To find this bizarre? Friend and soap

But she had no way of knowing that was the bottle you meant! You could have just as easily have been saying “It’s there!” and it had turned out not to be/fallen down into the bath toys/you’d misremembered where it was (you’d not remembered to fill your soap dispenser, not a huge leap of logic to think you weren’t clear on where your other soap was).

And to be fair the thread has been completely skewed by the ludicrous number of posters who can't read and have said things like "why don't you just buy soap. Refusing to buy handsoap is weird".

The classic.....
Was I wrong?
Yes!
No I wasn't.

YABU. In the same way as if someone asked me to go grab spaghetti for a bolognese, but it had run out, I wouldn’t assume they wanted pasta as a replacement. Same ingredients but distinctly different in form.

YABU to expect someone to think you’re meaning shower gel. You should have said that.

And stop calling everyone else literal - it’s patronising. The votes show it’s you who’s unusual in your thinking, not your friend.

Good grief....13 pages of this?
Surely if the woman was that desperate to wash her hands with something other than water, she would have just grabbed anything to do it - shower gel, shampoo, bubble bath.... if they're good enough for washing your body/hair, they're good enough to wash your hands with once!

I use shampoo instead of shower gel if I've run out so I'm no stranger to repurposing things.

But if I expected someone else to use shower gel instead of soap, I make that clear, especially if they asked more than once, because I also understand that other people aren't me.

If there isnt shower gel, ladies, use the toilet cleaner to wash your hands, it is all soap and you are a silly ninny for falling for the marketing hype.

Ok. Ye hardy old timers win the thread. I grew up poor in an asian country and the bar soap that was used to wash laundry was the same soap that was used for baths sometimes - it was a terrible cheap and harsh thing. It was all soap of course and I will brazenly claim that it is good enough for new borns just to win an online argument.

OP, my kids regularly mash the bar soap or pump all the handsoap down the drain. Often we’re using shower gel for hands in the upstairs bath or sharing one bar of soap between the sink and shower until I dispense more. If a guest asked for it I’d shout “there’s shower gel on the side of the bath, sorry” and then explain about my nuisance kids after. If I told them to look for soap in the shower I’d expect them to look for bar soap or hand soap. And I’d feel embarrassed even with someone close because it feels a bit personal rummaging in someone’s shower. And ingredients are mostly the same, but shower gel and hand soap are usually different products.

If I know someone is coming I run up and move the shower soap to the counter or pump shower gel into a handsoap thingy. You didn’t know you were out, said something a bit weird, your friend let you know you were a bit weird (also in a bit weird way). And then you started a fight with the whole internet.

I wouldn’t use shower gel to wash my hands unless it said “hand and body wash” on the bottle which you get in hotels sometimes.

I'm with you!

This thread is batshit. 🤣

I use hard soap in the shower and bath, shower gel is a waste and just washes away, without washing.
I use liquid soap to wash hands at all basins in the house 🌸

If I was told to look for soap then I’d be expecting to see soap. They’re similar products, but they’re not the exact same. So YABU because 5 simple words would have sorted the whole confusion - “just use the shower gel”.

Me neither!

It actually wouldn't have occurred to me to use shower gel to wash my hands in place of an antibac hand wash, and if you told me there was soap in the shower I would have been looking for a bar of soap.

This is the bit I find a bit barmy (on the thread and with your friend, not with you, OP)

I would guess she was just in a bit of a zone and not really thinking outside of a very, very narrow box, then when you’d shown her she’d been a bit of an idiot, she was still processing or a bit defensive because, well, shower gel is basically the same as soap, duh! Sometime we lose out flexibility of mind in the oddest ways.

I wouldn’t have asked TBH if I was at a friends house, would have just had a glance around and used a bit of whatever soap type thing that foamed up was available, probably avoiding the ££££ face cleanser
Shampoo, soap, shower gel, whatever is available

I wash my hands before skincare with a gel cleanser at the minute because I don’t like it and want to use it up
Did have to move my Aesop hand wash after finding my dad washing his face with it

Whilst yes on the occasion in a pinch yes you could use shower gel and I have, I wouldn’t naturally take it to be a hand wash so can see why when clearly she was wanting whatever it would be to wash your hands after going to the loo she wasn’t thinking of shower gel. I think the main thing here is if someone said soap I would think of a bar of soap, not a bottle of shower gel! 🧼

Same and I've done it! No big deal.

Soap with a a sanitiser?
Soap used properly with hot water literally is a sanitiser, that’s the whole point of it?
Shower gel is soap, she didn’t need to make a big deal of it.

Meh. I might do the same, since I've never encountered shower gel.
What's bizarre to me is that you considered this meaningful enough to quiz the forum about it.