Photographers Divulge The Strangest Images They've Developed For People
Photographers Divulge The Strangest Images They've Developed For People
[rebelmouse-image 18358499 is_animated_gif=Back in the day, photographs had to be developed in labs, which means the people developing them got to see the images. And if you think smartphones and the internet gave birth to the weird and the naked, think again. Kids today will also never know the smell of film stores, which, if you remember, was amazing.
whats-that-s**t asked, People who used to develop photos for complete strangers as a job. What was the weirdest photo you developed?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
Do people think developers don't look at their pictures?
[rebelmouse-image 18358500 is_animated_gif=My best friend worked in the photo lab of a supermarket we both worked at during high school.
A police officer mixed up two rolls of film he had - one being his family vacation photos and the other being photos from work (gunshot suicide victim). That messed her up a bit.
Just the way the Lordt intended.
[rebelmouse-image 18358501 is_animated_gif=I developed church directory photos. So many old guys standing behind their wives holding the wife's chest. Not even kidding.
Always, always look at the background in pictures.
[rebelmouse-image 18358503 is_animated_gif=Posted this before so it may sound familiar. My dad isn't a career photographer but he's super into is as a hobby. He has the fancy, bulky camera with the expensive lenses and lights. He has basically professional grade equipment as a hobbyist. One of his co-workers was getting married and asked my dad to be a photographer along with a professional one they had hired. He went, took pictures with the proper angles and all that then went home to edit and send them out to his co-worker and guests.
He was editing a photo of the bride and groom dancing and was doing some kind of low light balancing in the background when he noticed something...inappropriate going on in the background. Between the bride and groom were the dinner tables in the background. A couple tables back, in the low, shadowy light of the photo, was a woman pleasing a guy underneath the table. My dad was at just the right angle when taking the photo.
Imagine being this passionate about trolleys.
[rebelmouse-image 18358504 is_animated_gif=The trolley man. Once a week a middle-aged man would come in to have the photos on his SD card digitally printed. It was always photos of out of commission train cars. Anywhere in the neighborhood of 500-1000 photos each week of different trolleys. Figured it was a hobby of his that he enjoyed, but to drop $50 weekly on photos of trains stuck me as odd. To each their own though.
To be fair, Taco Bell is beautiful.
[rebelmouse-image 18358505 is_animated_gif=Not me, but my buddy worked as a photo tech the summer before we left for college. He said about once every two weeks this guy would come in and get photos developed of Taco Bell products. Like, really nicely arranged on his dining room table.
Anything can be sexy if you try hard enough.
[rebelmouse-image 18358506 is_animated_gif=I worked in a 1-hour photo lab in an Eckerd in the early 00s. We went through every picture that was dropped off and color corrected them so I saw EVERYTHING. One of my favorites was a picture of this larger woman in a mauve, velour mini dress posing on her hands and knees atop an HVAC unit behind her ratty looking duplex. It was so weird. Of all of the strange places to take "sexy" photos, that would not be the first choice.
I saw lots of other bizarre and random things in my 2 years there. Naked people, bizarre houses, dead people, the inside of chicken processing plants (which when taken with disposable cameras looked like something out of horror movies). There were lots of people who were regulars and so I basically had a rather voyeuristic view into the best moments of their life. It was an interesting job.
Some Avant Garde art best left to its devices.
[rebelmouse-image 18358507 is_animated_gif=Weird is all about perspective. I managed a supermarket minilab 20 years ago when 35mm was still king. I loved it. *trigger warning*
One that stands out was a series from an art student. There was a 1950's subversive series of quiet desperation. She did black and whites, dressed in a vintage housewife outfit, complete with the hairstyle... and had her head in the oven to mimic suicide. There was another with the perfect housewife suicide by toaster in the bathtub image.
She did a Betty Page series, too.
Well, this is embarrassing.
[rebelmouse-image 18358508 is_animated_gif=When I was in high school I briefly worked at the One Hour Photo at my local Target store.
For the most part nothing too weird, except for one guy who dropped off a disposal camera filled with close up pictures of his "bulge" in different pairs of underwear. He never came back in to pick up the photos.
"A 12-month calendar made of their friend passed out at parties." Genius.
[rebelmouse-image 18358510 is_animated_gif=I worked at a Ritz years ago right around the time they started to disappear. There are really so many standouts. Some bros got a 12-month calendar made of their friend passed out at parties.
There was a guy who always came in with multiple rolls of normal family photos but one time the last picture was him reclining nude on a couch with cans of beer surrounding him as he gazed into the camera. I removed the red-eye for him and I don't know if he ever noticed. It's really a thankless job.
There were some bondage rolls on occasion dropped off by the most mild-mannered man but they were, like, VERY amateur snuff film style with this big giant cowboy and lots of strangers coming and going from the scene. I never saw the cowboy in real life; only in the photos.
I imagine there were a lot of questions.
[rebelmouse-image 18358511 is_animated_gif=Slightly different perspective, but a few years ago one of my college roommates found two disposable cameras that had never been developed. We finally had the pictures made up about ~15 years after they were taken. Apart from a lot of group shots and alcohol, there was this one particular photo of a man and woman eating cereal at our dinner table completely naked. None of us have any idea who they were.
This is why you have strangers develop your photos.
[rebelmouse-image 18358512 is_animated_gif=Last summer I scanned a boxful of my grandparents' old negatives. There was a whole roll of my grandma posing naked in the woods and by a lake... I remember every time I hear from my grandparents. (shudders). Maybe that's why people get strangers to deal with their pictures...
Imagine the inconvenience of having to pay to develop your nudes.
[rebelmouse-image 18358513 is_animated_gif=I worked at a one hour photo back in the day.
So many penises. So. Many. Penises.
Even the eggplant meme isn't new.
[rebelmouse-image 18358514 is_animated_gif=My mom worked in a photo lab years ago and these are the worst things she saw...
An infected penis piercing.
Jesus was supervising the preparation of the car.
[rebelmouse-image 18358515 is_animated_gif=Worked in a photo lab for almost 10 years, lots of weird ones. My favorite was a guy who dropped off a standard 24 roll. The first 12 pictures were of an older car that he was restoring, in various angles and lighting. He had a portrait of Jesus that he kept moving so that it was in the bottom of each picture. The other 12 photos were of him having sex with his girlfriend in the car. The portrait of Jesus was not in those pictures.
Brought something hard to be developed...
[rebelmouse-image 18358516 is_animated_gif=Not a developer but worked in a pharmacy that had photo service. This hot guy came in every week with rolls of pictures for development. One day I could not stand any more suspense...and peeked.
They were core sample photos.
Gets weirder...5 years later we move to a diff state. Guess who was our new next door neighbor? LOL. Geologists.
Must have been one special shoe.
[rebelmouse-image 18358517 is_animated_gif=Saw all the normal stuff. Intentional nudes, peephole stuff, party scenes, or could just be fooling around.
The strangest? Had a guy who came in with an entire roll of a woman's shoe. Like 36 pictures of one single woman's shoe. Staged. Backdrop. The works.
Products That Customers Don't Realize Have A Really High Mark Up
Reddit user petrastales asked: 'What product unbeknownst to most people has the highest mark up?'
When I was in high school, my friends and I went to a pizza place after school nearly every day. In addition to a slice of pizza, we would each buy a soda. The place offered free refills (this was back when not all places did this), and we thought it was really cool. However, I used to wonder why they would do this. Wouldn't it be more profitable to them if they forced us to buy a second drink?
Four years later, I began working in a restaurant and learned that more often than not, the cups we gave out for soda cost more than the syrup that went in the drink. The restaurant offered us free food on days we worked, but we couldn't get drinks for free unless we brought our own cups.
This was shocking to me and put free refills into a whole new perspective. We could sell the soda for more than it cost to make, but no one would buy a soda if we tried to sell it for more than the cup cost. It would cost us less to allow customers to refill the same cup for free than it would be to give or even sell them another cup because it would cost the business a lot to replace each cup.
Soda cups aren't the only things that have a high mark up price, and they're not the only products people were surprised to find had a high mark up. Redditors know of lots of products that they were surprised to find out has a high mark up and are ready to share.
It all started when Redditor petrastales asked:
"What product unbeknownst to most people has the highest mark up?"
Equality Doesn't Exist
"Back in the early 2000’s I was managing a restaurant - garlic bread was selling for 3.95 and cost 0.07 to make. Not all food items are equal when it comes to margins!"
– leyland_gaunt
"I came here specifically to mention pizza. The profit margins on pizza are nuts, you have to suck at making it to not stay open."
– DreadedChalupacabra
"Yeah, it drives me nuts when you can request add-ons, but it's like $3 for a few pieces of camembert, or $2 for some chopped tomato, when it probably cost $5 for an entire 1kg bag of tomatoes."
– Writerhowell
How Cheesy
"Yeah and like 1.50 of that pizza was the cheese."
"Cheese is the most expensive part of a pizza assuming youre not doing some weird specialty stuff."
– Doomstik
"Can confirm. Worked at a pizza place. An incompetent employee was supposed to fluff a box of cheese but dropped it on the ground by accident. the owner was there. I swear I saw him shed a tear because that box was $120 of pure uncut shredded mozzarella and that was supposed to become like $1,000 in pizzas."
– PM_Sexy_Catgirls_Meo
That's Nuts!
"Yeah I worked at a place that did charcuterie, I apologized to the chef for munching out on the fancy olives all night. He said he didn't give a damn, as long as it kept my hands off the roasted cashews. Big jar of olives was like 15 bucks, the equivalent of cashews was like 200 bucks."
– hudson27
Bamboozled
"Reminds me of the never-ending pasta at Olive Garden. Pasta is dirt cheap and incredibly filling. The chances of you eating enough that it's actually a good deal for you is very slim."
– IBJON
"When I was working at a chain pizza restaurant, the storage manager wanted to get pasta on the menu, because of the profit margins. It's crazy because it cost us $2.10 to make a 17 inch pizza, and we sold them for $14."
– fukreddit73264
Not Worth It
"Flavored seltzers at a brewery. The beer costs 10x as much to make, but they charge almost the same at the tap."
– LocoCracka
"I have a buddy who made seltzers at a brewery in the Bay Area. Some malt liquor, very little flavoring, and a ton of soda water."
"Couldn’t make a cheaper adult beverage if you tried."
– Ikarus_Zer0
Ma, I Can't See!
"Glasses."
"Luxottica owns most major eye wear stores, costs them a few dollars to make and you pay hundreds for them."
– godnrop
"My cousin taught English in China after college in the early 2000s, apparently they had machines in malls where you could look into a pair of holes, do a vision test, get a prescription, and have a pair of glasses automatically ground for you in like 2 minutes for about $5, and the only reason we don't have that in the US is regulations."
"I travel to China frequently for work. I just take the USA prescription for family and friends and they have them made in about an hour or less. Family and friends give me an idea of frames they like and they pop the prescription lenses in. I pay about USD40 for the top-grade lens material that is antifog and anti-scratch."
– i3f8j
"I don’t really object to paying $50 for an eye exam, I object to paying $300 for a pair of frames. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to take the prescription the optometrist gives you, enter the numbers into the machine, and get the same $5 glasses."
– river4823
Message Received
"Back in the day, text messaging."
– alien109
"That's why I left T-Mobile in 2005. They were charging me for incoming texts but offered no way for me to block them. So basically, someone else had control of my bill."
– CGYOMH
"I remember being young, spending the $20 I worked so hard for so I could get minutes, only for a friend with unlimited minutes to spam me with a few texts and take it all away. What an upsetting time."
– Boopcheese
Ice Ice Baby
"Soft drinks in pubs. Especially the ones from “the tap”. Costs pennies and they charge £3 for a pint of it. Probably the biggest earner in a pub."
– lucky_1979
"Especially when they just cram a glass with ice and then lightly moisten it with the actual drink you ordered."
– jamesmowry
"My work just came out with a policy that we need to completely fill the glass with ice because it "keeps the drink colder for longer".. eyeroll."
– metalbridgebuilder
"The nuts and bolts section at your local big box hardware store is the highest markup isle. 500% or more. If you need more than a few bolts, go shopping at a proper hardware supplier."
– SatanLifeProTips
"Whenever I go through one of these aisles and look at the price for a single bolt or screw, I look at the overall assortment and think: There must be tens of thousands of dollars just for the shelf-price of fasteners I see right here in this aisle alone."
"The markup is crazy, but why do I want to buy a box of 100 screws if I only need two?"
– lemming_follower
Second To One
"The second-cheapest bottle of wine on the menu."
– slocki
"In order to not look cheap, many people will buy the 2nd cheapest item on the menu."
– AprilsMostAmazing
"Wine in restaurants in general. The markup on wine is wild. My boss used to get whatever was “on sale” from the distributor and usually pay $3-4 a bottle and sell it at $10 a glass."
– she_shoots
Pour Some Sugar On Me
"Candy floss / cotton candy. £4.99 for legitimately 10p worth of sugar."
– Tylervdub
"I used to work food service at an amusement park for a summer job."
"A manager told us that the cost of making a bag of cotton candy, including ingredients, labor, etc., was 19 cents...we sold it for $3."
– etm105
Look, Don't Drive
"Those button batteries in store."
"They know you need one asap cause your car won’t unlock so you are stuck."
"Wait 1 day and you can get a dozen from Amazon for same price."
– kindrudekid
Medical Supplies
"As a Diabetic I'm pretty sure it's Insulin."
– PraiseThePun81
"Can’t believe I had to scroll so far to find this."
"I spend over $13k annually on ‘good’ insurance that doesn’t cover half of the things I need as a diabetic. I spend half that again on the insulin and supplies. It’s a racket."
– Nosce_Temet
H2O
"Water."
– ganic-Lie4759
"Bottled water is so highly marked up as to qualify as a scam."
"At no extra cost aside from the bottle (I don’t have a water meter) my water is completely free. It tastes as good or better than bottled."
– 6033624
I didn't know about any of this!
I can hear my wallet crying.
Teachers are meant to impart knowledge to the next generation, but they have to get the kids to pay attention first.
Not an easy task.
So many, too many schools are plagued by kids who have no self-control.
Teachers end up playing referee, counselor, and parent in addition to their teaching role.
All of those additional hats don't come with any additional pay.
It's no wonder we're in a teacher shortage.
Redditor _Planet_Mars_ wanted the teachers out there to share some rough student stories, so they asked:
"Teachers, what is the worst thing you've seen a student do?"
I once saw a kid drive their car into the school office.
They were drunk.
Thankfully no one was injured.
POP!
"The was a loud pop and a flash in the back corner of the classroom. I asked the student sitting there what happened. She said it was firecrackers. I sent her to the office. While she was still in the office, I realized the electrical outlets in the room didn’t work. At that point, another student fessed up that the student sent to the office had put a pair of scissors in the outlet. I’m not sure why that student thought it was better to lie and claim she was doing fireworks inside the school?"
mynamelessname
Pain
"When I was teaching preschool, I had a little girl, between 3-4, walk up to another girl who was sitting on the rug reading a book, grab her by the hair and slam her head into the wall. They hadn’t been interacting in any way prior. When I asked her why she did it, she said she 'wanted her to know it hurts.'"
No-Doubt-8748
That Kid
"A different type of bad than most of these."
"I was a teacher at a poor inner-city school. I had a lot of wonderful students but some difficult ones. One was the worst — bright but was always sleeping through class and acting up and never doing homework. I lived about 30 minutes away. One night, I stopped by the local Wawa after a night out with friends. Was at least 11:30 pm and I was already dreading the early morning drive to school. And who should be checking me out but my own 'problem' student."
"He was working late to make money for his family and then getting home at 1:00 am or later before heading into school on 4-5 hours of sleep. He was a smart kid. Really smart. I hope things worked out for him but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he’d been allowed to have a childhood and focus on his education."
Low_Cartographer2944
Blame the Heat
Sweating James Mcavoy GIFGiphy"It gets very hot here in the warmer months and so the school put out those big containers for water for everyone. Well, one student was caught peeing into a bag and dumping it into the containers."
huzzahserrah
Some kids really need some deeper therapy.
Peeing in bags? Seriously?!
From Beneath
"My wife is an elementary teacher and has a kid this year that likes to slip under their desk and lick toes (we live in a warm state) and they all think he will grow up to be a creeper."
CherryManhattan
BOOM
"This was the worst thing I know of that happened at my high school."
"Someone brought a blasting cap to school (OK, that's a bit dumb), and flushed it down the toilet (that's REALLY dumb). Then told a teacher about it, because maybe it wasn't such a good idea (their best idea that day, really)."
"Wound up with that restroom being taken out of service while the fire department x-rayed the plumbing to find and remove the (admittedly tiny) explosive. Took several weeks before it was back in service."
gogstars
Sad
"My favorite teacher in high school was a very kind a lenient man. Do your work, be respectful, and follow the major school rules and you and him would be cool. The one thing that would seem minor, but that he was very strict about was taking any medication in any way shape, or form in his classroom."
"One day, I needed to take some Advil for cramps and asked to take it. He said I needed to go to the nurse for permission. I ended up asking him why he was so strict about it. it turns out, he had a student pass out in class one day at his former school. He tried to wake her up and called the nurse, but she wouldn't wake up. They called 911 and by the time they got there, she had died of an OD on narcotics she took in the bathroom that she had hidden in a Tylenol bottle. I don't know how he went back to teaching after that."
musical-nerd24601
Painful
Moving Season 2 GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Saw a 4-year-old purposely push a piece of furniture over onto another 4-year-old at preschool. It actually really hurt the other kid, and her parents took the school to court."
MPD1987
Kids are brutal.
No wonder people home school.
The Debunked Parenting Myths That People Still Somehow Believe
Some haters will disagree, but parenting is hard. Every parent is going to experience their journey differently from the next parent, and it stands to reason that they're going to make some differing decisions, too.
But some decisions are made based on facts while others are made based on old wives' tales and myths, some of which have long since been debunked.
Because that's how Grandma did it and how Mom did it, some of these myths are trying their best to stand the test of time!
Redditor BITE_AU_CHOCOLAT asked:
"What's a disproven parenting myth that way too many people still believe?"
Allergy Prevention
"To prevent allergies, avoid giving your child these foods until they are much older…"
"It has been proven over and over again that exposing your child to traditionally allergy-prone foods in very small amounts when they are younger drastically reduces allergy potential. Even to the point of doing so in utero."
- UsesCommonSense
Instant Maturity
"Having a kid will cause someone to step up or straighten out or grow up or mature, etc."
- Exploding_Muffin
"I have a family member that tried this. He and his girlfriend were addicts. They specifically decided that they should try to get pregnant as motivation to stop doing drugs. It didn't work."
- HoopOnPoop
Nonverbal, Not Deaf
"That nonverbal kids don’t understand what you say. This one is common in the autism community."
- Kwyjibo68
"I work in dementia care. Lord knows this isn’t the truth for either population."
"A lady I took care of several years ago was thought to be nonverbal and beyond the ability to understand speech. We were changing her one night, and she looked at me and said, 'When does school start back?'"
"Clear as a bell. I was in college at the time."
- bookishkelly1005
No Spoiled Newborns
"You can not spoil a newborn. Their brain is still quite underdeveloped, and actually, by refusing to answer their calls, you can give them self-regulation issues as they develop without that safety in processing new stimuli."
"Edited to Add: I said newborn because I meant newborns. Not babies that need to be practicing lifting their head, etc. There are people who start fussing at parents about this as soon as they bring their newborn home, forgetting that this baby is experiencing everything BRAND NEW, and needs a safety system."
"And also I did raise two humans, and I very much remember being a new mom."
- TinyGreenTurtles
The Power of Multilingualism
"That a child shouldn’t be exposed to a second (or third) language until having mastered their native language. I’ve heard this so many times from people who have no idea about multilingualism."
- lrbdad626
"My sister's first language is English, and her husband's is Spanish. They're both bilingual and speak both languages in their household."
"My sister remembers her daughter noticing when they switched between languages when she was well under a year old. She'd be watching them intently and do a little startle when they switched. Kids' receptive language develops earlier than a lot of people realize."
- dorky2
Dads Are Parents, Too
"Dads are more than babysitters."
"It's been 20+ years since I was a single father, but the attitudes towards men and parenthood haven't changed as much as they should have."
"Don't ask a dad if he is giving mom a break today. Don't assume dad doesn't know how to settle down their child. Don't stare at Dad at the park when Dad is there with his kid(s). And for god's sake, can businesses install a change table in the men's washroom!"
- keiths31
"Oh yeah, this p**ses me off to no end. And no matter how many times we tell the school not to, they will ONLY call my wife if there is some issue during the day. She is 100% unavailable during the day, while I WFH (work from home) and can come deal with anything at a moment's notice."
"Once, my poor kid sat in the infirmary for two hours because they were waiting for mom to return their call. Finally, she herself piped up and said, 'Can you try calling my dad instead?' and I was there five minutes later. You would think they would eventually learn but nope... still happens to this day."
- dcmcderm
Why Is Comfort So Taboo?
"Picking up your baby too much will spoil them. For f**k's sake… pick up a crying child and meet their needs. Sometimes it's just a need for comfort and bonding with their caretaker."
- laurenderson
Disturbing Gender Norms
"Daughters are nightmares and sons are so easy to raise."
"The really disturbing part is women seem to believe this more than men."
- lilymunsterisaqueen
Best Practices, Who?
"That there is anything even remotely approaching a consensus on best practices when it comes to raising a child. I've only been a parent for five months and the sheer volume of confident, authoritative, and completely contradictory advice I've received has been staggering."
"As best as I can tell, just work on keeping them healthy, secure, and loved, and try to muddle your way through as best you can on rest."
- liebkartoffel
Don't Let Regret Run the Show
"I'm an older parent. In my opinion, a lot of who the kids grow up to become is simply them. For the kids who turn out well or don't, people will look back and think, 'If I had only done this more often!' and pass it off as advice."
"Parents shouldn't beat themselves up. Don't traumatize the kids. Don't spoil them. Support them in their interests. Outside of that, just let them become who they will become and enjoy the ride. It's a shorter run than you think at the time."
"At some point, we as a society may find that electronics are bad, something in our food is a problem, lack of interaction is an issue, etc. but as an individual parent, it's really hard to swim against the stream. It's fine to research and take reasonable steps to avoid this but I see too many young parents totally overwhelmed with advice and data."
- fish1900
Breaking the Cycle
"That all parents, specifically mothers, have an instinct that will kick in eventually and your child will be your world."
"Mine told me from a very early age that I wasn't the kid she'd wanted, I was ugly, fat, whatever. I finally ended things completely this year when she told me she's always hated me and never wanted me. I needed the closure."
"She made my life h**l, especially since she had two kids after me that she loves."
"My daughter hasn't ever been shouted at (by that, I mean raising my voice), hurt, or made to feel like less than the wonderful person she is. I suppose I can thank my mother for showing me how not to be."
- earthtomanda
Not the Same AT ALL
"That love, respect, and fear are the same thing. They're f**king not."
- LaliMaia
"'Is it better to be loved or feared?"
"'I want my kids to be afraid of how much they love me.' from Michael Scott's School of Parenting (on 'The Office')."
- Millerisabast**dMan
Not In Debt
"This destructive myth that we are OWED respect and love from our kids. NOPE!"
"They are attached to us, yes, but love and respect are earned. Fear is not respect; guilt is not love; we chose to have kids, they had no say in the matter. It is incumbent upon us to reach them by mirroring the behaviors we value."
- I_wear_foxgloves
"This goes hand in hand with some parents thinking their kids owe them anything in return for meeting their basic needs. You see this especially when children become adults."
"Parents telling their adult children, 'You owe me X because I fed you and gave you a roof over your head.' It’s utter bulls**t. Your child never signed a contract saying that in order to be born, they owe you something in the future."
"Keeping a child safe, providing food and water, a roof over their head, etc… those are basic needs that your child deserves. If you aren’t prepared to provide those things, don’t become a parent. Your kids don’t owe you anything, not as children and not as adults. Respect is earned and not bought. A child’s relationship with their parent(s) is not transactional."
- CatmoCatmo
Public vs. Private
"That you can tell if a stranger is a good parent by how their kid behaves in a random instance you happen to observe."
- JuniorPomegranate9
Resilience as an Excuse
"Kids are resilient and will get over stuff without it correctly being addressed."
"No, we remember everything In our tiny and impressionable brains."
- Pleasant_Tooth_2488
The misconceptions presented here are truly heartbreaking in some cases and mind-boggling in others.
It's hard to unlearn behaviors and what we thought were facts, yes, but if we want to be better people, and better parents, we absolutely have to figure out how to do it.
The Best Real-Life Examples Of 'You Can Have A PhD And Still Be An Idiot'
The saying "it's not brain surgery" hasn't meant the same thing to me ever since Ben Carson took his place on the national stage.
The saying "it's not rocket science" doesn't hit the same with me ever since one of my life-long friends became a rocket scientist.
I don't know Ben Carson—just his many public blunders—but in the case of my friend, he's an absolutely brilliant guy.
However I often wonder how my friend managed to survive this long and apparently this isn't an unusual phenomenon.
But more about my friend later at the end of this article.
Reddit user mariababexoxo asked:
"'Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot,' stated Richard Feynman. What are some real-life examples of this?"
Chemical Engineer
"I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart."
"I spent the Summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own."
"She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit, but she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened, and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her."
"When her car’s GPS lost signal once she didn’t know what to do so she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help. I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding."
Giphy"She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane."
"If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it "She refused to ask an employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was."
"She’d just walk in random directions looking for things. For example if you said 'go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours' she would send me pictures of random aisles in Walmart with 'is this close? which way from here?'.”
"Book smart but utterly dim."
~ captainofpizza
It's The Milk That Makes Them Healthy
"My wife once had a roommate who was working on her PhD."
"At one point she went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan."
"She was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving."
~ educational_palmeira
GiphySquirrel!
"I am a graduate student at the University of Oxford."
"I recently had to explain to another grad student the concept of animals hibernating. She's British and English is her first language, so it wasn't a vocabulary issue. She just didn't know that animals did that."
"When I explained it she said 'Oh! like squirrels!' Squirrels actually don't hibernate, but I just nodded."
~ slider501
Have You Tried Turning It Off...
"Ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more unwilling to learn anything new—outside of their small specialization—than university professors."
"These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that 'I did restart my computer' than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that sh*t."
"Department heads do this."
~ Mammoth_Clue_5871
GiphyIt's One Banana, Michael
"My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school right now."
"I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade."
"He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price."
~ Royal-Character-2035
And Vampirism!
"The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was.
"Only for her to suggest to our director of nursing that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures COVID."
~ GlassPeepo
GiphyHistory ≠ Geography
"I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trousers and jumpers/sweaters to wear."
"He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts."
"Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, and had to wear jean shorts the whole time because he cut up all his trousers."
~ RexEverything_
And On The 7th Day...
"I met a PhD molecular biologist who was an evolution denier. I found out years later that he was somewhat infamous."
~ whittlingcanbefatal
"I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry."
"All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious."
~ D-g-tal-s_purpurea
GiphyNobel Disease
"There are a ton of laureates that go conspiratorial batsh*t later in life."
~ hacktheself
"Kary Mullis is the worst one and he really emboldens other conspiracy theorists."
"He won the Nobel prize for helping invent the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so."
"Oh, and ghosts."
"Anti-vaxxers love him."
~ AstonVanilla
Members Around The World
"Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther."
"So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that."
"The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling."
~ QuanticWizard
GiphyWhat Did They Do With The Couch?
"Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging."
"While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door."
"The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place."
~ cruiserman_80
New-Fangled Gadgets
"In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The university was old, really old."
"And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc... The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for."
"The professors got extensive training on how to use it."
"There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight."
They didn’t originally plan on having an old-fashioned overhead projector there, but after a few weeks they relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way."
"In their defence, the other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables."
~ moosmutzel81
GiphyDo No Harm
"I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis."
~ DeadSharkEyes
What's That Burning Smell?
"My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes."
"I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap—'it doesn't have one'."
"Spoiler alert: it did have one, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint."
~ arbiterror
GiphyIt's Not Rocket Science...
I chuckle whenever someone uses this saying to indicate something isn't complex like rocket science ever since my friend became an aeronautical engineer.
Why?
Well, we'd have to go back to the mid-1980s when we were both teenagers in high school. As many teens with cars in rural America did, my friends liked to drive around on the back roads as a form of entertainment.
One sunny, Summer day two of my friends came to visit me with a tale to tell.
It seems they were driving on a stretch of road with a speed limit of 35mph [56kph] because of a cluster of homes and farms. When the car slowed to this speed, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist looked down at the pavement passing by below his window on the passenger side.
Upon studying the passing blacktop for several moments, he came to the conclusion he could easily run as fast as the car was moving, so...
...he undid his seatbelt, opened the car door and STEPPED OUT of the moving car.
According to the driver, one moment our friend was sitting next to him and the next he was gone. Or mostly gone.
After a brief moment of panic during which he slowed then stopped the car, he noticed Mr. Future Rocket Scientist's right hand gripping the door's armrest and his left hand gripping the side of the passenger seat.
He was probably only dragged for a few seconds which wasn't long enough to do more than scuff up his jeans, jean jacket and the toes of his shoes.
He escaped with only minor road rash and a few bruises.
After the driver told me what happened from his perspective, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist interjected:
"It worked!"
"I was doing really well until I tripped over that rock."
Luckily an understanding of things like velocity, speed, trajectory, friction, drag, inertia and gravity aren't needed for aeronautics.
GiphyNeedless to say, we've never let him forget his "experiment."
He still claims the only problem was that rock on the road.
And I now use the saying "it's not rocket surgery" instead of either of the original sayings.