennsylvania."
"Ffffff.... you might want to sit down."
2 and a half freaking hours later, the bank finally says they will release a copy of the title if they get an official request from the Department of License in Washington State.
Great! They get put on hold, DOL lady types up a quick request and faxes it over. Takes it off hold.
All I see is her look like she's about to start screaming. She puts them back on hold.
"So apparently, they need a hand written request. A typed copy isn't something they can legally work with."
"Wha- but, why?"
"I've no idea! They just thought it was incredibly unprofessional that we sent them a typed document..."
So there it was that I had to send a hand written document that had to be explicitly polite asking for a single number off the top of my title to please be released.
On top of requiring a hand written note, apparently this is not unusual for PA-> WA transplants since PA is one of the few states that still issues paper titles, and is VERY protective about who is even allowed to look at that title.
Once Again, Try A Little Harder
Decades ago, anybody who obtained your bank account number and the bank's routing number could make an unauthorized withdrawal of money out of your account.
But now, thanks to much better technology, anybody who obtains your bank account number and the bank's routing number can make an unauthorized withdrawal out of your account.
Banks say there's no way to prevent this, such as by delaying withdrawals by a single day until the customer explicitly grants permission.
We Like It Harder
My most recent job was as a developer at a small software company. When I started there was no source control, the programmers would sit behind a computer and compare their code line by line with a file compare tool.
When I brought up that there was a tool to fix this, they didn't trust it. "We don't want to change how we do things just because it's easier"
Cutbacks
My company has offices in a few countries. I recently went to one of these offices for 2 months (was meant to be 3 but I had to get the out of there!) to retrain them because the office was clearly struggling and on the verge of being shut down. Now, I'm not saying I'm amazing at my job but I know what I'm doing. When I'd try telling them about any small change they needed to make, I'd get 'but this is how we do things here. The clients won't like change!' Yes but you're clearly struggling. Have you asked the client if they're ok with change? No. So how do you know they won't like it? Anything is better than the sh-tshow currently kicking off in that office. But nope. They don't want to change.
Half of them are likely to be fired soon because of this so it's their loss!
Why Not Just Not
We use stock pickers where I work.
Prepare for hell if you use a picker that a first shift guy wants because 'they've been using it for the last X years!'
I've gotten threats to my property, job, and self because my shift just so happens to overlap theirs sometimes and I'm on some random piece of equipment.
Por Que
I have two coworkers, our admins, who print an email, and scan it back to themselves as a PDF.
Yes. I've shown them how to save the original digital file as a PDF. Yes, the keep printing and scanning.
Bananatastic
Maybe not the worst but I think this story is worth sharing.
Banana farmer Doug takes his future son in law and my friend Jim out to pick bananas. Bananas are grown on steep slopes around here with roads winding back and forth up the hill.
So Doug parks the truck at the top, walks down the hill and starts cutting bunches that weigh 25-45kg and then hauls them back up the hill to the truck. Jim takes one look at this setup and and says "why don't we park the truck at the bottom of the hill and start picking there so we are carrying the bananas down the hill instead of up? Then we can move the truck up the rows as we go"
"Because we always do it this way" is the reply.
So Jim says "humor me. Let's try it my way, just for today". Doug reluctantly agrees.
End of the day comes, bananas are picked and they're back at the house enjoying a cold beer. Doug says "you know what Jim, your way was a lot easier".
It's Your Skin
I work in the construction field as a safety/QA/geotechnician and sometimes our older subcontractors will do trenchwork as deep as 10 feet without any sort of protection from collapse.
When I stop work and tell them that it's dangerous and they could die, they get heated and tell me that they've never had any problems with trenches and "it's how we've always done it."
We politely ask them not to come back until they take a trench safety class.
Once Again I Would Like To Present You: An Easier Method
When I worked at the camp front desk we had a really bad system. It was sort of ok for checking people in but for everything else it was just horrible. Even check outs were a chore to do. Anyway, I was thought that I need to search for the parcel number, lets say 202. I had to scroll down to 202, right click on it, choose check in guest then press F4, TAB and then I could check people in.
I soon figured out that I can type the parcel number by keyboard and if pressing Enter, it jumped straight to check in page. No F4s or TABs. So thats what I did and told every one of the ''new'' way. Until that ''one'' guy said that screws up the process, that by doing it ''my'' way it can mess with everything else and blamed me for some mistake that was made by him at the check out.
Like I said, even check out was a chore and you had to be really careful when doing it otherwise you could mess things up which he did. He told the boss about it and we had to go back to left clicking and what not. Nobody did it of course because it was time consuming.
The Sciences Suffer
I'm a scientist. In my lab I will either ask "why do we do it this way, what is the point?" or I will suggest the proper way to do something because they have been doing it wrong or inefficiently. I get this response all the time, "Well, we've just always done it that way".
This is the sh*ttiest response a person in science could have, it just shows that they can't think critically and shouldn't be a scientist to begin with.
The US Does A Ton Of Weird Things
Everywhere but the US and Canada use the A system of paper sizes where each size is twice the size of the previous size. This means you can blow up an A4 document to A3 and have it fit. Similarly you can print A4 two up on one A4 sheet where they will effectively be two A5.
Because the ratio of width to height is root two it also means that the long edge of one size is the same as the short edge of the bigger size, or folding a big sheet in half gives you the smaller size.
US sizes are purely arbitrary and have no relation to each other.
The Digital Age
Used to work for a city councilman & he insisted that anything that was sent to him electronically must be printed out. Every single email, a new email in a previous thread + that thread also...literally everything. Our printer used to have to get replaced all the time bc it couldn't handle the sheer amount of printing. I used to feel so bad about how much paper we were wasting & I even offered to teach him how to use his phone for this kind of stuff but he insisted it's just how they've always done it. He didn't want to admit he was a senile old man who doesn't understand technology therefore decides to hate it. Lmao
I was a few times in a company where our family's friend works as a head (director?), to check on students while they are taking exams to make sure they aren't cheating (I'm pretty sure there is one job word description which sums this whole paragraph, I just can't find out how this position is called).
I was teaching there once in a while with their employees. They send 20000 e-mails every third week and 10000 every week. They do it by hand in MS Outlook. They have an excel with 30000 entries and they copy it from there to "Mail To" option and send the same e-mail to everyone (newsletter, not personalized), it takes them 2 days to do it. Their main work is always behind and they can't get on top with the amount of important work they have.
I was asked to help them out when I was there watching students if I had time. Oh man I did not have time for that.
Just to be sure it's understood. If you put 30000 e-mail addresses in the "Mail To:" form and send it, their server would send about 100 e-mails and then just scratched the rest.
Their IT technician told them to send it by 100 every once in a while - that's a regular practice in IT, it's fine. They do it by hand :0.
I offered them to make a simple script to do this for them (to automate the process). It would take them seconds to send it every week/few weeks and cost them zero (because we are friends). They refused because they were doing it that way forever.
The people who refused my offer were 35 and 39. ;)
Help Me Help You
Every time there is a scheduling conflict at work, I offer to make a calendar. I offer to do this for free (I'm paid hourly) and to go to everyone in the office once a week, and ask them what new stuff they have upcoming. Every time I offer, the response is, "well, nobody is used to co-ordinating schedules, so it probably wouldn't work." and I die a little inside. (Yesterday there were 3 events, one that went 2-4, one that went 5-6:30 and one that went 2-6)
Papeles
I work with contracts, I have a coworker who refuses to review them on her screen, so she prints out several 20-50 page documents per day, reviews them manually, and tosses them in the recycle bin.
She probably goes through 1-2 reams of paper a week. I tried to explain to her that you can review them without printing them off but "that's the way I have has always done it".
So for all that work that you do every day to try and recycle and be responsible, she is out here making enough waste to make up for it.
Depending on the job, non-office employees work tirelessly to push through with their physically-demanding tasks despite their fatigue to earn that paycheck.
But in their exhaustion, judgments can be impaired and exhausted workers can be vulnerable to workplace hazards.
And when an accident occurs while on company property, it's a devastating predicament that can have long-term effects.
Curious to hear job horror stories, Redditor Bwrice asked:
"What’s a work related accident that still haunts you to this day?"
"Beware of falling objects" was the last thing on these workers' minds.
Do Pets Miss Their Owners?
"While building Levi Stadium, a trucker was unloading rebar when the entire pile fell on him, impaling him multiple times and also crushing him."
"I never met the man, but his cat and elderly dog ended up a a local shelter. We planned to adopt the dog and ended up taking home the cat too because we didn't want to split them."
"Nena (the dog) passed away in her sleep in 2017 about 2 years after we brought her home. Seal (the cat) is around 7 years old now and doing just fine."
"I've always wondered if they ever thought of him."
– ryneaeiel
I Scream
"Worked for Edy's Ice Cream. My truck was loaded wrong so at a stop had to shimmy between pallets to get to the back pallet."
"Was unloading the top pallet and the pallet below collapsed. The top pallet slid on to me. But since I was between 2 waist high pallets about 1200lbs of ice cream bent me at the waist the wrong way."
"Sort of like bending over normally, backwards."
"Ended up with 2 broken vertebrae, nerve damage and was not fun."
"Eventually got a six disc fusion and was able to walk again."
"But now I have arthritis in my back and it really hurts most of the time. I also have numb areas in my right thigh and my whole lower back."
"Would not recommend."
– Im_too_old
Fatal Collapse
"Trench collapse. Guy was pinned mid chest. Not good but not immediately fatal. Guy’s coworkers freak out and use the backhoe to dig him out. Ended up catching him with the teeth on the bucket. Essentially cut him in half."
"The guy on the backhoe was his brother."
"Dude would have probably been alright had they rescued him the right way."
– Flame5135
Drowning in Molasses
"Not me, but at the cookie factory where my brother worked a worker died when someone accidentally dumped out a massive mixer full of molasses on top of him. He suffocated before they could dig him out."
– brainbarker
No one ever expected these jabs to happen.
Implementation Of A Rule
"Engineer decided to open a parcel with a Stanley knife, not sure if he slipped or what angle he was cutting at but BAM! Stanley knife in the eye. Never saw him again but h&s quickly introduced a policy that safety goggles needed to be worn when opening boxes"
– Quizzical_Chimp
Ruined Wedding Gown
"Used to be a wedding caterer. While the bride and groom were going to cut the cake it started to fall off the table as they were both trying to catch this ridiculously huge thing the bride slipped, fell into a pyramid of wine glasses on a foldout table behind her... The table collapsed and a wine glass stem pierced her neck."
"She survived, but she was not gonna be able to take that gown back to the rental place... I've never seen so much blood in my life."
– DanteWolfe0125
These accidents were uniquely different from the common examples above, but horrific, nonetheless.
Mad At The Machine
"I dunno if you can call this an accident but I was working with this guy and outta nowhere he says 'I'm sick of working here, check this out' and jammed his foot into the gears on the machine. Completely mangled his foot. Saw him 20 years later and his foot was still f'ked."
"He was looking for a couple weeks of workers comp, got a lifetime disability instead. It was pretty horrific."
– KingGuy420
Bashed In The Face
"Work in a dealership and once a tech was using a tool that broke free bashing him in the face, knocking out multiple teeth, splitting his lip and breaking his nose…it was a bloody mess. Young kid, with balls of steel appearantly. While waiting for an ambulance he was sitting there talking and smiled to show the damage. That smile was horrifying. He recovered and got a ton of dental work and still works there."
– smallboxofcrayons
"I was a cashier in a grocery store. One of my fellow cashiers was a senior, just killing time in retirement. One day, she had a dizzy spell, collapsed, and cracked her head open on the floor. Paramedics were called, and as they were loading her into the ambulance, she was crying out that she could still finish her shift."
– originalchaosinabox
Aviation Disasters
"I used to fly small airplanes in north west Alaska. In the two years I worked there I knew three pilots that died in crashes."
"Don’t miss how those days felt."
– SweatyMooseKnuckler
Severed Digits
"Coworker, who was fresh out of trade school was using a table saw to cut 1” thick sheets of plastic into strips. It was cold so he put on some leather work gloves."
"A glove got caught and pulled his hand into the saw, nearly severing his right index and middle fingers."
"He came to me and said, 'uh, I think I cut my hand'. It literally looked like a package of pork ribs - all mangled bone and tissue."
"They were able to save the fingers, but they’re non functional and don’t bend."
– funtobedone
Working in theater, I've seen my share of fellow performers getting injured.
From theme parks to Broadway, the things actors do for the sake of entertaining audiences are nothing short of risky.
Anything can go wrong when actors rush backstage for a quick costume change or when they rely solely on the mechanics of set pieces to move efficiently.
A good friend of mine was the victim of the latter, when he expected the bottom of the trap door would be clear of a moveable stair case when jumped in as he always did at a particular moment during a theme park show.
He landed on a staircase that hadn't been switched out for the airbag because of a crew member's incompetence.
My friend sustained several non life-threatening injuries but survived.
The things we do for art...
They say you can never have enough of a good thing, but we all know there's plenty of stuff that you'd like to just go, "Oh, no thank you" about and that would be that.
Unfortunately, that pretty much never actually works.
Try telling the electric company "no thanks" when the way too high bill comes, or just putting up a hand to decline work for the next week or so because you're just kind of over it.
Consequences and repercussions, folks. But you've got to admit some stuff would just be better if it was... less.
Reddit user DuckyMomo_12 asked:
"What’s something that would be 100% better if it was slightly shorter?"
Time At Work
"Average work hours"
- friendofjay
"Seriously. My current company has us work 37.5 hour weeks with a paid hour lunch. I don’t know if I could go back to the 40 hour/unpaid 30 min lunch again. It seems like such a small change but it feels like a lot."
- cageygrading
"Everything is getting more expensive right now because of corporate greed. Don't buy the bs that it's just inflation."
"Your bosses are making profits and squeezing you for everything you're worth in the process. Remember that while you bust your @ss for them."
- ravenfire47
"So would you take a pay cut so you can work less?"
- Pathwil
"If you work less, yes. But if you do the same amount of work in less hours, no."
"I moved to US a the beginning of this year and that is something which drives me crazy. People are so inefficient when they work, here."
"Why not just do your job rapidly, with great care and concentration then leave to have your life?! I was in Germany, UK and France before and that's what people do. You do your job and when it's finished, around 3 or 4 pm, they just go home or to gym, or other places. Having time for you is the reward for working well."
- OnTheGoodSideofLife
"Yeah that's a good way to look at it"
- Pathwil
Unwanted Hair
"My nose hair."
- HunterRemarkable550
"Dude... tell me about it. I didn't need excessive nose hair at 26, why TF do I need it at 36."
"Seriously, I can trim for minutes and the next morning I got nose hairs coming out my nose tickling the sh*t out of me!"
"Oh and there is one cheeky hair all the way up in my left nostril that will grow all curled up in my nose and all of a sudden it just starts poking out, seriously now, this thing has grown to about 2 inches long. if i pull on it, I swear to god it feels like it tugs on either the back of my head or my left eye."
"I got nose hair for days."
- Osborne85
"I just bought a beard/hair trimmer that has a nose/ear hair accessory, my nose hairs weren't excessively long but I feel like it looks much better now!"
- radekvitr
"This is fortuitous cuz I wondered if I'd ever get to tell this story! Literally, cleaning/fixing things in my new home about 3 hours ago."
"My nose got tickled and I i couldn't rub it because I had wood glue gloved hands. So I'm washing up and staring in the mirror at all the stuff my (generally maintained, but neglected because I can't find sh*t) nose hairs kept out of my system. It was AMAZING! DUST WAS DANCING IN MY NOSE HAIR LIKE I'VE SPUN CHARLOTTE'S WEB."
"I, honestly, felt lucky to get a chance to appreciate my nose hair. And I hope 1 day you do, too. As for me? I'm still left in awe like that'll do, pig, that'll do."
- unbridledboredom
Lines For Fun
"Lines at any amusement park."
- TheNonMurderingSort
"Go during September or October. The lines are much shorter and the weather isn't too hot or cold"
- darkaurora84
"One year my father's company and maybe a couple others rented Disneyland for one night. There were enough people that it didn't feel empty, but not so many that we couldn't just walk right up and immediately get on any ride. I was old enough to be on my own."
- cutelyaware
"One of the big perks of staying at one of the Disney hotels is they have certain nights that the park closes for everyone but the people that are staying there. We chilled at the hotel for most of the day then went in late and walked up to every attraction we wanted. My kid loved space mountain and we must have ridden it 10 times in a row. Glorious."
- olcrazypete
Personal Height
"Me. I hate hitting my knees on the seat in front when using public transport"
- hdhdhdhdzjursx
"Tall gang represent. Got the opposite problem tho, 31 inch inseam, all my height is torso. Crack my head on every ceiling in every personal vehicle I've ever owned bar one"
- Megalon84
"I don’t fit on airlines. Flying sucks…"
- Jak_n_Dax
"Frequent festival go-er, I always stand in the back because I hate blocking other peoples view"
- Zymper
"You took the words right out my mouth"
- LateTeenAnubis
This One Is Advance
"Queues. This is a two for one, as the word queue would also be 100% better if it was shorter."
- kriminellart
"The word queue is just the letter Q with a bunch of extra letters waiting in line."
- ecodrew
"Underrated."
- PM_meyourGradyWhite
"I've seen people using 'cue' like 'cue up', but idk if they're just americans that suck at using the right word because we don't call lines 'queues' as often."
- souleaterevans626
Rest
"The amount of time you need to sleep"
- WomenAreNotReal
"How I wish 5 hours was enough..."
- 1ne3hree
"I honestly wish I could sleep more, maybe it would help with my loneliness. I usually need 6 or 7.5 h based on prior activity"
- Sad_But_Realistic
Court Appointees
"Supreme court appointments."
- Debasque
"Justices should serve an 18 year term, with each one staggered every two years."
"A: that is still plenty of time so that the court can be "above" politics, but a lot more sensible than a lifetime."
"B: it would eliminate this hair-on-fire panicked emergency that happens every time one of them suddenly dies and needs to be replaced. Every president gets to appoint two new justices per term like clockwork, predictable and calculable. No more political wrangling over who controls the Senate vs who is president vs how much time there is before the election and all that BS."
- DerCatzefragger
"Agreed. Lifetime is a bit much... I do believe in term limits across all branches of US govt . By all means make a difference for the people that voted for you or for the party that appointed you. But, a lifetime appointment. 🥺🙄"
- slowclicker
NFL
"Football (American) games. Especially things like replay reviews and timeouts after kickoffs and change of possession. Sure, guys would get more tired and worn down late in the games but that would be part of the strategy."
- sometimesimtoxic
"I grew up watching football with my dad. I always hated it (and still do) and always thought why do people enjoy watching a minute play with five minutes of whatever after before the next one, it's so goddamn boring to me."
- cozyroof
"A football game is played in 4 quarters, each 15 minutes long, with a 12 minute halftime in the middle. So do the math and a football game lasts. . . 3 friggin hours!?!? And the last 3 minutes of the 4th quarter accounts for 45 minutes of that time!"
- DerCatzefragger
"As a big American Football fan, I completely agree. I think the biggest culprits are the endless commercials but 3 hours is just too much. The players would adapt and you would likely see some reduction in size, especially on the line. Being 400 Lbs with that amount of PED assisted muscle is questionable as it is."
"Same thing with baseball but the purists like the pitchers taking 20 minutes before each pitch for whatever reason. I like Soccer too and watching a match get knocked out in 1.5 hours and getting on with my day is great."
- DustinAM
More Days To Enjoy
"Work week, 4 day work week, 3 day rest would be fantastic"
- Piemaster113
"I used to do 4 day work week, and I preferred it more than 5 day work weeks. Sure, I had to spend 10 hours at the office, but that 3rd day off gave me a day I could take my Mom to the doctor if needed."
- ryukin631
"The job I worked the longest at had me on a 4 on/4 off schedule. 12 hour days. I was there for 8 years, honestly loved that job, and one of the cool things about working 12 hour days for 8 years was that it made transitioning to 8 hour days a breeze. The downside was 2 day weekends f*cking suck."
- Mister_McGreg
"I would love that. You need the middle day. Then you get a day to rest/decompress, a day to have fun/do things, and a day to do chores/get sh*t in order for the week."
- pamplemouss
New Movies
"Most recently, Gray Man. They need to chill with the 2+ hour movies."
- olnog
"If the writers really knows what they are doing with the story and the actors nail the, well, acting, I don't mind 2hr movies."
"For me the main issue is that they tend to cut short, as if they halfway through filming realize that 'Oh shoot, this movie will end up 4hrs long'."
"I'd rather have a 4 episode mini-series with hour long episodes instead."
- ActualTechSupport
"I feel like any bollywood movie not clockin in at 3 hrs is pretty short. But the good ones make it seem short. Ex: Three Idiots, PK"
- rabid-
Which of these resonated with you most?
More importantly, what needs to be on this list that you don't see?
Gripe with me in the comments, folks! It's always a good time.
Life is a mystery full of mysteries.
Some we'll finally get, some will stay a conundrum forever.
Sometimes no matter how much we study or agonize over a piece of information, it just doesn't click.
But that's okay, we're all here to commiserate.
RedditorDangerous_Mobile9188 wanted to discuss what aspects of life still leave confusion.
"What do you genuinely not understand?"
Life is full of quandaries that I give up on trying to figure out.
Everywhere?
"Why people can't use a public restroom without literally pooping all over the freaking toilet."
Natural-School5690
Around the grooves...
"How a single needle can run through the grooves on a record and produce a fully layered and 'separated' sound. I mean, I get how it works in theory. But like... how TF does it work?"
LandofRy
"I know how it works, and I understand how it works, and I was gleefully trying to convey this knowledge to a friend when I realized that I am not able to explain how it works, which essentially means that I don’t actually get how it works."
smelllikesmoke
Meow Team
"The thought process of a cat trying to jump on a shelf that is clearly filled with stuff and doesn't have space for it to land safely."
Mikrosarvinen
"The opposite, actually... how on earth does my cat jump on a shelf filled with stuff and somehow always land elegantly with all four paws between all the stuff without dropping a single thing? It surprises me every time."
WanderingArtichoke
"50% of cats have a 6th sense to avoid everything and 50% of cats are clumsy as hell. 100% of cats think they have the skill though."
KneeHumper
Clueless
"How consciousness works."
DarthDinDjarin
"I'm shocked no one has replied to this. Because yea. I haven't the slightest clue and i honestly don't think scientists know exactly how either. Such a complex system that turns into our thoughts and feelings, this is one of those things that REALLY made me appreciate the intricacies of our bodies."
r-Newbiedonthurtme
10/10
"Every time my grandmother sees me, I seem to grow taller and more attractive."
JoeyMMuelle
I love grandmas. They understand everything.
S.O.S
"How people can raise a functioning family at the age of 18 or 19? I can't even hold my own life together."
Radioactivocalypse
Staying Put
"Squatter rights! They confuse the hell outta me."
roomtempcoff33
"Right! So you’re telling me, I can get evicted/foreclosed for missing some payments… but you can’t get rid of squatters who declare a house theirs ? I should just become a squatter then haha."
violet-ack
"Squatting is basically the same. It's not that they just get to live there, but the landlord has to use the proper legal mechanism (eviction) to get rid of them. And sometimes, that can take quite some time."
banality_of_ervil
"Steps"
"How crypto mining works... like what exactly are these huge setups doing and why do GPUs matter so much? I've read several articles about it and I still don't get it."
Tripper-Harrison
"This is an oversimplification, but they're trying to solve a math problem. If they get the answer, they get rewarded with crypto. But the math problem is very very hard. There's no 'steps' to find the answer, it's just guess and check."
"So you need to make as many guesses as possible to see if one of your guesses is right. And it just so happens that GPUs are very good at making these guesses. So if 1 GPU can make let's say 22,000 guesses every second, then two GPUs can make 44,000 guesses every second. 10 GPUs can make 220,000 guesses every second, and so on."
PierogiMachine
I'm Lost
"The wave-particle duality."
FishySwede
"This is the one man. For me this is the biggest mystery. Look, I don't care how the universe came to be. I mean I do, but this is much crazier to me. HOW DOES REALITY REACT DIFFERENTLY BASED ON OBSERVATION ALONE I sear this haunts me at night. Do i even exist man."
yungbandido
"Long story short, observing something at the quantum level is not as benign as observing, say, a runner on a racetrack. In observing something so small, the mere act of doing so affects the behavior/outcome. Imagine having to knock the aforementioned runner over in order to know where they are on the track. That's more or less how it was explained to me."
BaronMusclethorpe
Magic
"Cameras, I’ve been explained and seen explanations 100 times. It’s still magic to me."
Salty-Director538
Maybe there are just somethings we're not meant to understand.
Beauty.
We all want to attain it.
Some people dedicate their lives to having it.
But who can say what is and is not attractive?
The older you get, the more serious and realistic you get with the topic.
And grapple with whether it really matters.
RedditorBig-Courage-7297 wanted to know what some people really thought when they looked into a mirror.
"How hot do you think you are? Why?"
Depending on the minute and the era, I fluctuate in my response. Oh, and depending on my sodium intake.
Middle of the way...
"5, am not ugly nor a beauty."
son-of-sumer
"'Perfectly balanced, as all things should be' JK... you probably look great."
math_math99
Alright
"I give myself a solid 'alright for an old guy' out of 10."
TungstenkrillYup.
"Comparing myself to when I was young I feel like a 2. However if I look around at other guys my age, I'm doing pretty great. Simply still having a full head of hair puts me in the top 15%."
sarcasticorange
"Occupying the latter half of the age bracket here too. And while I’ve never considered myself wildly attractive, one of my wife’s work friends once remarked to her, 'you didn’t tell me your husband was a silver fox!' I keep that one in my back pocket for gloomy days."
Ryanbikes2
Mama Said...
"My mom said I'm a 10/10."
gamer25677
"His mom also said I’m a 10/10. Im starting to think she says that about everyone who’s been inside her."
AlwaysMooning
"Don't listen to these jealous haters you be that 10/10 and strut your stuff."
"Learning to love yourself, doesn't mean you don't see your own flaws but know where to improve and where and how you want to grow. Appreciate the goodness within even when it's hard, and work to have your ideal to be reflected on the outside too. Loving and forgiving yourself is the greatest peace you'll know, because everyone else might be gone at the end and you'll be left with you and your memories, make good ones. Spread positivity. 💕"
SevWagoner
Changes with time...
"I think most people's scores fluctuate with age. I like to think I was a solid 8/10 in my early 20s. Then my metabolism crashed and I was working a desk job. I got real fat, got lazy, less effort, dropped to a 4/10. Got my s**t back together, lost the weight, started putting in the effort again, back up to an 8 if not higher in my 30s."
"Then I had a traumatic event in my life and I slipped into a dark place for many years. I put on weight again, stopped putting in the effort, general depression stuff, 5/10. Now I'm in my 40s, working on keeping my weight down, putting in some effort, solid 6/10..."
"But no matter what has happened, how low or high I've been... my wife has always considered me a 10. She's the best woman I've ever met and will always be a 10 to me too."
Bannon9k
Oof...
"6 or 7 on a good day? 1 when I try to take a picture of myself."
baconpoutine89
God I hated picture day. Still do.
Bless You
"I have days where I think 'God da*n, look at me. I’m God’s gift,' and then other days where I think 'how does every mirror not break?'"
Conconharni
"Actually though. Part of it is I used to be super athletic but due to an injury now can’t, but go**amn, I could look quite literally like a sculpture of a Greek god or hero, but also a balding baby-faced creep. Also occasionally homeless. More often the two latter than the former"
Walshy231231
Getting Higher
"I think I was a 6 growing up. But now that I've matured into my late 30s I'm a solid 7."
Ok-Type9999
"This is me except as a kid I’d give myself a 3. Long-haired greaseball in my teens but now in my 30s, exercising for the past decade has really helped me out. Solid 7/10."
Fine-Difference-6896
"Man, I went from 4 to 8 to 5 in the span of 20 years. Metabolism is a *itch."
ELL_YAY
Bad Views
"I just remind myself that the me that looks bad in in some pictures/at some angles is the same me that looks good in other pictures/other angles, just a different version. There are some angles and types of lighting and mirrors that for whatever reason, will make just about anybody look bad. There is no such thing as someone who looks good when the phone camera opens itself and shows a view of you from under your chin."
StreetIndependence62
Boy Magnet
"I was objectively pretty hot when I was younger. Now I am an older hot, which is weird. Younger guys really dig me but I’m like, you weren’t even born when the Challenger blew up and I was at Uni."
dearabby1
We're all beautiful. Just keep saying that. Maybe it'll stick.