We've all experienced a moment in our lives when we were left so dumbfounded we couldn't help but think the universe was pulling some elaborate joke on us. From lucky twists of fate to the totally unexplainable, here are some of the most ridiculous "are you kidding me" moments real people have experienced:
#1 Spelling Problems
I have a last name that is common but comes in multiple spellings. Think Smith vs. Smyth. I always spell the name out when I tell people my last name because mine is the less common method. I was checking into a hotel and the employee checking me in was having a hard time finding our reservations. I believe it was her first day so she asked the manager for help. I tell him how to spell my name but he wasn’t really listening. More of a let me show this new girl how it is done.
After what seemed like 20 minutes he says “Oh here it is. Someone misspelled your name. They put a 'Y' instead of an 'I'” Me: “That is the correct spelling” Him: “No it isn’t! I know how to spell Smith. I am going to change it in our system it will only take me a second” That was the day I realized I didn’t know how to spell my own name.
#2 Wrong Birthday
I had a rough time financially a few years ago and got approved for food stamps, but I never received my EBT card. I called and the operator asked me for my birthdate. I told her what it was and she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, that's incorrect." I replied, "No, it's not, I'm pretty sure I know my birthdate."
"Well, the information I have for you says differently."
"Can you tell me what it says so I can correct it?"
"That's confidential."
"Okay, lady, if you want me to start on January 1 and we can try the OTHER 364 days of the year, I will do that. But if your information IS INCORRECT, I don't know how I'm supposed to randomly guess what date you guys put down."
#3 Who Do You Think You Are?
At one point, I was engaged. I was together with this girl for nearly seven years. Her car died so I bought her a brand new one of her choice. She wanted something small and easy to drive with good storage space so she chose a Scion. We drove four hours to the next state to get one in the color that she wanted.
A few months later, she was ready to leave me to be with an older mid-30s, unemployed, uneducated, married loser who she knew fulls well was cheating on his wife with her. He stayed at home all day while his wife worked. They would do their thing together and be sure to get him back home before his wife so she wouldn't know.
Well, here was this brand new car. It was in my name. I was making the payments. And she was leaving me to go be with this mutual cheater. I told her that she had two options regarding this car. She could either get a loan to purchase this car off of me or I'd just take the car back. I was not going to pay $18,000 after interest for a car that she was going to own.
She wasn't happy about this. She was also using my old cell phone since she broke hers. I told her that I wanted my phone back, too. After I got it back, I looked at what she left on it. She deleted the contact of her new fling but the text messages remained. I knew his number so it was easy to see who she was talking to.
She was saying to him that I was "driving her crazy" about this car and that I wouldn't just leave her alone about it. You think that you can leave me for the guy that you were cheating on me with and that I'm still going to pay for this brand new car of your choice for you?
#4 A Dictatorial Approach
I had a college professor scold the class for helping each other study for exams because she stated we were all up for a program spot or future job and needed to be more competitive. She magically was not teaching any classes next semester. I feel sorry for her. She must feel like she took this job because she got out-competed by someone else, and must teach others that. Unfortunately, it made her jaded.
#5 Doing The Right Thing
I used to work at an animal shelter. A woman brought in a Rottweiler puppy, aged eight weeks. Said she was surrendering it because she did not realize it would get that big. Honestly, though, thank you, thank you, thank you, lady. You brought him in young, cute, and supremely adoptable and not a year and a half later, out of control and completely unsocialized from living in your yard. You did the right thing!
#6 No Manners
I was in the Mona Lisa room of the Louvre and it was kind of crowded, but not too bad. I was sitting on a bench and this man sat down beside me, kind of close. There was someone on the other side of him, so whatever. A woman came up to him and they started talking. She decided she wanted to continue the conversation in a seated position and proceeded to sit on my lap without warning. She literally sat on me. I leaped up and probably knocked her on her butt. I didn't even look back to see if she was okay.
#7 Listen Here, Lady
I worked for Bath & Body Works.com customer service for years. It was nothing but “are you kidding me” moments. One winter, we had hand soaps with a cartoon polar bear and penguin on the label, wearing scarves and sledding or something. I had a lady yell at me for nearly an hour about how inaccurate that was, since polar bears and penguins didn't live in the same place. She demanded that I tell her why we put them on the label together. I didn’t last much longer after that.
#8 Measure This
I used to be the foreman of a cardboard box factory and the pool of applicants we would get was so bad that I started to bring a tape measure to interviews. After normal pleasantries, I would ask them to find different measurements down to the 32nd because that was the tolerance we had for certain specialty packaging items. I had SO many people claim to be able to use a tape measure and then mess up thousands of dollars worth of stuff up.
#9 Making Assumptions
Apparently, my last name isn't as uncommon in France as it is in Hungary (which is where the paternal family comes from), which led to an exchange with some knucklehead who insisted that I was actually of French extraction. Yeah, you totally got me there dude... I look Hungarian, I speak some of the languages, I can eat paprika by the spoonful, and family members have names like Csaba, Balázs, Zoltán, Attila, and Szabolcs. All of that clearly points to France.
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#10 What Are The Chances?
I have a really rare first and last name combo. Last I checked on Whitepages, there are only three people in the US with my first and last name (exactly) and another four or five that are one letter off on either. Turns out, one of the people with a one-letter-off first and last name combo works for the same parent company as me. I get his emails all the time. It's very annoying.
#11 Get Off The Road
I was going to the dreaded blue store and a woman on her phone nearly pulled into me with her big blue Dodge van. She suddenly decided she needed to be in the turn lane and then nearly rear-ended me because she assumed we would just continue to go when the light changed to red (there were two cars ahead of me too). If that wasn’t bad enough, she nearly hit me again in the parking lot as she drove across the parking spots. She even had the nerve to flip me off when I honked at her to stop her from slamming into me.
#12 Holding Up The Line
I saw a grandmother say their two-week grandchild could not go through the X-ray machine. The reason was that they didn't want radiation to be exposed to the child. TSA agent, unphased, said, "Fine, then we have to 'wand' the child to detect metal." The next 30 minutes was the grandmother explaining that the child would not be subjected to that radiation. She clogged up the line into the terminal and forced the main TSA manager to remedy the situation. Eventually, the baby was detected for metal with the wand as the grandmother cried.
#13 Centre Of The Universe
My mom used to tell the story of how she was approached by another woman on a beach in Barbados, who asked her where they were because her boyfriend kept joking and saying they were outside of America. Apparently, the freaking grown woman didn't realize that there were any countries other than America. I literally love that story so much.
#14 See It To Believe It
This girl I went to school with told me she didn’t believe in four-leaf clovers. Not the “luck” part; she didn't believe they existed at all. She said it was because she didn’t believe in things she’d never seen. She also said she didn’t believe in shooting stars until she saw one a month earlier. It also came up that she thought the moon landing was faked so the US wouldn’t lose to the Russians. I told her I couldn’t prove the moon landing, but I found four-leaf clovers before and assured her they’re real. Last week, she asked if you could recycle an orange peel. Like, put it in a recycling bin.
#15 Bye, Bye, Bye
My boyfriend was looking up who the voice actor for Sephiroth from Kingdom Hearts was. He said "Lance Bass," and I was like, "Oh wow! From Nsync?" He has no idea who Nsync was. We live in America, and we're both 90's kids in our mid-20s. I listed off a couple songs and he still had no idea. I'd never been so taken aback by something like that.
#16 R.I.P. Server
There used to be a Minecraft server and for the game's two-year anniversary, they did a live stream and gave away ranks. The grand prize was a rank that you weren’t able to buy, plus a T-shirt. Now, it was getting around that time when my parents yelled at me saying, “You’ll never win! Get off the dang computer!”
So after a minute or two of protest. I gave up. They left to go shopping a little bit later, so as soon as they left, I hopped back on the stream. The guy said, “Okay, he isn’t here, so let's reroll.” I asked the chat who won. Guess who it was? Me. Some nice guy won a rank that he already had and I guess he felt bad because he gave it to me.
#17 Dangerous Driving
I'm a professional driver in a city full of people who are on par with baboons for the average quality of commuter. I see all kinds of stuff. But the #1 "are you kidding me" moment I think was when I saw a guy on the freeway (three lanes on our side) pull over onto the left shoulder, proceed to go into reverse and slowly crawl across all three lanes.
He was in the far left lane and missed his exit, so he backed up on the opposite side and then strolled across three lanes of fast-moving traffic. I've yet to see a more douchey maneuver that was so blatantly selfish and had total disregard for other driver's safety.
#18 Losing Grip
You know that feeling when you drop something? Then you try to pick it up six or seven times and your hands just can't freaking GRAB IT? It just keeps slipping out of your hands and you just stare at it like, "Fine. This is your home now. On the floor like the dirt you are." That's happened to me way too many times and I hate my life.
#19 Disturbing The Peace
We were doing an event at a school for some tuition program and they asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. It turned into a debate since half the class said they wanted to be astronauts and one kid kept shouting how the moon landing was fake, and outer space was fake. Man, they sure do get them while they're young.
#20 The Name Game
My parents tried to name me Drew, but the nurse went ahead and wrote Andrew on the birth certificate. So I'm officially Andrew, despite nobody ever calling me that. My cousin, born in the same town, found out when he was 16 that they wrote the wrong birthday on his paperwork. He's almost a week older than he thought he was. Our town needs a better hospital.
#21 Just Wasting Time
Last week, I forgot my keys inside the house and I didn’t find out until I drove all the way home, walked up three flights of stairs and couldn’t get in the door. I realized I needed to drive to my husband's workplace because he wouldn’t be home for hours. I drove there, grabbed his keys and was on my way back home.
Just as I was unlocking the door, my husband called, telling me he gave me his car keys too so I needed to come back. So, at this point, I was furious because I just worked nine hours and wasted over two hours in the car due to pure stupidity. What a great day...
#22 The Sapphire Expert
One time, a customer noticed my engagement ring and told me that it was "the most beautiful sapphire she'd ever seen." I thanked her but explained it was actually a topaz, to which she replied: "That's absolutely a sapphire. I love sapphires, and they're my birthstone, so I KNOW a sapphire when I see one." Obviously, she didn't.
#23 Good Riddance
An acquaintance posted something on my Facebook wall, attacking me. He didn't use any punctuation at all. I asked him if he could explain what he meant (and to use punctuation this time so I could follow his argument). He told me that "grammar didn't matter because schooling was invented by the devil." Then he posted a link on my wall about the Deluder Satan Act. He was promptly blocked.
#24 A Teacher's Ego
I had a teacher in a base level chemistry class yell at her students after everyone failed a test because we hadn't been taught half of the unit. Her exact words were: "It's not my job to teach you the materials." She had helped write the textbook and it was awful. Our whole class (and I pretty much mean everyone) went to the dean one day to file a joint complaint, and she ended up quitting before the year ended.
#25 Serves You Right
I was actually in a group in college freshman year for business majors but engineering and arts majors had their own too. This group was administered by the college to house us in the same wing of the dorm, create and lead study sessions, and do community service and professional development events together. Our econ professor told us we shouldn't be studying together or discussing the material together and threatened to fail us all for cheating. The dean loved our group and chewed him out in front of all of us that showed up for office hours.
#26 Living In A Snow Globe
Flat earthers and people with common sense alike will enjoy this one... I was talking to my professor after class just about some space stuff, and this girl was listening in on us. She interrupted with a question, "Wait, aren't we like, inside the earth??" She believed that we were inside a globe where space was in the middle. I am sure her world opened up (pun intended) quite a bit after we explained to her that that is entirely incorrect.
#27 No Means No
I had some lunatic come into the restaurant I worked at and ask if she could pay for her $12 order with either a bank draft or a bank transfer. And then she asked for the restaurant's bank account number. When I told her cash or debit only, she became extremely irate and began to berate me for supposedly discriminating against her because of her financial situation. She started screaming at me when I told her to either go to the bank and withdraw $12 or just leave.
#28 Inappropriate Concerns
A customer in the restaurant I work in had a seizure and an ambulance was called. My reaction when the ambulance pulled up was to prop the door open for the paramedics so they could get in faster. The assistant manager's reaction was to complain to me about how they parked right in front of the entrance, and that they should have more respect for the business...
#29 What A Mess
Hospital worker, here. This happened last week. A patient was brought into ED with a fresh, poisonous snake bite. The pharmacy was called to prep the anti-venom once the species was identified. The pharmacy then REFUSED to prepare the mixture and insisted that because the patient was ill-equipped to pay for the therapy, (and that they were to be transferred to another hospital) it would be a waste and an undo expense to give them anything.
The provider, who insisted the pharmacy was wrong, had to make several demands which were all ignored. The patient withheld the therapy and undeservingly had an increased risk of losing their life. Finally, the CFO made the “call” to allow the medicine to be given—at which point the patient was already in transit to another facility.
#30 A Wrongful Suspension
I got suspended for the horrendous crime of taking Tylenol on school property last year. I was waiting for the shuttle to marching band practice when I had cramps, and there was no way to get to the nurse and back to the bus stop on time. I, of course, complained about my impending miserable practice to a few friends and one offered me Tylenol.
Practice went great, I thought nothing of it. The next day, my friend and I were dragged to the office and interrogated because someone told the school I took something else. I never had broken a rule before that so I was panicking. I remember the quote of that year: "If it was just Tylenol, that doesn't explain why you're so upset right now."
Apparently, I was the only person at that school who cared when they were in trouble. They ended up confirming it was Tylenol though, and just when I thought truth, justice, and the American way had prevailed, they suspended me anyway.
#31 Playing Favorites
I was eating Christmas brunch with my mom, dad, sister, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. My mom said, “Did everyone get their Christmas money?” My sister and her family said yes. I said, lightheartedly, no. Dad grumbled at me: “Well you don’t get any money because you don’t celebrate Christmas.” We were literally eating the Christmas brunch I made, consisting of a ton of food including filet mignon. Thanks, mom and dad! Keep insisting she’s not your favorite.
#32 Small World
I started casually dating a guy that I met on Tinder. My best friend at the time kept going on and on about this awesome guy that she had met at the beach that also happened to live in the same town as us. My new guy informed me his brother met someone at the beach that lived in our town and that they were talking. Have you put it together yet?? Small, small world.
#33 It Gets Better
Really the whole year of 2017 for me. It started with my dad's life-changing diagnosis, then my long-term relationship falling apart (he totally flaked when I needed emotional support). A couple of months later, when I was thinking “this year can’t get worse,” I got appendicitis the day before my birthday. I haven’t needed to stay in a hospital since I was four years old and I’m 26. There’s more but it's not even worth mentioning. 2018 has been exceptionally good though.
#34 Strawberry Issues
I work fast food. We have a relatively popular item which is a strawberry slush made with actual strawberries. It says as much on the menu. A customer orders a strawberry slush. Sixty seconds pass, and they call back in and want to speak to a manager. Customer: "My strawberry slush has strawberry in it?" Me: "Well, yes, of course?" Customer: "I'm allergic to strawberries."
#35 A Really Random Dude
He was a really nice dude–an ex-marine, too good at PUBG. He just happened to believe the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked... which made for some interesting conversation during the satellite communication course. He understood that we had uh... differing opinions and said he didn't care as long as we did our own research and saw it for ourselves. Unrelated, but he also bolted solar panels on his truck, wired them to charge the battery and power a fridge and his gaming PC. He had a butane grill and made us bacon and eggs for lunch once.
#36 The Worst People
It was New Year's, 2016. I was at a party at a close friend's house and this couple wouldn't stop talking about Trump and how they hated Mexicans and whatnot. Once the clock struck midnight, they started blasting a techno club remix of Trump saying "Make America Great Again" and started scream chanting "ERADICATE ALL INSECTS." Yeah, we live in Canada and they've never set foot in the USA.
#37 A "Cold Line"
When my 35-year-old friend revealed that he didn't have air conditioning because he thought you had to pay a monthly air conditioning bill. He actually thought there was some sort of "cold line" they have to hook up... kind of like a gas line or something... I don't even know. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Did I mention he's 35 years old?
#38 Acting A Fool
I used to clean houses. We cleaned a house for a woman who I rarely saw but my boss saw and spoke to often. We were at her home every two weeks for the two years I worked there. One summer, she let my boss know she wouldn't be needing our services for a few months. Flash forward to the fall and she contacted my boss to set up a day for us to come. When we showed up, she acted like she had no idea who we were. She told us she had another cleaning service that was supposed to come and didn't know why we were there. She let us clean that day and we never went back after that.
#39 Cool Theory, Bro
Me and a new coworker of mine hanging out for the first time. Everything was cool: we watched some It’s Always Sunny and then chit-chatted. Eventually, we got to talking about biology and genetics as I studied that. We moved onto the theory of evolution and he said:
“I don’t believe in evolution. If we came from monkeys, why are monkeys still here.”
That same old argument. Then he said this:
“I think aliens have technology that they can use to successfully alter DNA and they came down and just altered monkeys DNA and that’s how humans were made.”
I just didn’t know how to respond.
#40 This Freaking Woman
My license got suspended for several months because a woman with my exact name (not at all common) got caught driving without insurance and the officer mistakenly assigned the ticket to me. After finally figuring out what happened, my boyfriend and I had to take a day off work and drive an hour to the town she got the ticket in to go to court and basically prove I wasn’t her.
After I was cleared, it still took well over a month for my license to be reinstated. It was so inconvenient and beyond frustrating because I had done absolutely nothing wrong! Fast forward two years and I’m denied when trying to get a library card because the same woman had a late fee for a Fast and Furious 6 DVD.
#41 A Major Face Palm
I took Sociology at a community college during summer break because I was told it was easier there. To say the instructor wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree was a huge understatement. One day in class, she started talking about “Indigo Vertilization." No one knew what the heck she was talking about. So, she wrote it on the board. “Indigo Vertilization.” After about 30 minutes, we realized she was talking about in-vitro fertilization. What an idiot.
#42 It's Performance Art
I work at a restaurant that is very popular for our brunch. This family came in that had a reservation. They were told their table would be ready in about 15 minutes. The mother then had this complete meltdown because she was so hungry. She was laying on the floor crying about it. Mind you, they were clearly from one of the wealthier suburbs. So we just gave her some bread so she would stop making a scene.
#43 Maybe He Was Colorblind?
I worked at a coffee shop. I handed out two drinks belonging to the same customer; both iced and both in transparent plastic cups. One was clear dark brown (black iced coffee) and one was bright green and milky (iced green tea latte). A customer came up, pointed to the cups and said, "Which one is the green tea latte?" That job taught me that there really are some truly stupid humans on this planet.
#44 You Got The Wrong Guy
In high school, I was escorted out of class by armed security guards for coming back to school when I had supposedly been suspended for committing some kind of violent act. Of course, when I said I had no idea what was going on, they thought I was lying. After a while of sitting handcuffed in the Dean's Office, the Dean arrived and instantly said I wasn't the person he'd suspended. It turned out to have been a data entry error.
#45 The Pain Of Being Used
She never actually wanted me. Her home life was pretty terrible. Her mom was an awful person. Then she met me. I gave her genuine affection without ulterior motives. Her mother was two-faced, manipulative, and a liar. She was never really into me as a person. She was into me as a concept.
Heck, I should have known since I'm kind of the opposite of the guys that she would fawn over in the early days of knowing each other. She loved tall, pale, lanky guys. I'm slightly short, ambiguously brown-skinned, and stocky. Guess what kind of guy cheated on me with. Eventually, after I finished my degree and started my career, we moved together four hours away so get her away from her family. She had her escape.
So, suddenly, I no longer represented anything to her. She didn't need anything more from me. All that was left was me as a person. All that was left was us, two people, as life partners. And she didn't want that. So she started cheating with someone who she was actually attracted to, instead.
#46 The Worst Road Trip Ever
My friends and I decided to go down to Miami. I didn't book the hotel, one of my friends did. So we asked her to contact the hotel to make sure we still have reservations made because we would be arriving by 5 a.m. She told us she did.
After spending nine hours driving down there, the hotel she made the reservation at was actually a bed bug-ridden motel. The receptionist at the motel said the reservation was made yesterday and she didn't know that because she thought they saw her email on the reservation change instead of just calling them. Long story short: We didn't find a place to stay until 7 p.m. that day.
#47 No Patience
I was tutoring a high school senior to help her improve her ASVAB score. She worked as a cashier at CVS. We came to a practice word problem about counting change... She didn’t know how many nickels it takes to make a dollar. Then she didn’t know how many dimes are in a dollar. THEN she didn’t know how many quarters are in a dollar. After explaining that she lacked the basic knowledge to perform her job... she didn’t call to schedule the next session. I’m not sure I’d have answered if she had.
#48 The Useless Doctor
I asked my doctor for help with a weird problem I was having. He had no idea what it was and had no suggestions for where I should go next or what to do. I was on an insurance plan that bound me to use him as my GP, so I couldn't afford to get help anywhere else, and I told him that. He got very angry and flustered, saying: "You can't just come in here with symptoms, and expect me to do something about them!" I thought that was a pretty good description of a doctor's actual job, to be honest.
#49 We're NOT Friends
I worked my butt off to put a baby shower on for my sister-in-law with the help of her sister. On the day of the shower, their mother proceeded to tell everyone how great a job the sister did, completely blowing off me like I was just another guest, and then the sister looks me in the eyes while this is happening and still says nothing. She thinks we are friends. I think now we are just two girls who get along well together.
#50 The DMV Debacle
I was denied a license to the new state I lived in (while holding a license in my previous state) because my birth certificate was laminated. It had been laminated by the hospital I was born at and it had a seal pressed INTO the lamination. But nope. They wouldn’t take it. When I got a passport a few years later, they took the birth certificate with no issues. So the government accepted it so I could leave the country, but the DMV wouldn’t take it when I already had a license.
