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What's the most ridiculous thing anyone has said to you?

1000 replies

chimamandafan · 10/08/2023 18:28

I occasionally volunteer at a local community centre. It's managed by a woman who tells anyone who cares to listen that she has a medical condition that means she can't eat. She looks well-nourished but I've always been too polite to ask her questions about her condition.

I volunteered at an afternoon event today. I get the seniors to their seats and make pots of tea. Cake was served. The woman who never eats was standing there eating cake.

'Look at you, eating cake! Are you better?' I said. 'Oh,' she said, 'you know me, you know I can't eat because of my medical condition.' 'But you're eating...' She walked off and is apparently really pissed off with me. Apparently I'm rude.

There are some real weirdos around, aren't there?

OP posts:
venus7 · 11/08/2023 10:18

Saschka · 10/08/2023 19:57

@betterchange I think in some languages (I want to say Swahili but I’m not 100% on that), there’s a distinction between “meat” (cattle, sheep, goats) and “birds” (chicken, duck, etc). Like we separate meat and fish, even though it is still a bit of dead creature.

So in English you might say “I eat fish but not meat” and that makes sense, from a language perspective if not an ethical one. And in other languages you can say “I eat birds but not meat” and that also makes sense.

This is true, and we have fish, poultry and meat.
But vegetarianism is not eating any flesh, none of those three, nor anything from the killing of an animal, so no lard, rennet etc.

moofolk · 11/08/2023 10:20

RoyKentsTieDyeTop · 10/08/2023 19:12

My sister in law used to say that she weighed half a pound when she was born. She used to go on about it (she was in her 30s when we met) as the reason her life has always been so much harder than anyone else’s. I mean it wasn’t a passing comment, she used to bring it up all the time. ‘I get migraines because I was half a pound at birth’, ‘I had a miscarriage because I was half a pound at birth’, ‘I was bullied at school because I was half a pound at birth’ etc.

I never believed it so when I met her mum for the first time I asked her (mainly for my own entertainment). Four pounds. She weighed four pounds. I mean yes, tiny, and a bit premature but not life threateningly so and she has no lasting effects so it’s very much not the cause of all her woes.

A mishearing compounded?

I've been saying this to myself and wondering if 'a four pound baby' morphed into 'alf a pound baby' in the girls head. Funny how these things stick and aren't questioned.

I wonder if she had fork handles on her fourth birthday cake?!

xigris · 11/08/2023 10:21

Midwife: you can’t possibly be in labour you have lipstick on

I wad 7cm dilated. DD was born 45 minutes later……

mauricemossmylove · 11/08/2023 10:24

Went to see GP about a problem with my nipple, I'd stopped breastfeeding recently and hadn't had the issue whilst I was bfing.
He suggested I look into becoming a full time wet nurse..

Sugarbeaches · 11/08/2023 10:25

We were sat behind a family on an aeroplane going to Gran Canaria. The mum pointed out the Pacific Ocean to her daughters. She also pointed out the white marks in the sea and explained that they were dolphins. I honestly don’t think she was joking.

HaveANiceFuckingDay · 11/08/2023 10:26

TheLightSideOfTheMoon · 10/08/2023 19:32

Someone once told me (in utter seriousness) that the homeless people in London have card reader machines to take payments.

Yes they actually do some of them. my son Was caught out by one. He had no change but was them told " I have a card reader " needless to say he was so shocked he donated a tenner

HuwJanus · 11/08/2023 10:26

My mum telling me to ‘cheer up will you’ when I was in the pits of severe post natal depression. She was aware of my diagnosis.

Elleherd · 11/08/2023 10:31

"It's alright for you, you get to sit down all day!" By impatient woman in queue to me in my wheelchair.😂

"You shouldn't be allowed to drive that." Bloke on seeing me unload wheelchair and use hoist into it from passenger side, from a transit van.

On discovering I worked " You're entitled to benefits, you're stealing jobs from people who need them." By young woman who also couldn't see where self employment came into that.

"He can't be woken up, he needs his nap" by woman on bus as to why she couldn't remove a pushchair from the wheelchair space on the bus.

"Can't you just walk up the stairs and I'll bring the chair up to you?" SLT at Dc's school.

"You just need pray to St xxxx, to be cured" Said by carer.

It's a gift that just keeps giving.

ThelmaBorden · 11/08/2023 10:37

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 11/08/2023 09:06

Motnight's post has reminded me of the daftest comment I ever had. My landline number is similar to that of the local timber yard, so I get the occasional wrong number. One caller asked me if I was sure it was the wrong number and I wasn't actually the timber place - well yeah, looking round my one bedroom flat I can't see a couple of hundred tonnes of wood.

similar happened to us when we had just moved into a tiny 2bed cottge, small front door and small front window, in the middle of a row of terraced cottges, on a narrow lane, in the depths of the countryside.

hammering on the door, flat bed lorry outside loaded with scaffolding, irate driver demanding we open up so he could deliver as was agreed,
became angry then incensed when we told him he was at the wrong place, insisted this was the place, his tomtom said

He was obviously due at the small industrial estate miles down the lane, but he wasn’t having it

He was so aggressive. In the days before smartphones with camera/video.

JudgeJ · 11/08/2023 10:45

Pub quiz question about an animal, the answer was, say, a swallow and all 5 of my fellow team argued that a swallow wasn't an animal, it was a bird! When I argued that a bird was a part of the classifcation of animals I was called a smart arse!

JudgeJ · 11/08/2023 10:51

Blinkinbloodyhayfever · 10/08/2023 20:29

A woman picking her dc up from school told me off for driving to school, I told her I had to drive as I come straight from work, and it would take 20 minutes to walk. She told me I didn't need to work as I had a husband, that I was just greedy, and that working mothers are all that is wrong with society!

Wasn't my late MIL I suppose? When I proudly told her that I had been appointed as head of a major department in a large high school she was appalled, Were there no married men with children going for it? Married women should have jobs when there are married men with children needing them!

She was very proud of the fact that 'My husband wouldn't let me go out to work when we got married, he said I had enough to do with looking after him and the house'.

AlexCabot · 11/08/2023 10:52

My husband used to work with a guy who was a 'flexi vegan' Called himself a vegan but ate eggs and dairy, particularly if there were cream cakes in the office. So a vegetarian then.

I've recently discovered that MIL (and subsequently her wider family) thinks that I'm lying about my job.
I work in an administrative support position in a school but work year round rather than the usual term time only.

This is apparently, impossible as everybody knows that if you work in a school you don't work in the holidays therefore I am lying about my job.

Dh got a message from MILs sister (known within the family as Aunty Gobshite) telling him to follow me when I go to work so he can see where I'm really going all day.

Caledoniadreaming · 11/08/2023 10:53

Decafflatteplease · 10/08/2023 19:34

Another one....

For context, I'm (partially) deaf.

Someone said to me oh you can't be deaf you're too young?! Yes because I just wear hearing aids for the lols. 😂

@Decafflatteplease on the hearing aids thing, especially meeting people for the first time after talking on the phone etc., "oh I didn't realise you wore hearing aids...you talk so normally!"

Also, apparently because I wear hearing aids I should have an accent. Apart from a Scottish one....🙄

marblesthecat · 11/08/2023 10:53

Daisythecat15 · 10/08/2023 19:14

When I was in university I worked part time at Tesco. I was kneeling on the floor stocking shelves. A random customer came over to me and went "god look at you, on your knees in Tesco, I bet you thought you'd achieve more than that in life"

Never spoken to the man before in my life. I was absolutely astonished.

Woah what the fuck.

consordino · 11/08/2023 10:54

DC (age 8) school refusing, in CAHMS system awaiting ASD diagnosis.
SENCO lead teacher said to me when finding out me and DH were musicians … "OH, so you're creatives. Have you thought of using a bedtime routine for DC? I know creative people don't do routines. I think this would really help."
Doh. If only I'd thought of using routines for my obviously ASD child.

NotSoBright · 11/08/2023 10:56

FIL criticising me for allowing DS to have the MMR - apparently I was wantonly exposing my child to the risk of "catching autism" 🙄

Needthesun · 11/08/2023 10:56

Groutyonehereagain · 11/08/2023 03:18

My mother and older sister argued that there is a third category of rhesus blood groups. One that isn’t negative or positive. My mother was a nurse. I remember shrieking at them with frustration but they stuck to their guns.

I’m not sure if it’s a third group but in my pregnancies I was classed as Rh indeterminate so was just treated as though I’m positive - so there is definitely more than two possible Rh classifications!

MonumentalLentil · 11/08/2023 10:57

Newly adopted cat with no tail.
'It will grow won't it?"

JudgeJ · 11/08/2023 10:57

ChelseaGem · 10/08/2023 20:44

Drunk, irate then-boyfriend: “You think you’re Avril Lavigne!”

A very sheltered Californian teenage girl: “Oh my god, you have an accent! What language do they speak in England?”

🤯

Lots of stories from the US! When we told someone we were from Northern England someone said 'oh, you mean Scartland'.

Many couldn't fathom that driving a LHD car on the right wasn't a problem for us, one man refused to believe that when we worked in Germany we had two cars, a LHD and a RHD which we then brought bacvk to the UK with no problem.
Back a long time ago one man refused to accept that Berlin wasn't on the border of East and West Germany, 'But it's divided by the Wall!', his exasperated son said he'd given up years ago trying to tell him anything.

ClawedButler · 11/08/2023 10:59

I was awaiting delivery of a large piece of furniture. It hadn't arrived, and I called and the man on the phone said, "It's been delivered, it says it on our system"

No, I replied, it hasn't.

"Are you sure?" quoth he. Oh wait let me check, have I inadvertently allowed a sofa into my house without noticing?

starfishmummy · 11/08/2023 11:08

Thisismyartform · 10/08/2023 20:27

OP, I actually do know someone who can’t eat due to a medical problem. She is fed directly through a tube to her stomach. She sometimes eats small amounts of food others have prepared to be social/polite. Could that be like your colleague?

I have to say that if you have never asked your colleague what the situation is, then this is a pretty mean thread to start to ridicule her.

Exactly this.

People can be fed directly into their stomachs or intravenously

This week is Home Artificial Awareness Week. Perhaps the PP should educate themselves.

What's the most ridiculous thing anyone has said to you?
Hawkins009 · 11/08/2023 11:08

CringeLicious · 11/08/2023 07:49

Well, I believe that the climate change trend is caused by human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels to create more CO2 in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect. And I’m not an eco protestor, just an informed intelligent person.

Show quote history

You do realize there is a lot more science rather than just humans that contributes to global warming it's not just a modern day one, nature itself also plays a part with eg under sea volcanos etc

fullbloom87 · 11/08/2023 11:09

That my newborn was critically ill because we took her to a Christmas market at 3 weeks old.
She had an undiagnosed genetic metabolic condition.

Maireas · 11/08/2023 11:11

@JudgeJ - the American misunderstanding reminds me of one recent conversation I had with an American who couldn't understand how I could teach in a state school, when we don't have states in the UK!

WibblyWobblyTimeyWimeyStuff · 11/08/2023 11:13

ClawedButler · 11/08/2023 10:59

I was awaiting delivery of a large piece of furniture. It hadn't arrived, and I called and the man on the phone said, "It's been delivered, it says it on our system"

No, I replied, it hasn't.

"Are you sure?" quoth he. Oh wait let me check, have I inadvertently allowed a sofa into my house without noticing?

😂

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