To share the stupidest thing I have ever heard

[Sparklfairy]

My friend is away in a country that a few days into her holiday brought in quarantine restrictions upon returning to the UK. No big deal to her, she can wfh and organise deliveries etc.

She just told me she was chatting around the pool and people are confused about when quarantine actually 'starts'. Most have convinced themselves it's the day after you land 'to give them time to go shopping and get food and everything ready and stuff'.

So you're quarantined, but you have a magical window of time where you can get supplies and merrily skip round the supermarket infecting everyone saying 'Oh, I'm not in quarantine until tomorrow'.

I'm not sure if they're spectacularly thick or just so entitled they've twisted the rules to suit themselves. I don't normally get annoyed about CV or what other people do but really!?

Many years ago, dh had to go over to America for work. He was in the office when one of his colleagues said to him "we speak English here, what language do you speak in England". 😁

*Omg! This reminds me of a cartoon I used to love, think it was in the beano or dandy where the premise was there were little anthropomorphic beings inside your brain that “ran” your body! Can anyone tell me what it was called?!

I’d be so happy to be reminded! *

I think it was The Numskulls?

Graphista - the Numbskulls?

@Graphista If you mean TV cartoon, sounds like "Once upon a time... Life"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Life

Once I overheard a colleague at lunch commenting loudly "Why do they call all these dried sausage things in sandwiches different names, anyway? Salami, pepperoni, chorizo, it's all the same!"
Urgh... Then he went on about how camembert and brie were also exactly the same thing (I had to leave at that stage, but I can only imagine he also believed cheddar, emmental and edam to be entirely identical)

Pointing out the Lenin statue in Prague to a friend of a friend and her reply "Wow, I never knew the Beatles were so big here!" (Uncanny likeness obvs)

@GrandAltogether

That's really not THAT stupid. Both were writers, George Eliot was a pen name and both were roughly (ish) the same time

@BuddyRun, not being able to tell the difference between a Victorian novelist and a modernist poet is pretty stupid if you're in the second year of an English degree.

You can study a whole English degree without studying either TS Eliot or George Eliot.

I once told an American that I lived in the Midlands in England and they asked if I could see the sea from my bedroom. Not sure how big they thought England is but definitely don't think we'd fit 65 million people on it. Mind they also asked whether we had tv or Internet yet and this was 10 years ago so clearly they thought we all lived in Sherlock Holmes or something.

Last summer in the Highlands of Scotland an American tourist asked my daughter, who was serving her in a shop, whether she had electricity in her village.

This reminds me of a cartoon I used to love, think it was in the beano or dandy where the premise was there were little anthropomorphic beings inside your brain that “ran” your body! Can anyone tell me what it was called?!

@Graphista It was the Numskulls! There was a Suggestions Box in the Brain Dept., they used to feed a paper with an idea written on it for the host human to have a thought, and the Eye Dept had blinds in front of the windows to roll up and down for blinking... I loved them too, although I was aware it wasn't remotely realistic. I had exactly the same thought when I read that poster's message!

My husband's colleague in a taxi after a Christmas night out, drunkenly blathering on to the driver, then said, 'so what do you do for a living then?'

You can study a whole English degree without studying either TS Eliot or George Eliot.

Yes, but there is also such a thing as general knowledge.

I did wages in a school and I had an ex member of staff ring because she didn’t get her full January pay. She had left to start a new job (6th jan or something) so had gotten 5 days pay. She didn’t understand why we hadn’t paid her the full month as she had ‘worked in January’ and had budgeted for having 2 full pays in January.

I also had an ex teacher put a formal complaint about me to HMRC for not paying her maternity pay. When she left she didn’t even know she was pregnant and so hadn’t even informed us (she would have been a few weeks gone). But apparently we should have paid her as that’s where she was working when she conceived (and I should be psychic too I wonder).
It gave the grumpy woman at HMRC a laugh anyway.

@itchyfinger

Our school isn't letting siblings do joint school photos this year because it means mixing bubbles. Like the siblings dont already live together and travel into school together

Yes, they live together, but normally all the siblings would queue up in their little groups to have their photos taken, which they cant do now, so it would take all day if each family had to come separately to avoid any further mixing of bubbles.

Add teaching to that. I'll never forget the girl who labeled the scrotum as the "cul-de-sac" in biology. 😂

@mathanxiety

You can study a whole English degree without studying either TS Eliot or George Eliot.

Yes, but there is also such a thing as general knowledge.

There is - but knowing who TS Eliot and George Eliot are certainly isn't "general knowledge". At all. People who think so are nothing more than snobs who, I'd imagine, wouldn't appreciate being shown all the things that they don't know. I did a combined honours undergraduate degree and studied eight English Lit modules (as well as my A Level and GCSE). I never studied either of these writers. If it's not taught to people who have a reasonably high level of knowledge in an area then it certainly is not general knowledge.

@mathanxiety

You can study a whole English degree without studying either TS Eliot or George Eliot.

Yes, but there is also such a thing as general knowledge.

'General knowledge' is very broad and often differs by generation, country, class, educational background, etc.

I didn't know until I read this thread that George Eliot was a woman. A charity shop near us came up with the bright idea of dividing their books on to two sets of shelves: Male authors; and Female authors. I was eagerly waiting for them to get their first George Eliot.

Friend’s dp was working in Ireland on the day of a big England football match.
Friend asked if Ireland was ahead of us time wise - I replied no
Friend was upset, if Ireland had been an hour ahead her dp could have phoned & told her the football score before it happened here.
I tried to explain why that wouldn’t work, years later friend is still not convinced!
Friend is in charge of international freight forwarding for a huge uk retailer - she deals with People in different time zones every day.😂

@AhCheeses

DH's Grandma told me off for massaging DS's feet when he was a baby as it would 'give him a stutter' 🤦🏼

Oh yes, I got told that by an elderly relative.

Also, don't let baby DD see herself in a mirror because... (can't remember the reason it was so stupid).

Has nobody heard of "Brideshead Revisited"?

Is it a sequel?

@ChocolateCherrybomb

Reading some of these corkers out to DH. He tells me this.

He was in Home Bargains today. He had 6 packets of Halls Blackcurrant Soothers in his basket.
The checkout woman picks up a packet and waves them at a colleague and shouts "Oi, Ave these got paracetamol in".
They are sweets, OK they're soothing sweets but still just boiled sweets. How would they contain paracetamol.

See this kind of thing is just so unpleasant. It’s one thing to have a wry smile over a misunderstanding or a gentle ribbing, but just imagine your friend / sister / daughter had additional needs and a job like this and strangers were laughing at her behind her back then posting it online. It’s a perfectly reasonable question - it’s sold as cold medicine and there are paracetamol melts so maybe that’s why she thought it. Plus, adding her pronunciation sounds like you’re just being horrible, judgemental snobs.

Pair of bellends. In my completely unimportant opinion.

My friend who told me she couldn’t be bothered with tampons as it was too much of a faff taking it out and using a new one every time she needed a wee . I had to explain to her that you pee out of your urethra not your vagina and they are infact separate holes! She was mid twenties at the time!

I wouldn't say that knowing George Eliot was actually a woman, or that Evelyn Waugh is a man, is general knowledge tbh.

Daftest I've heard recently was a convo between DH and MiL (who lives in Oz) about Hallowe'en pumpkins. DH saying why didn't his mum suggest to his DB and DSiL that they head to a pumpkin farm like the ones we'd been seeing here in the UK for some decorative pumpkins and MiL saying she hadn't seen any anywhere, DH saying they should head out to (agricultural town 150 miles away from her and DB) because they'd be sure to have loads.

I let this run a good ten minutes expecting one or other of them to realise before I gave up and said, "It's spring there right now. They're not harvesting anything except wildflowers. What are the pair of you you thinking?!"

MiL has lived there for 55 years and DH lived there for nearly 20. I guess the pumpkin doesn't fall far from the vine!

At a dinner party once: “You can’t divide the big number by the little number as then you get these numbers no one can understand”.
She’s now married with 4 kids, living in a £2m house and living her best life.
Smarter than me!