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!?

@slashlover

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-how-to-self-isolate-when-you-travel-to-the-uk/coronavirus-covid-19-how-to-self-isolate-when-you-travel-to-the-uk

In England, you are allowed to leave your accommodation in exceptional circumstances. This includes such things as:

accessing basic necessities like food and medicines where you cannot arrange for these to be delivered

Interesting slash

Well that’s embarrassing OP. Not everything is deliverable.

You sound like a jealous frenemy OP.

I worked with one of the most stupid people ever. I have no idea how she got through life she was pig shit thick. We were discussing the volcanic ash cloud years ago and how some people in the very north of Scotland had found ash on their vehicles and she piped up ‘I haven’t noticed anything in my car and I live next to the airport!’ The ash cloud is not over the airports!’well how can planes not get in and out then!’ Because they’dhave to fly through the ash and dust!

@LightDrizzle

“...the world will be overrun by cows.”

• this might be my favourite!

True in parts of India though!

When I was living in Australia, I range my DM one evening - mindful of the time difference- and described to her the beautiful full moon I could see from my balcony. She told me that she too had seen a full moon last night. When I said of course you did, it's the same moon, she told me not to be so daft and it couldn't be the same moon as mine was obviously Australian!

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

@ArabellaScott

My MIL maintained people always got married to someone whose first name was within two letters of yours in the alphabet. Pointedly then looked at me and DP and noted our names are further than three letters apart.

We've never married.

O M G.

Dh is a B and I was a D.

.

@Allthedoggos nooo is anyone that stupid that they don't know that if they do less hours the pay will reduce ?.
Saying that this has reminded me I had a colleague years ago who was adamant that working parents got more holidays than people without children , no parental leave or anything it was all the same as everyone but no was sure was getting some benefit as he put it .
The same person also believed that part time staff got the same amount holidays as full time it's technically true but i explained it was pro rata , he couldn't get his tiny mind round that kept saying it's not fair she only works 3 days a week but still gets the same holidays as full time staff .

@ArabellaScott

My MIL maintained people always got married to someone whose first name was within two letters of yours in the alphabet. Pointedly then looked at me and DP and noted our names are further than three letters apart.

We've never married.

Oops. I misread as surname.

First name wise we are six letters apart.

My MIL maintained people always got married to someone whose first name was within two letters of yours in the alphabet. Pointedly then looked at me and DP and noted our names are further than three letters apart.

I was strangely excited that this was true of myself and my husband.

@MsKeats

Too many to quote.

A once had a friend turn a compass round and round trying to get South to point in a different as that is where South was as he knew.
30 minutes. 30 minutes of my life I will never get back. 30 minutes explained North is north and south is south and you can't make the compass point a different way while stood in the same location. Argh................

Actually, compass needles can become depolarised, making them point in the opposite direction. This can happen if you put them next to something magnetic (phones are a frequent culprit) e.g. in a bag, and they will stay depolafised even after the offending item is removed.

I have been in the position of knowing that my compass was pointing the wrong way, and that was the reason.

(It's fixable btw - plenty of advice online about how to fix a compass this has happened to.)

Women chatting in the baby food aisle of supermarket arguing about whether they could feed 19nonth old a “real”jacket potato as it was dirty and come out of the ground.

A friend of my dad came up with the revelation that parrots don’t really talk - they just copy what you say.

Mind you, given members of recent and past Cabinets who've had degrees in PPE, I have occasionally wondered whether sending assassins to take out the entire PPE undergraduate population might not be a beneficial move. (Sorry, innocent and well-meaning PPE students..)

The thing is, PPE is a massively popular subject so if you kill them all you'll take out a lot of future really amazing leaders as well as the dregs. I knew a ton of PPE students (I wasn't one of them!) as I was very involved in student politics where, of course, they all hang out, and only a couple of them have gone on to do anything disastrous to do with the government. One is a fabulous member of the shadow cabinet. A load more work for NGOs and the like. Even to get rid of the entire decade's worth of dreadful former PPE-ists, there'd be an awful lot of collateral damage. I reckon you'd probably have to take down 50 good ones and a whole load more average onesto be sure of getting the next Jeremy Hunt or Rishi Sunak.

Anyone who’s worked in healthcare will tell you you need to dial way back on how intelligent you imagine the general population is.

Omg yes!

@GrandAltogether

Oh, and one of my students once thought that George Eliot was TS Eliot's pen name.

Some of the examples on this thread are funny, and ones like this are just snobbish. It’s not a massive deal or a very stupid mistake is it now?

The one thing that this thread has taught me is that if you hear someone say something that you think is "stupid", you would be well advised to go away and check your own assumptions before labelling them as such.

Because at least a few of these "stupid" examples are actually true, and it's the listener who is being dumb by not questioning what they assume to be true.

I love the “that’s actually not so stupid after all” replies, really interesting

It's a toss up between "Jesus spoke English" and "St Patrick was protestant".

Both from the same thick bloke (an ex mate I got sick off and went nc with). He came out with stupid shite all the time, but those are the two that stuck in my mind.

@FrancesFlute

A colleague with a thick Yorkshire accent (relevant!) asked me if I ate 'corned beef 'ash on Ash Wednesday?'

In some parts of Yorkshire, corned beef hash is a pretty traditional thing to eat on Ash Wednesday. He wasn't being thick, he was asking a question along the lines of "will you be having turkey this Christmas?".

@Cadent

Did you read the OP? Nothing embarrassing in it. What on earth is an essential item which can't be delivered (even medication can be picked up by a friend)? Even if you had something essential you HAD to collect that's very different from a day without quarantine where you swan around going to coffee shops as these people were suggesting. Also OP's friend overheard other people talking she didn't say this herself so how on earth is OP jealous? Your post is embarrassing!

I used to work in a university lab that also featured a small radioactive facility (a cupboard sized room really). One day in summer my Professor gave a tour to some (non-scientist) visitors. One of the visitors fanned herself, look at the 'radioactive' sign and asked quite seriously whether it was so hot because of all the radioactivity. I don't know how my Professor managed to keep a straight face.

@StCharlotte

An Oxbridge educated lawyer: "is infertility hereditary?"

Total infertility no, but very low fertility and premature menopause certainly can be hereditary - so your lawyer friend wasn't completely wrong.

I’ve got one better - a librarian who was referring to George Eliot as “he” and “him”. A librarian in Warwickshire!!

Not knowing that George Eliot was female really doesn't mean someone is thick.