To ask what's the rudest thing a stranger has done to you?

[YoungScrappyHungry]

Inspired by the lovely thread about kindest thing strangers have done for you, and also a chance for me to share this horror.

When I was 19, I worked on the tills at a supermarket in my holidays from university.

A woman I was serving was staring at me, trying to get my attention as I scanned her stuff. I looked up at her and smiled. She said, in still the most condescending tone I've ever heard:

'Don't you wish you'd studied now?'

I was so floored and ashamed, I didn't say a thing back and just carried on scanning her things. Fact was I was actually at university, but even if I hadn't been....aghh!....still gets me.

What are yours?

“I want to be his step-dad” whilst pointing to my son.

Bearing in mind, this stranger was in his mid 20s, I’m damn near 34 and forever getting approached by younger men (most can’t help but say something inappropriate)

Told me that my daughter (baby back then) was ‘too pale’ and ‘looked ill’

Not the meanest but the most satisfying to respond to.

I was working on security at an event and had stopped two young men from an age restricted area as they didn't have ID. They were joined by two girls, and were standing to one side of me. They were telling the girls that I had stopped them going in, but speaking in German - called me a fat English idiot. I replied in German that if they could prove their age, this fat English idiot would have let them all in, and they scuttled off.

Tara336 I was a passenger in a car stuck in traffic, I noticed we were close to a pedestrian crossing and said to my DP who was driving to be careful not to block it. I glanced up at the flashing pelican beacon (or whatever they are called) and then noticed a woman close to the car door, do whatever reason she suddenly went nuts at me and started banging on the window of the car claiming we were blocking the crossing (we weren’t we had stopped before it) I put the window down a bit and said “why are you shouting at me? Am i driving?” She said “no but you were going to block the crossing” (how she had decided that I don’t know) she then proceeded to stand in front of the car on the crossing and and jump up and down! DP sounded his horn at her and she moved back onto the pavement and walked off down the road! So she obviously didn’t even want to cross! Absolutely Batshit crazy!

I'm sure she must have been related to the woman I describe up thread who went crackers when I stopped to let her past before I turned in a laybye. Full on banging on the car bonnet, screaming and shouting over absolutely nothing at all!

A head teacher at my first sons school looked at my second son and to him said 'your hair cut makes you look a bit special' he has ASD and goes to a special school.
When i was pregnant i was singing carols with a group in a shopping centre and a man pointed at me and said 'we can all see you're not a virgin' about 4 times.

Today, cashier in Asda suggesting that the Covid vaccine was wasted on old people because they don't have long to live.

I was livid, but tried to explain that all lives are worth something, just that some people need a bit more help.
Both my sisters work in a specialist nursing home, the very people who need te vaccine and around the corner from the supermarket. Under usual circumstances I might say something.

My male year head called me a slag because he caught me bunking off a general studies art class. Along with the rest of the year group. Although they didn’t get called slags. I don’t think he could have gotten away with shouting “slags” at everyone so he just went for me. It was the 90’s he was a massive prick.

Door to door salesman attempted ‘charming’ me by insulting my 2 yr old DD. I kid you not the conversation verbatim as follows;

Cock knocker “she’s ginger”
Me “she has red hair yes”
Cock knocker “but your blonde” tilts his head with a sad face “her dad a ginger then”
Me “nope he’s got dark hair”
Cock knocker looks shocked and offended and tops it off with “ay you bothered shes ginger”

Me - Shut the door in his face

My dh was relocating for work. I didn't want to move so was reluctantly looking at houses.
Went into estate agents and the 50 something agent asked if she could help. We told her what we were looking for and the price.
She said. Oh, you won't get that on your budget, did you think it would be cheaper here? In a really sarcastic voice.

Dh said it is cheaper and he made the agent look for details of four properties.
We went outside and there was a bin on the pavement. He waited until she was definitely looking and threw the details in the bin.

God, I used to be a magnet for rude strangers (and odd strangers, there is some overlap!). Too many to mention, but a couple particularly stick in my mind. I used to work in a supermarket cigarette kiosk and the lottery machine had broken, I apologised to a customer about it and he said "Did you shit in it, is that why it stinks of piss and shit?).

I also had customers take the piss out of me for working in a supermarket, including one bloke in front of his wife and kids who basically said that working in a supermarket was demeaning and I was obviously neither intelligent or ambitious enough to do anything else. He stopped smirking when I told him I was doing a degree in maths at the local university.

I was getting off a bus once (middle doors) and I stopped to let a woman who was waiting go first as she had a buggy. Another women who was trying to get off the bus behind me just shoved past me to get to the door and muttered to me really aggressively 'Are you getting off or what???'

I was so surprised that by the time I'd 'registered' it after a couple of seconds, she'd gone. It annoyed me cos I would've loved to have said something like 'Actually I was trying to be polite, something an ignorant cow like you wouldn't understand'.

Was helping my sil move into her house,so obviously not wearing my usual tiara😂 when her new next door neighbor popped round to introduce herself pot plant etc.
I was leaving them to it having a bit of a chat and carried on unpacking sorting , she then turned to my sil and said oh it’s very handy you’ve bought your cleaning lady with you today and off she went
My sil just froze with her mouth open so didn’t correct her , we still laugh about it now

-Been called ugly by random men and occasionally women. Very hard to get over.The binmen were especially mean when I had to walk past them on my Post Office trips pre-Lockdown.

-At the beginning of lockdown 1 I was walking round our village and a local woman and her 22-ish y.o. daughter were coming the other way. I said hello and smiled at them both. The mother said a cheery hello back but the daughter stayed silent and gave me such a nasty, evil look you could have scraped me up off the floor. Never met her before. I seem to bump into them every sunday and the daughter does the same thing each time so I look at the floor now. It's more unpleasant because the mother clearly doesn't know she's doing it.

Not to me but I was in A&E two or three years ago and a man was making trips to the disabled loo every 10-15 mins and a small group of middle-aged men and women were merrily publicly taking the piss with nursing staff staying schtum, Told them they were an embarrassment to which one guy said I was "just a bit of fun".

So many, but here are a few.

Went to a job interview, v young, managed to read that the interviewer had written one word on his notepad, in capitals: FAT. Would have challenged him immediately these days!

Attending a writer friend’s book launch. My friend is 10 years younger than me. Was asked if I was her mother!

When I lost my hair through chemo and managed to go out for a quiet drink one evening with my husband. Old woman on the next table said, loudly, “My neighbour had to have HER head shaved when she had ringworm!”

To those complaining about the posters who used to work on checkouts/bars and pointed out to rude customers that they were actually students/graduates - you do realise that in these situations theres only a few seconds to think of a comeback?

And that they're just pointing out the factual context of their situation?

I doubt they were being sneering towards people who do those types of jobs long term.

And given that a large percentage of people in those jobs are students/graduates, why shouldn't they mention it?

Honestly, give them a break...people winge about this every time there's one of these threads 🙄

@Ohalrightthen I'll also remember the boy who came out of the corner shop just as it happened, shouted at the man to fuck off, and threw one of his shoes at the van. He was probably about 14 and i think he knew exactly what the man meant.

i was hoping you would update you married him

Oh and to the PP who said that telling someone who is patronising about your intelligence because you work in a shop is the same thing as agreeing with them, I worked at the supermarket for 8 years, the latter 4 as a student, and went back for a while after I graduated. I strongly suspect that there is/was an ageist and sexist element to how checkout staff got treated as they were predominantly middle aged women and I rarely had the same problem when I worked on other departments. I would never assume anything about someone based on them working in a shop, as retail work is frequently flexible for people who want to work hours to fit in around other things, such as studying, caring or another job.

@Avondklok

Not me but a colleague was explaining that their unborn baby had been dx with a cleft palate and my other colleague piped up that they should "just get rid of that one and have another go." We stood there quite speechless. 😡

Sadly doesn't suprise me. People are dicks.

[quote BlueCheckedTeatowel]**@Ohalrightthen* I'll also remember the boy who came out of the corner shop just as it happened, shouted at the man to fuck off, and threw one of his shoes at the van. He was probably about 14 and i think he knew exactly what the man meant.*

i was hoping you would update you married him [/quote]
That would have been an excellent ending! Alas i married a completely different man who as far as i know has never removed his own shoe and hurled it into traffic in a fit of righteous fury. More's the pity.

I was a bartender in Cambridge while at university there and a group of businessmen came in. I was serving them drinks and being friendly and smiley and laughing at their crap jokes and one of them shouted "great tits, arse, and teeth but not much between the ears eh!"

I was so shocked I just stood there staring. Then my male colleague piped in with "she's a student at the Cambridge and she's going to be a doctor. What are your qualifications?"

He actually apologises saying he 'hadn't realised'. By that time I'd managed to regain composure enough to tell him that it didn't matter if I was at Cambridge or not; speaking to anyone like that is totally unacceptable.

@Brainfogmcfogface

First time I’d worn shorts in years and years, was walking down the road with my children, 2 lads in a car drove past shouting abuse at me, about me being fat, then turned off and doubled back to do it again, then a third time.. I was finally feeling some body confidence and it completely wiped it out. I’m now back to dressing like a nun, covered from head to toe. Clearly my body is too hideous to be seen in public!

Please read Laura Bates' "Men Who Hate Women", and put your shorts back on (might want to wait until it warms up though ).

• eight months pregnant, walking along, man in a white van drives past and shouts out of his window "oi oi, you fat slag!"

• walking along with toddler and baby in summer, wearing vest and shorts, white van pulls up at the traffic lights near to us and the three men in the front seat shout out the window that "we can see you like to fuck!" along with offers to jump in the back and do exactly that. The lights changed and they shouted "I bet your cunt is like a welly top!" then drove off

• it hasn't happened much this year thanks to covid but when I'm out with my four DC people think nothing of asking if they all have the same father, am I still with their father, were they all planned, have I not figured out whats causing it (pregnancy), am I Catholic, and so on. Its so rude as its none of their fucking business

• autistic DS had a meltdown on a bus and a lady gave me such a filthy look and asked "whats wrong with it?" when I said he was having a rough time and we were getting off at the next stop anyway she told me that "it shouldn't be out in public if it can't cope"

I had been in hospital with an undiagnosed medical issue that meant I was vomiting 24/7 for weeks at a time meaning I was very underweight. First day in a new job when a typist berated me for being a 'stupid anorexic girl'!!

When I was a young teen we lived in Portugal and I spoke fairly fluent Portuguese. By my mid 20s my parents had moved to the Canaries and after many visits I understood Spanish fairly well but struggled to speak it as the accent was just so different to pronounce in comparison to Portuguese. Visiting a beach in Tenerife on my own one day I had chosen a sun bed and umbrella where you just wait for the beach worker to come and collect the money. Before I'd paid for sunbed the fruit seller came past and I ordered a few items, speaking Spanish. The fruit seller (fs) was a few rows away from me when he was joined by the beach worker (bw). They spoke together in Spanish about me,
bw: 'look at the arse on that'
fs: 'be careful she speaks Spanish'
bw: 'just a few words, please and thank you, stupid English bitch has had loads of cocks up that arse'.
BW then approaches me for payment and I mutely pay him the money. As he leaves he calls to fs, 'English whore took loads of cock up that arse'.

I still have day dreams of reporting him to the council and getting him sacked but I know if I'd have tried to confront him in Spanish it would have come out as gibberish.
I've overheard many unpleasant things being bilingual, not always about me but unpleasant all the same. The 50yo me knows that the mid 20s me had a banging figure so I put the arse comments down to his innate sense of inferiority.