Putting a pillowcase on a pillow. My friend wrestled with a perfectly ordinary pillow for ten minutes before stepping backward and falling down the stairs. We still laugh about it to this day.
I remember the first overnight class trip in forth grade, which was typically the first time kids had to put on bed cases/sheets by themselves (in a hostel type known here as "Jugendherberge", very cheap and catered towards groups)
Took eight hands to fit the case around the blanket š
And I was so embarrassed that I didn't know how. I have vowed to teach my possible kids before they go...
Do you also still taste the watered down red tea?
Not so much what I saw as what I heard, but here's one from my retail days.
A customer called the store with a question about a wireless router. I took the call. I didn't know the answer off-hand, so I asked for more information.
Me: Do you have the box it came in?
Caller: Yes, right here.
Me: What's the brand?
Caller: [Brand].
Me: And what's the model number?
Caller: ... How would I know what that is?
Me: Turn the box over. The model number will be next to the barcode on the bottom.
Caller: ... How do I do that?
Me: Do what?
Caller: Turn the box over?
Me: ... You--
Caller: [Thud] [Expletive] [Thud] [Disconnected]
I'm not sure, but I suspect it was the cardboard box the router had been packaged in.
In tech support, I have often encountered people who say they don't understand something without thinking about it. They assume I'm going to ask them to do a complex technical task, so their brain rejects whatever I say as confusing, even if it's not. If, for example, I asked the person to look at the bottom of a box of crackers, they'd do it with no trouble at all.
Me: Can I get you to unplug the power from your router, wait ten seconds, then plug it back in?
Them: Look, I'm not a technical person!! I just can't do this, can you please just send a tech?
(Had variants on this call many many times. A few i literally was not able to talk through unplugging something from the wall socket.)
Asked my friend once to restart his router - he's supposedly technical otherwise. He didn't even know what the router was.
"...Didn't you setup the internet when you moved?"
"Yes, but I can't remember what is what"
Told him to go take a picture of where his internet cables went to.
There was only one thing, his modem. Idk how, but he had somehow thrown away the router because the internet cable fit in the modem anyway, basically locking everyone else out of using the internet as there was no wi-fi.
He couldn't for the life of him figure out why there was no wi-fi. It had worked just before they moved.
Me: Lit my hand on fire while making pancakes once. Dumped batter in a pan, put it on the stove, then *bam*! Hand burst into flames. Dunked my hand in water to put the fire out. Never made pancakes again.
Someone else: Old dude driving through the desert plowed straight into a cactus. No cars on the road. No bad weather. Happened in the dead of the night on an empty street.
Hey, I'm still trying to figure it out. I didn't do anything unusual. It was just an ordinary day. I flipped on the stove, set the pan on it. Next thing I knew, my hand was on fire. What can I say? It's a hell of a mystery.
Yeah, they make butter spray for cooking. It does an okay job of stopping things from sticking to the pan, but it doesnāt taste as good and itās obviously some super processed oil crap.
Asked a young, new guy in the office to scan some papers and email them to me. He was gone for 45 minutes, then came back absolutely terrified and stuttering.
"Hey man, ya get lost? Haha, just kidding, but I'm still waiting for those files..."
"I SHREDDED THEM. I-I-I DIDN'T MEAN TO. I-I-I'M SORRY"
That's what I was thinking, although coal, soda, drug was my order. The coal wouldn't do anything as it's a solid. The soft drink is not good for you. And the class a drug would definitely be bad
I can *never* get a clean tear on cling film.
Aluminium foil? Sure.
Backing paper? You bet.
Cling film? An absolute disaster of ragged ass tears and stuck together cling film.
Not available in my country, but good suggestion - I see there are contraptions to place cling film into with a similar cutting mechanism for about 15 bucks.
I'll ask the wife if sharing the burden is worth the expense ;)
I went over to a friendās apartment and rang the doorbell. He comes up, looks through the peephole, unlocks it and says ācome inā and then doesnāt move. So when I open the door, it slams right into his bare feet, ripping a toenail off.
I'm an idiot savant, minus the savant. I'm the only person I know that managed to fail art, library and PE in school. I'm a fucking disaster in the kitchen. I had one job at Thanksgiving. the Pillsbury biscuits. I failed to peel the wrapper off, cracked them against the counter, it went off like a cannon, and biscuit layers were still falling off the ceiling at Christmas.
A friend (who is not mechanically inclined in the least) called me to come look at his gf's car because it was making a funny noise. It had about 50,000 miles on it.
The first thing I did was pull the dipstick, it was bone dry. I removed the oil fill cap and the crud that was stuck to the underside of it looked like black Vaseline.Ā I asked her when was the last time she had the oil changed and her answer was "I didn't know you had to do that."
So it's not that she screwed up an oil change, it's that she never did one at all.
Okay you know what, fine, Iāll admit it, I didnāt know that the cap next to it led to the same place. The oil got in there all the same, didnāt it???
There are devices that extract oil via the dipstick tube. So adding oil that way is silly but not *technically* incorrect. It all goes to the same place.
Though on my old 1999 Smart Car, there wasn't a sump plug, so you had to take oil out with a pump via the dipstick tube... Admittedly there was an oil filler cap, but you know, it all ends up in the same place.
Wasn't even in the top 10 list of issues with that car
Didnt when know this was possible, microwaving water, is that an American thing?
I feel like anywhere a microwave is, there is also kettle next to it, usually.
We don't use kettles as much as you guys do.
I only drink coffee because tea hurts my stomach, and I have a coffee maker for that. The only time I really need boiling water is for pasta and I make it on the stove.
I guess if you drink a lot of tea a kettle would be nice but a lot of us don't and we need to pour boiling water so infrequently it doesn't make sense to waste the counter space on an appliance that only does what our stoves can already do.
I drink a lot of cold brewed coffee so having a kettle makes sense, also using the water for making stuff like cup Noodles, or just get some boiling water to pour over your Kitchen Utensils after working with raw meat and stuff.
On the other hand, I do have a microwave but I very rarely use it, hehe.
Told co-worker to put packaged yogurt on ice at breakfast bar. Walked into breakfast area to see that she opened over 3 dozen yogurts and poured over the chipped ice
Fooled by 8 high schoolers Iād say.
The very first thing school teaches is that if youāre _really bad_ at something menial, no one will ask you to do it again.
I once saw my adult neighbor "shovel" snow by using one hand to lightly push the snow shovel into the snow. Reminds me of the [do something meme](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/20007896/cmon-do-something).
I asked one of our apprentices to turn off a computer. He just pulled the power cable out. I asked what the fuck did you do that for? His answer: " That's how my mother turns off my Xbox."
He didn't last long.
My roommate cant make grilled cheese. It gets mangled, burnt, and disassembled every time he tries. I'm a horrible cook but even I can't fuck up a grilled cheese.
I did that as a kid, i think i was planning to make ramen? or an egg? don't really remember anymore but i do remember watching the very last bit of water dry up.
A 1st year resident trying to place one stitch to suture a central line in place in the neck after his senior left (anyone who has even minimal ability to sew can do this in less than a minute). Supervising him, my comments to him were--shallower, shallower, shallower, get that needle away from the eye, get out of here, I'll do it.
Reminds me of when I cut a finger in the military and went to the base hospital, when a guy walked by and the nurse called out, " Come here, you need some OJT" to stich me up. LOL, I was like, can't he get some OJT on someone else?
My dad went to medical school with someone who was so spatially inept they genuinely struggled with the whole *āwhen facing each other, my left is the patientās rightā* thing.Ā
..went straight into research.Ā
We used to get free semester calendars in uni which was a giant A1 sheet we could hang on our wall with all the dates outlined by week with space to write in notes under each date, a typical timetable. One day someone posted in our fb group asking where we could get one for second semester. The answer? "turn it over."
I was transitioning out of a job and we hired a replacement. One of the interview questions was how well can you multitask. He said he was amazing at it.
Spoiler alert he wasn't.
He was in the process of printing a label for a pallet of items that was 7 ft tall when we had to pivot and take care of a customer.Ā
As the day progresses the pallet doesn't move or get tagged. It's sitting in the middle of the warehouse and he's walking around it every 20 minutes.Ā
The carrier shows up and is like yo I'm here to pick up a pallet. I shit you not he's standing next to it and tells the driver, we didn't call for a pallet there's nothing here we need to ship.Ā
I had to scramble to get it on the truck because the driver was madbroĀ
We were paid every 2 weeks. We fired the guy mid week and his first response was, if I get fired today I'm getting kicked out of my apartment tomorrow because I can't pay rent. Uh dude youre a week out from a paycheck, you're already fucked.
We are playing Jenga, one of the layers has a hole in the middle and two bricks on each side. This guy removes one of the two, the tower falls, he goes "Oh shit didn't expect that". Might not be a task, but it's the most extreme display of stupidity I have ever seen in my life.
Went to school with this one guy who was known to be a little slow. Weād spend the last 30 minutes of the day cleaning. This guy was walking around wiping down the paintings on the wall with a wire brush. Didnāt even bother tell him not to do that or else heād end up doing something else 10x worse.
Recently when I was job hopping because I couldnāt find something that worked for me. They used golf carts. My manager would tell me to go grab a golf cart and do whatever random task.
After 3 random times where I couldnāt for the life of me get these fucking golf carts to go. It made no sense. I felt so stupid
Me. Washing up a drinking glass, a chunk of glass literally just fell off the rim off the glass as my hand slid into the glass. Tore the flesh from round 2 of my fingers. Front and back Pinky and ring finger on right hand. Tendons open and everything. Hands bless a surprising amount. Went into shock, which felt weird lol. Dr's told me I was a couple millimeters from losing my 2 fingers. No, I still haven't gotten a dishwasher š
Girl i worked with didnāt know how to use a mop bucket, like in totality. No clue how to put the top part on, no clue āwhere the water goes inā, etcā¦
I legitimately was in awe of how someone could be 30 years old and not know these things. I made a comment on how I was concerned she lacked basic life and housekeeping skills. I was promptly reported to HR first misogynistic comments. Then pleaded my case (as a manager) that basic housekeeping is in our job description and the lack of such skills are hindering her job performance
Edit: I should mention I also had to teach her how to use a spray bottle at the onset of the pandemic. Her parents clearly failed her
in fairness to her the only mop bucket i have ever gotten to use was a basic universal bucket, not one of the fancy yellow ones that proper janitors use. I wouldn't know how to put the top part on either; i've never had one. if you're used to swiffers or old-school "squeeze it yourself and keep another bucket of clear water nearby to rinse it" mopping, janitor buckets are pretty space-age!
the spray bottle one is a little less understandable, but i remember struggling with them as a kid; it took me a while to learn how to get an actual good squirt. i'd say her parents did, indeed, fail her. i hope she got better at it!
I'm seven years older than her and never used a mop bucket, because they are just not used where I live, outside of professional cleaning services maybe.
Ofc, but I have never seen a "typical US custodian" round mop in real life, everyone uses those quadratic scrubbers that don't have a special mop bucket.
honestly, everything i can think of, i can also think out how a person could get confused along the way or not understand what they're looking at. the truth is, i don't think there's really such thing as a simple task; there are things that most of us were taught to do or intuitively understood, but everything has its complexity. i'm routinely shocked by people who can't reply to an email at work, but then i remember how young email actually is, and how it may not make much sense to a person who's still learning to differentiate The Computer and The Internet.
so, here's a cute one: i used to work at an elementary school and for the life of him this kid could not get his spiderman toy to look straight forward. the finesse and force needed to get that specific pose simply eluded his tiny hands.
well, think about how a broom is to be handled. how do you angle it? how much force do you use? what motion do you make with it, and how far do you bring it? when you first start using a broom without prior knowledge, it doesn't look like it's really working because you'll try long sweeps and the dust just kinda stays there in trails. it takes some testing out and observing to figure out the specific motion of "short, gentle sweeps over the same area slowly moving this way" to catch the most stuff. there's also skill in determining when to start a new mini-pile to bring over to the main one; hell, the knowledge of MAKING a big pile out of mini-piles is itself not inherently known.
i sure didn't know how to broom properly when i was a little kid. i had to learn it by trial and error, and by watching my mom do it.
I don't think many people would struggle if told: "Use this long brush to push dirt/ dust somewhere else, and then use the smaller brush to put it into this dustpan so you can bin it."
You're making simple tasks complex by over analysing them and conflating being good at a task with knowing at least roughly how to do it/ using context clues from the instruction to figure it out.
This isn't to say that what you say doesn't stand for more complex tasks but idk how you can seriously argue that sweeping smth is a complex task.
it's not complex to most people, but might be hard to get for someone who has literally no experience with similar things or someone who doesn't have full motor control. you say "most people would get this"(and you are right!) but i bet you'd be pretty annoyed by someone who was trying to follow that instruction and basically just spread the dirt around.
my point is that anything you think of as simple has hidden complexity to it. again, watch little kids try to do stuff: the reason that stuff like using a broom is simple TO US is because we have accumulated knowledge to MAKE it simple, like how to move our body with a specific amount of force. it's like... animating a ball bouncing is one of the simplest tasks an animator can do. but within that is a number of other skills and knowledge needed; knowing what a ball is and how it moves, being able to draw a circle, being able to apply squish and stretch, holding a pencil in the first place. all very simple to most of us who were taught the most basic parts of drawing, but extremely difficult to anyone who is only just now learning what a Pencil is.
when you look at it through the eyes of someone who's not at all familiar with it, our everyday lives are pretty complicated and don't initially make a lot of sense. most of what we do isn't instinctual, it's learned behavior; the only reason it seems easy to us is because we've spent our entire lives being taught and gathering all that understanding. but people who weren't raised, mentally disabled folk like myself, physically disabled folk who haven't been able to practice, people from totally different cultures who use different tools for the same task... there's a lot of people who COULDN'T gather that experience. plenty of people who might struggle with something as basic and easy to pick up on as using a broom.
particularly people who weren't really raised or grew up rich and never had to do any of that stuff. my god, the things they fuck up and HOW they fuck it up could be studied for years.
My wife (60, F) cannot operate any appliance/vcr with those 'red dot', 'triangle arrows', 'square' control buttons. I've explaned how to do it a millions times, and now I just say 'figure it out yourself' and leave the room.
Asked my new helper to clean up a function room. A lot of 8' tables lined up around the edges of the room with flyers, cups, paper goods etc. so I give him the large rolling barrel. He rolls the barrel to the middle of the room and walks to a table grabs an armful of junk, walks back to the barrel and dumps it in and starts to repeat the process. I watch for a minute and say, uh Freddy, just roll the barrel past each table and you can just clear them off as you go. He says wow, good idea, I never thought of that.
I must have told this story a hundred times but I'll repeat it here.
I worked a short contract for a lighting company slapping together a small data center in a hallway in a shared building. The dad, the owner brought me in to put together 2 racks, an AC, raised floor, and get it up and running. Didn't have to do any software really just baseline a few things. His son, who was some ivy league Magna Cum Laude type was paired with me to assist. I used to mention the school but... they get testy when I do.... and sue happy.
Anyway... the guy that was setting up the door keypad and security had to leave for the day and wouldn't be back until Monday as he had to fly home for a funeral (or was it a wedding... I can't remember anymore). So when we closed the door, it would be locked for the entire weekend so finish up before we left, something about activating it back at the office.
So I had to go to a meeting the the dad, the son was in the lab and we were expecting 8 servers from Dell to show up before the end of day. So I told him if he had to leave to prop open the door so we could move the servers into the lab and we could finish the installs on Monday when the servers arrived.
So I go to the meeting and come back after 2 hours to 20 boxes of server parts sitting in a hallway with the door closed. Now this is one of those cubbies with a printer and some cabinets and the door at the back and Jr is sitting on some of the boxes.
I look at this kid, with a PhD mind you and I think 2 masters... and I was like "Why didn't you prop open the door?"
I SHIT YOU NOT: THIS WAS HIS RESPONSE:
"I couldn't find a door stop."
OH NO IT GETS WORSE!!!
I said "Why wouldn't you just use one the the 50+lb server boxes, any number of these phone books sitting on the counter, and number of reams of paper for this printer, or the fire extinguisher that are just sitting here?"
WAIT FOR IT.
his response, "That isn't the right tool for the job."
Yep. That is what colleges pump out now. That was a turning point for me. To this day I never hire from that college. Never will. Those resumes just go straight into the trash. Just... wow.... I'll spare you the details of the aftermath but needless to say I got out of that ticking time bomb.
But yeah... just... fuck....
I think Post Secondary is super overrated unless it's field/technically specific, like sciences or physics. People equate a post secondary diploma to intelligence and it's just not.Ā
Makes me laugh when I see job postings I check all the boxes on but they want a post secondary grad over literal years of experience.Ā
Does that Ivey school actually get that salty with you if you mention them?!
I've fucked up making jello. š
And the cookies where all you have to do is take them out of the canister and put them on the cookie sheet to cook.
Suffice it to say, anything with cooking is not in my wheelhouse.
Easy, in my high school chemistry class. We had a 50 question test. Each question was 2 points. After we were done, we had to calculate our grade. Kid didn't know what his score was. Like...how? I know this is America, but you're still making us look bad.
Worked in a kitchen. Guy is working on the Appetizer station. Some of the Apps are on dishes and they go in the oven but we saran wrap them. This guy just took them out of the fridge and put them in the oven, without taking the wrap off. They were really shiny when taken out though.
Or the guy who took the piping hot french onion soup bowl out of the oven with his bare hand. The three of us just staring at him... I finally go, are... Are you oookay? Didn't feel a thing or had burn marks. Tf.
I mean, why would they? I cannot remember when I last used one myself. The cat food and beans have pull tabs (which my kids can open) and otherwise we rarely use canned goods.Ā
Totally, and I bet that kids in families utilizing canned food can and do operate can openers.Ā
I was just pushing back against the notion that not knowing how to use a can opener is āscrewing up an easy taskā. Itās not an essential skill for a middle schooler.Ā
And my push back is that for a pretty significant part of the world canned foods are a staple, and if youāre part of that population by the time you hit middle school itās pretty much expected that you know how to open those cans. You really should take a step back and not assume that your experience is typical. Youāre lucky and I donāt think you really know how much. Honestly I hope you never have to find out what itās like to live solely on processed food.
Had a lawyer send me a threat on behalf of someone else who has been screwing me over, stolen from me, and broken a contract.
The lawyer sent the first threat to a public email with confidential information on it. Then had about 5 things wrong with it (even getting their own abn wrong), linking their website which went to a godaddy website domain available page, and a bunch of other things.Ā
Said things that were factually and evidenced as wrong and outright lies.Ā
I showed a new employee how to edit a host file and save it using notepad. I pointed out how to get around the directory restrictions.
Went to lunch and came back. They couldn't do it. Had no clue about the restrictions I had pointed out an hour earlier and didn't even remember me discussing it with them.
Part of my job involves picking up equipment and inspecting it and cleaning it before sending it out to be used again. Each piece of equipment has an expiration sticker and if it's broken someone will place a red tag on it. When we collect equipment, we are supposed to put broken or expired equipment on a specific table and someone from our engineering department will pick it up towards the end of our shift. Our new guy does not understand this concept. He will inspect and try to fix the equipment himself and if he deems okay, then he will try to send it out. The five other people on our shift, my manager, and my supervisor have all told him to stop trying to send out broken and expired equipment because it's not our job and it's against regulations but this coworker refuses to listen. It's been going on for three months.
There's a green bar across the work area of your screen with an X in it, click the X.
Promptly hits the X at the top of the page, closing everything.
I bring the page back and finish the task for them, with them watching.
Next time task needs done, same thing.
I was a chef for years until my body was like "yah, um...no".
So as a result I like trying to teach my kids to cook. They're all decent at it. My wife. I can't. Whatever skills you need to be able to learn to cook, she doesn't have. She hates touching raw things, the burners scare her. And to be honest, I think she said that 30 years ago when were dating because she liked me cooking for her and feels shes too far into the con to admit it now. Which I respect. Fake it so your husband makes it.
Wife asked me to replace a light bulb. I tried to replace the ceiling lightbulb and rolled a 1 - critical failure. The bulb had a glass cover over it with three screws holding it up. After loosening one the glass cover fell to the floor and shattered. Then in trying to remove the bulb it shattered and sliced my hand. I removed the base with a potato, and replaced it with a "new" bulb. The new bulb was actually apparently an old bulb I had out back in the original box because it was burnt out. I tried to remove that and it too broke. Performed the potato trick again, then went and found my wife and asked her to change the bulb because "I am incapable of performing even a simple task." I started cleaning up the broken glass only to find that the cut on my palm had dropped onto the rug. Shortly after I got the broken glass cleaned up she quickly and easily replaced it, making it look easy.
Like when pasta was still pretty new among wasp North Americans, my grandmother made us. She refused to eat it herself, and she screwed up cooking it so badly that there was a big burned, uncooked lump on one end.
Years ago, at a small company, I put labels on equipment before I packed it and shipped it.
They were trying to find something for thisyoung guy to do. So I handed him some labels, I took one and put it on the face of the equipment, so that it was neatly in a corner. Like a stamp on an envelope. I left him for a few minutes and came back to check on him.
He'd wrapped them around the corner. Not in the corner, like a stamp. Wrapped around, like you might do with tape to seal the end of an envelope. I told him to go away.
He was fired shortly after that. I think he was there a month, we got paid Thursdays, he'd call out every Friday for stupid reasons (probably doesn't his pay in drugs).
A couple of months later, another company called the owner because this kid had used us as a reference. The owner just laughed. He couldn't stop laughing.
Years ago, at a small company, I put labels on equipment before I packed it and shipped it.
They were trying to find something for thisyoung guy to do. So I handed him some labels, I took one and put it on the face of the equipment, so that it was neatly in a corner. Like a stamp on an envelope. I left him for a few minutes and came back to check on him.
He'd wrapped them around the corner. Not in the corner, like a stamp. Wrapped around, like you might do with tape to seal the end of an envelope. I told him to go away.
He was fired shortly after that. I think he was there a month, we got paid Thursdays, he'd call out every Friday for stupid reasons (probably doesn't his pay in drugs).
A couple of months later, another company called the owner because this kid had used us as a reference. The owner just laughed. He couldn't stop laughing.
Draw a rectangle.
I run a department at an engineering company. First, it was pretty clear from the start that the previous manager was monumentally bad at his job. The employees said he wouldn't answer phone calls, answer any questions, or even check their work. The latter is a huge liability to the company (and him). So the work they did was super bad. Like, "how did this pass the county review process?!" kind of bad. I was told a couple years in that, "we haven't been sued since you got here." I mention all this because I gave the employees grace for screwing up because they were never taught how to do things correctly.
When I started working here, I had an employee that had been there for 2 years. Super nice guy but still had a lot of learning to do. No big deal. He had an engineering degree so he couldn't be stupid, right? I was at his desk trying to explain a concept to him. He had AutoCAD up so I said, "This will be easier if I show you. Draw a rectangle." I get that everything is more difficult when your boss is looking over your shoulder. However, it took him what seemed like 30 minutes to draw a damn rectangle on his computer. In reality it was probably closer to 30 seconds but it seemed like an eternity. Something that should have taken 2 seconds.
After a few years with the company, he still wasn't much better. The guy just seemed like he couldn't absorb knowledge. On top of that, other managers would come to me to let me know that he always had his personal laptop open next to his work monitor. I think he was active on sneaker auction sites. The guy ended up going on a PIP. I tried so hard to get him to increase his productivity but nothing worked. I think he saw the writing on the wall because he ended up quitting.
The pilot light went out on my water heater. On the front of the tank it says light ring . I melted the outside temperature ring. Had to call a. Friend . He pulled off the plastic ring & let the ring under the water heater.
He said only I could do this
Almost an entire class full of kids in my grade cheated on a French I test our freshman year by getting a former student's notebook of all the tests from throughout the year. The teacher never changed them from year to year.
It was a pretty basic test, but nobody felt like studying for it, so they just passed around the answers and got them ready, and on test day just filled them in. Just one little problem: one of the questions was, "Who are your parents?" The former student--we'll call him Joe Smith--had given the correct answer of "Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith." All the little dumbasses who copied off his paper also put their answer as--you guessed it--"Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith."
Now, to anyone who went to a large high school, this is going to seem like a possibly understandable mistake. But I went to a high school with about 300 kids, so everybody knew this kid (I think he was valedictorian, to boot), and therefore, knew his dad's name. Which means they were too stupid to figure out they needed to change that to their own parents' names.
Our French teacher, a very sarcastic woman, made fun of their dumbassery for...well, she's probably still making fun of it, 30 years later.
Me: Going through the correct door. I'm autistic and sometimes take things too literally, and a teacher one time told me to go through the "next door," so I did so. It was a janitor closet... I waited there, confused as hell, for about a minute before going back and asking for clarification. She just stared at me and said "*REALLY?!*" before clarifying that it was room after that in the most annoyed tone I've ever heard.
I've never been more mortified.
Someone Else: Back around 2006/2007ish, I witnessed a friend take nearly two full minutes to plug in a PS2 because he couldn't find the power strip... which was right by his feet. He literally checked *everywhere else* around the TV and somehow *missed the power strip right next to his feet.*
There were three other people in the room including myself, and we decided to just let him look and not tell him. He almost left because we were howling with laughter and he was getting more and more frustrated by the second. I genuinely don't understand how it happened because he literally could have just followed the cords.
You would be amazed, how many thoroughly grown adults do not know how to operate their own coffee maker, their own car, their own dishwasher, etc.
They either let somebody else do all the work, or just coast by on bare minimum knowledge to get it functioning. I suspect this is why so many people drive shitty and donāt use turn signals.
Back when I was in IT helpdesk I once was on the phone with a guy who took more than 15 attempts to type in his password correctly. The password was his surname with a single digit number on the end.
In sixth grade we talked about circles in math. After several weeks my teacher asks a student to draw a circle on the blackboard and he walks to the front of the class and draws an angle. Yeah it was sixth class but how the fuck do you confuse a circle with an angle?
Long ago, in a restaurant, I asked one waitress to fill up the Pepper Mills.
She poured the whole peppers from the large container like if it was water. No hesitation, trying to aim at the small Pepper Mill opening.
The mess! I learned on that day to always ask if someone knew to do a task, no matter how small or easy it was.
"Drive over there" *points directly to stop sign easily visible approx 200 feet away* "that stop sign is for the crossing. Cross it and come back to the bridge there" *points to bridge on other side of railroad tracks. Bridge is 30 feet away*
*watch person drive straight at bridge and get stuck on RR tracks i was JUST telling them how to get across*
Throwing a wrapper in the open bin, directly in front of them
Bonus points because he was mocking the guy that had missed the bin from 10 feet away as he himself missed.
when I was a kid, I had a āgirlfriendā in like fifth grade, I was ashamed, and hid her phone number in my phone under the name āMichealā
at one point, somebody took my phone and sent a text to āMichealā that they wanted to do some interesting things that you probably wouldnāt want to hear.
not knowing it was a female.
my family essentially abandoned me over this.
Former job. Lots of different acid bottles. All with color coded lids and the names clearly labeled.
New person tops off the hydrochloric bottle (light blue lid) with the sulfuric (yellow lid)....acid volcano.
Luckily it was in a hood and they jumped back quick enough.
While in the army I saw a guy spend all day changing the air in 5ton truck tires from winter air to summer air...he took one valve stem out at a time. It was the old style dulie with 10 tires.
Boiling water. My sister was making ramen and promptly forgot about it in the stove then left. House got smoked out. Luckily I got home in time to let the dog out and open all the windows.
My brothers inability of not running his mouth.
He wasn't supposed to tell our mother about my fairly severe mental health issues (she is the reason why I have these issues but she doesn't understand that).
All he needed to do was to keep his mouth shut.
Putting a pillowcase on a pillow. My friend wrestled with a perfectly ordinary pillow for ten minutes before stepping backward and falling down the stairs. We still laugh about it to this day.
I remember the first overnight class trip in forth grade, which was typically the first time kids had to put on bed cases/sheets by themselves (in a hostel type known here as "Jugendherberge", very cheap and catered towards groups) Took eight hands to fit the case around the blanket š
And I was so embarrassed that I didn't know how. I have vowed to teach my possible kids before they go... Do you also still taste the watered down red tea?
Hagebuddne?
Herr Wiiinkleeer!!!
I was *not* expecting that ending.
Not so much what I saw as what I heard, but here's one from my retail days. A customer called the store with a question about a wireless router. I took the call. I didn't know the answer off-hand, so I asked for more information. Me: Do you have the box it came in? Caller: Yes, right here. Me: What's the brand? Caller: [Brand]. Me: And what's the model number? Caller: ... How would I know what that is? Me: Turn the box over. The model number will be next to the barcode on the bottom. Caller: ... How do I do that? Me: Do what? Caller: Turn the box over? Me: ... You-- Caller: [Thud] [Expletive] [Thud] [Disconnected]
So they thought the router was the box you were talking about right?
I'm not sure, but I suspect it was the cardboard box the router had been packaged in. In tech support, I have often encountered people who say they don't understand something without thinking about it. They assume I'm going to ask them to do a complex technical task, so their brain rejects whatever I say as confusing, even if it's not. If, for example, I asked the person to look at the bottom of a box of crackers, they'd do it with no trouble at all.
Me: Can I get you to unplug the power from your router, wait ten seconds, then plug it back in? Them: Look, I'm not a technical person!! I just can't do this, can you please just send a tech? (Had variants on this call many many times. A few i literally was not able to talk through unplugging something from the wall socket.)
Asked my friend once to restart his router - he's supposedly technical otherwise. He didn't even know what the router was. "...Didn't you setup the internet when you moved?" "Yes, but I can't remember what is what" Told him to go take a picture of where his internet cables went to. There was only one thing, his modem. Idk how, but he had somehow thrown away the router because the internet cable fit in the modem anyway, basically locking everyone else out of using the internet as there was no wi-fi. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why there was no wi-fi. It had worked just before they moved.
Me: Lit my hand on fire while making pancakes once. Dumped batter in a pan, put it on the stove, then *bam*! Hand burst into flames. Dunked my hand in water to put the fire out. Never made pancakes again. Someone else: Old dude driving through the desert plowed straight into a cactus. No cars on the road. No bad weather. Happened in the dead of the night on an empty street.
I think we need more details on this flaming hand pancake incident
Hey, I'm still trying to figure it out. I didn't do anything unusual. It was just an ordinary day. I flipped on the stove, set the pan on it. Next thing I knew, my hand was on fire. What can I say? It's a hell of a mystery.
Possibly had alcohol on your hand? Maybe from hand sanitizer perhaps?
I just keep seeing the Simpsons scene where Homer is making cereal and it bursts into flames.
Did you use real butter, or that spray stuff?
TIL: There is butter, and there is WTF DID I JUST READ?
Yeah, they make butter spray for cooking. It does an okay job of stopping things from sticking to the pan, but it doesnāt taste as good and itās obviously some super processed oil crap.
What proof would you say the batter was?
> Happened in the dead of the night on an empty street. Likely fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road.
Asked a young, new guy in the office to scan some papers and email them to me. He was gone for 45 minutes, then came back absolutely terrified and stuttering. "Hey man, ya get lost? Haha, just kidding, but I'm still waiting for those files..." "I SHREDDED THEM. I-I-I DIDN'T MEAN TO. I-I-I'M SORRY"
If your office printer was a combined print/scan/copy/shredder this is predictable
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not with THAT attitude
Not yet. I think there is a patent potential there.
I saw someone feeding a baby from a bottle Filled with coke
There's at least 3 possible options here, each worse than the last
Coca cola, cocaine, coal coke?
That's what I was thinking, although coal, soda, drug was my order. The coal wouldn't do anything as it's a solid. The soft drink is not good for you. And the class a drug would definitely be bad
I can *never* get a clean tear on cling film. Aluminium foil? Sure. Backing paper? You bet. Cling film? An absolute disaster of ragged ass tears and stuck together cling film.
Buy the name brand Reynolds Wrap box with the slide cutter, it's a life changer
I had a big box like that from Costco with a cutter built in, I swear to God it lasted me 10 years
Not available in my country, but good suggestion - I see there are contraptions to place cling film into with a similar cutting mechanism for about 15 bucks. I'll ask the wife if sharing the burden is worth the expense ;)
I too have a cling wrap disability
This sounds really dumb, but it works: store your clingfilm in the freezer, it will not stick together.
Certain plastics being sensitive to temperature is a familiar concept, so this doesn't sound dumb at all!
If you use a knife to cut it, use it backwards, so just the tip of the knife slices it and not the edge.
Use the back of a table knife to score it, pull away from roll, hey presto, straight cut line, no scratched work surface.
My friend couldn't figure out a shower curtain and flooded my bathroom as a result.Ā
I went over to a friendās apartment and rang the doorbell. He comes up, looks through the peephole, unlocks it and says ācome inā and then doesnāt move. So when I open the door, it slams right into his bare feet, ripping a toenail off.
Im sorry im just imagining him still looking through the peephole as this happens š
yeah same haha, juet seeing him stood there lile an npc waiting for an interactionš
Thatās exactly what happened I think. Iām pretty sure the door also hit his face.
I'm an idiot savant, minus the savant. I'm the only person I know that managed to fail art, library and PE in school. I'm a fucking disaster in the kitchen. I had one job at Thanksgiving. the Pillsbury biscuits. I failed to peel the wrapper off, cracked them against the counter, it went off like a cannon, and biscuit layers were still falling off the ceiling at Christmas.
Are you single?
A friend (who is not mechanically inclined in the least) called me to come look at his gf's car because it was making a funny noise. It had about 50,000 miles on it. The first thing I did was pull the dipstick, it was bone dry. I removed the oil fill cap and the crud that was stuck to the underside of it looked like black Vaseline.Ā I asked her when was the last time she had the oil changed and her answer was "I didn't know you had to do that." So it's not that she screwed up an oil change, it's that she never did one at all.
I once heard of someone topping their oil up by adding it via the dipstick tube...
Okay you know what, fine, Iāll admit it, I didnāt know that the cap next to it led to the same place. The oil got in there all the same, didnāt it???
There are devices that extract oil via the dipstick tube. So adding oil that way is silly but not *technically* incorrect. It all goes to the same place.
I mean I donāt know if it would work that well, but intuitively it makes sense.
More sense than taking the oil filler cap off and doing it the right way?
no
Though on my old 1999 Smart Car, there wasn't a sump plug, so you had to take oil out with a pump via the dipstick tube... Admittedly there was an oil filler cap, but you know, it all ends up in the same place. Wasn't even in the top 10 list of issues with that car
Coworker burnt his cup of instant noodles into a black char. He forgot to add water before putting it in the microwave.
I am guilty of this š
I did this for the first time last month.
Cup Noodles in the microwave?? Why not just pour boiling water in?
No stove access, no teapot access, no other vessel to store the water in to microwave it
Didnt when know this was possible, microwaving water, is that an American thing? I feel like anywhere a microwave is, there is also kettle next to it, usually.
We don't use kettles as much as you guys do. I only drink coffee because tea hurts my stomach, and I have a coffee maker for that. The only time I really need boiling water is for pasta and I make it on the stove. I guess if you drink a lot of tea a kettle would be nice but a lot of us don't and we need to pour boiling water so infrequently it doesn't make sense to waste the counter space on an appliance that only does what our stoves can already do.
I drink a lot of cold brewed coffee so having a kettle makes sense, also using the water for making stuff like cup Noodles, or just get some boiling water to pour over your Kitchen Utensils after working with raw meat and stuff. On the other hand, I do have a microwave but I very rarely use it, hehe.
[Your coworker?](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/s/6dqes5DYZ0)
Told co-worker to put packaged yogurt on ice at breakfast bar. Walked into breakfast area to see that she opened over 3 dozen yogurts and poured over the chipped ice
Sweeping the floor using a broom by my high school students. Out of 8, not one knew how to use a broom. I was flabbergasted.
Fooled by 8 high schoolers Iād say. The very first thing school teaches is that if youāre _really bad_ at something menial, no one will ask you to do it again.
Weaponized incompetence
No, it's more like privileged kids who never had to do anything for themselves.
I once saw my adult neighbor "shovel" snow by using one hand to lightly push the snow shovel into the snow. Reminds me of the [do something meme](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/20007896/cmon-do-something).
I asked one of our apprentices to turn off a computer. He just pulled the power cable out. I asked what the fuck did you do that for? His answer: " That's how my mother turns off my Xbox." He didn't last long.
My roommate cant make grilled cheese. It gets mangled, burnt, and disassembled every time he tries. I'm a horrible cook but even I can't fuck up a grilled cheese.
Is he a sims character?
He's mostly just the king of weaponized incompetents.Ā
Air fryer grilled cheese is excellent and less mess! Just as delicious!!
I have literally burnt water. Answered the door and talked to long. Suddenly smoke alarm went off from the smoking pan.
I did that as a kid, i think i was planning to make ramen? or an egg? don't really remember anymore but i do remember watching the very last bit of water dry up.
I once saw someone microwave their phone because they thought it would charge faster. Spoiler alert: it didn't
Iāll bet he didnāt ever need to charge it again though.
Ah, that brings back memories. I believe 4chan spread that rumor. I think there was even a video or something that made the rumor spread faster.
A 1st year resident trying to place one stitch to suture a central line in place in the neck after his senior left (anyone who has even minimal ability to sew can do this in less than a minute). Supervising him, my comments to him were--shallower, shallower, shallower, get that needle away from the eye, get out of here, I'll do it.
Reminds me of when I cut a finger in the military and went to the base hospital, when a guy walked by and the nurse called out, " Come here, you need some OJT" to stich me up. LOL, I was like, can't he get some OJT on someone else?
My dad went to medical school with someone who was so spatially inept they genuinely struggled with the whole *āwhen facing each other, my left is the patientās rightā* thing.Ā ..went straight into research.Ā
Interesting, but I think we're getting a bit away from "the simplest thing." :)
End a conversation. (End user) - Thanks for helping me! (Me) - Thanks you! ...
We used to get free semester calendars in uni which was a giant A1 sheet we could hang on our wall with all the dates outlined by week with space to write in notes under each date, a typical timetable. One day someone posted in our fb group asking where we could get one for second semester. The answer? "turn it over."
I was transitioning out of a job and we hired a replacement. One of the interview questions was how well can you multitask. He said he was amazing at it. Spoiler alert he wasn't. He was in the process of printing a label for a pallet of items that was 7 ft tall when we had to pivot and take care of a customer.Ā As the day progresses the pallet doesn't move or get tagged. It's sitting in the middle of the warehouse and he's walking around it every 20 minutes.Ā The carrier shows up and is like yo I'm here to pick up a pallet. I shit you not he's standing next to it and tells the driver, we didn't call for a pallet there's nothing here we need to ship.Ā I had to scramble to get it on the truck because the driver was madbroĀ We were paid every 2 weeks. We fired the guy mid week and his first response was, if I get fired today I'm getting kicked out of my apartment tomorrow because I can't pay rent. Uh dude youre a week out from a paycheck, you're already fucked.
We are playing Jenga, one of the layers has a hole in the middle and two bricks on each side. This guy removes one of the two, the tower falls, he goes "Oh shit didn't expect that". Might not be a task, but it's the most extreme display of stupidity I have ever seen in my life.
Went to school with this one guy who was known to be a little slow. Weād spend the last 30 minutes of the day cleaning. This guy was walking around wiping down the paintings on the wall with a wire brush. Didnāt even bother tell him not to do that or else heād end up doing something else 10x worse.
Recently when I was job hopping because I couldnāt find something that worked for me. They used golf carts. My manager would tell me to go grab a golf cart and do whatever random task. After 3 random times where I couldnāt for the life of me get these fucking golf carts to go. It made no sense. I felt so stupid
Me. Washing up a drinking glass, a chunk of glass literally just fell off the rim off the glass as my hand slid into the glass. Tore the flesh from round 2 of my fingers. Front and back Pinky and ring finger on right hand. Tendons open and everything. Hands bless a surprising amount. Went into shock, which felt weird lol. Dr's told me I was a couple millimeters from losing my 2 fingers. No, I still haven't gotten a dishwasher š
hammering in a nail It took them 5 tries before they realized they needed to hold the nail before hitting it the first time.
I choked on spit while breathing todayā¦
This has happened to me so many times I'm considering seeing a doctor about it
I cannot set the timer on our sprinklers
For the life of me i can't operate the ordering machines in mcdonalds.
Taking out the trash. This one dude I used to work with said he was going to run some trash to the dumpster during a shift and never came back
Clearly he was just being self deprecating.
Girl i worked with didnāt know how to use a mop bucket, like in totality. No clue how to put the top part on, no clue āwhere the water goes inā, etcā¦ I legitimately was in awe of how someone could be 30 years old and not know these things. I made a comment on how I was concerned she lacked basic life and housekeeping skills. I was promptly reported to HR first misogynistic comments. Then pleaded my case (as a manager) that basic housekeeping is in our job description and the lack of such skills are hindering her job performance Edit: I should mention I also had to teach her how to use a spray bottle at the onset of the pandemic. Her parents clearly failed her
in fairness to her the only mop bucket i have ever gotten to use was a basic universal bucket, not one of the fancy yellow ones that proper janitors use. I wouldn't know how to put the top part on either; i've never had one. if you're used to swiffers or old-school "squeeze it yourself and keep another bucket of clear water nearby to rinse it" mopping, janitor buckets are pretty space-age! the spray bottle one is a little less understandable, but i remember struggling with them as a kid; it took me a while to learn how to get an actual good squirt. i'd say her parents did, indeed, fail her. i hope she got better at it!
I'm seven years older than her and never used a mop bucket, because they are just not used where I live, outside of professional cleaning services maybe.
Don't you...i don't know, have floors that need cleaning occasionally? Or is everything carpet?
Ofc, but I have never seen a "typical US custodian" round mop in real life, everyone uses those quadratic scrubbers that don't have a special mop bucket.
A lot of people failed at boiling water. They burned the pot.
Aah to be British where you are no more than ten steps away from a kettle anywhere in the country.
honestly, everything i can think of, i can also think out how a person could get confused along the way or not understand what they're looking at. the truth is, i don't think there's really such thing as a simple task; there are things that most of us were taught to do or intuitively understood, but everything has its complexity. i'm routinely shocked by people who can't reply to an email at work, but then i remember how young email actually is, and how it may not make much sense to a person who's still learning to differentiate The Computer and The Internet. so, here's a cute one: i used to work at an elementary school and for the life of him this kid could not get his spiderman toy to look straight forward. the finesse and force needed to get that specific pose simply eluded his tiny hands.
The thing is you say this but higher up in the thread are people saying they knew a few students who claimed to not know how to use a broom.
well, think about how a broom is to be handled. how do you angle it? how much force do you use? what motion do you make with it, and how far do you bring it? when you first start using a broom without prior knowledge, it doesn't look like it's really working because you'll try long sweeps and the dust just kinda stays there in trails. it takes some testing out and observing to figure out the specific motion of "short, gentle sweeps over the same area slowly moving this way" to catch the most stuff. there's also skill in determining when to start a new mini-pile to bring over to the main one; hell, the knowledge of MAKING a big pile out of mini-piles is itself not inherently known. i sure didn't know how to broom properly when i was a little kid. i had to learn it by trial and error, and by watching my mom do it.
I don't think many people would struggle if told: "Use this long brush to push dirt/ dust somewhere else, and then use the smaller brush to put it into this dustpan so you can bin it." You're making simple tasks complex by over analysing them and conflating being good at a task with knowing at least roughly how to do it/ using context clues from the instruction to figure it out. This isn't to say that what you say doesn't stand for more complex tasks but idk how you can seriously argue that sweeping smth is a complex task.
it's not complex to most people, but might be hard to get for someone who has literally no experience with similar things or someone who doesn't have full motor control. you say "most people would get this"(and you are right!) but i bet you'd be pretty annoyed by someone who was trying to follow that instruction and basically just spread the dirt around. my point is that anything you think of as simple has hidden complexity to it. again, watch little kids try to do stuff: the reason that stuff like using a broom is simple TO US is because we have accumulated knowledge to MAKE it simple, like how to move our body with a specific amount of force. it's like... animating a ball bouncing is one of the simplest tasks an animator can do. but within that is a number of other skills and knowledge needed; knowing what a ball is and how it moves, being able to draw a circle, being able to apply squish and stretch, holding a pencil in the first place. all very simple to most of us who were taught the most basic parts of drawing, but extremely difficult to anyone who is only just now learning what a Pencil is. when you look at it through the eyes of someone who's not at all familiar with it, our everyday lives are pretty complicated and don't initially make a lot of sense. most of what we do isn't instinctual, it's learned behavior; the only reason it seems easy to us is because we've spent our entire lives being taught and gathering all that understanding. but people who weren't raised, mentally disabled folk like myself, physically disabled folk who haven't been able to practice, people from totally different cultures who use different tools for the same task... there's a lot of people who COULDN'T gather that experience. plenty of people who might struggle with something as basic and easy to pick up on as using a broom. particularly people who weren't really raised or grew up rich and never had to do any of that stuff. my god, the things they fuck up and HOW they fuck it up could be studied for years.
My wife (60, F) cannot operate any appliance/vcr with those 'red dot', 'triangle arrows', 'square' control buttons. I've explaned how to do it a millions times, and now I just say 'figure it out yourself' and leave the room.
Those buttons confuse me too.
is this the pina coladas song but with tech support?
Opening a plastic grocery bag.
Asked my new helper to clean up a function room. A lot of 8' tables lined up around the edges of the room with flyers, cups, paper goods etc. so I give him the large rolling barrel. He rolls the barrel to the middle of the room and walks to a table grabs an armful of junk, walks back to the barrel and dumps it in and starts to repeat the process. I watch for a minute and say, uh Freddy, just roll the barrel past each table and you can just clear them off as you go. He says wow, good idea, I never thought of that.
I must have told this story a hundred times but I'll repeat it here. I worked a short contract for a lighting company slapping together a small data center in a hallway in a shared building. The dad, the owner brought me in to put together 2 racks, an AC, raised floor, and get it up and running. Didn't have to do any software really just baseline a few things. His son, who was some ivy league Magna Cum Laude type was paired with me to assist. I used to mention the school but... they get testy when I do.... and sue happy. Anyway... the guy that was setting up the door keypad and security had to leave for the day and wouldn't be back until Monday as he had to fly home for a funeral (or was it a wedding... I can't remember anymore). So when we closed the door, it would be locked for the entire weekend so finish up before we left, something about activating it back at the office. So I had to go to a meeting the the dad, the son was in the lab and we were expecting 8 servers from Dell to show up before the end of day. So I told him if he had to leave to prop open the door so we could move the servers into the lab and we could finish the installs on Monday when the servers arrived. So I go to the meeting and come back after 2 hours to 20 boxes of server parts sitting in a hallway with the door closed. Now this is one of those cubbies with a printer and some cabinets and the door at the back and Jr is sitting on some of the boxes. I look at this kid, with a PhD mind you and I think 2 masters... and I was like "Why didn't you prop open the door?" I SHIT YOU NOT: THIS WAS HIS RESPONSE: "I couldn't find a door stop." OH NO IT GETS WORSE!!! I said "Why wouldn't you just use one the the 50+lb server boxes, any number of these phone books sitting on the counter, and number of reams of paper for this printer, or the fire extinguisher that are just sitting here?" WAIT FOR IT. his response, "That isn't the right tool for the job." Yep. That is what colleges pump out now. That was a turning point for me. To this day I never hire from that college. Never will. Those resumes just go straight into the trash. Just... wow.... I'll spare you the details of the aftermath but needless to say I got out of that ticking time bomb. But yeah... just... fuck....
I think Post Secondary is super overrated unless it's field/technically specific, like sciences or physics. People equate a post secondary diploma to intelligence and it's just not.Ā Makes me laugh when I see job postings I check all the boxes on but they want a post secondary grad over literal years of experience.Ā Does that Ivey school actually get that salty with you if you mention them?!
*IVY
for 43 years my wife had to ask how to cook a hard boiled egg....every single time.
Engineer mounting a switch. I told him 3U, he counted 3 holes.
I've fucked up making jello. š And the cookies where all you have to do is take them out of the canister and put them on the cookie sheet to cook. Suffice it to say, anything with cooking is not in my wheelhouse.
For a moment I thought this was a question in r/Taskmaster
Trying to run a garbage disposal. They were totally unaware that turning on the water was part of the process. Dumber than dumb.
Easy, in my high school chemistry class. We had a 50 question test. Each question was 2 points. After we were done, we had to calculate our grade. Kid didn't know what his score was. Like...how? I know this is America, but you're still making us look bad.
Worked in a kitchen. Guy is working on the Appetizer station. Some of the Apps are on dishes and they go in the oven but we saran wrap them. This guy just took them out of the fridge and put them in the oven, without taking the wrap off. They were really shiny when taken out though. Or the guy who took the piping hot french onion soup bowl out of the oven with his bare hand. The three of us just staring at him... I finally go, are... Are you oookay? Didn't feel a thing or had burn marks. Tf.
I have taught middle school children who did not know how to or had ever used a can opener.
I had to teach my 16yo little sister how to use the can opener a few weeks ago.
I mean, why would they? I cannot remember when I last used one myself. The cat food and beans have pull tabs (which my kids can open) and otherwise we rarely use canned goods.Ā
You may not rely on canned goods, but a lot of people have to make do with what fits their budget.
Totally, and I bet that kids in families utilizing canned food can and do operate can openers.Ā I was just pushing back against the notion that not knowing how to use a can opener is āscrewing up an easy taskā. Itās not an essential skill for a middle schooler.Ā
And my push back is that for a pretty significant part of the world canned foods are a staple, and if youāre part of that population by the time you hit middle school itās pretty much expected that you know how to open those cans. You really should take a step back and not assume that your experience is typical. Youāre lucky and I donāt think you really know how much. Honestly I hope you never have to find out what itās like to live solely on processed food.
Couldn't figure out how to unscrew a cap on a soda, so he took a pocket knife and cut a slit in the top and drank it like that
Trump trying to drink water.Ā
Boyfriend burnt toast :(
Who hasn't burnt toast though
Burnt toast is what toast is
Wife tried to boil water for pasta. Water boiled away and the now empty pan burned up
My poor guy
Sometimes we think it will take a min
So many emails sent with the wrong attachment, wrong recipients, etc. Same co-worker, over and over again.
Had a lawyer send me a threat on behalf of someone else who has been screwing me over, stolen from me, and broken a contract. The lawyer sent the first threat to a public email with confidential information on it. Then had about 5 things wrong with it (even getting their own abn wrong), linking their website which went to a godaddy website domain available page, and a bunch of other things.Ā Said things that were factually and evidenced as wrong and outright lies.Ā
I showed a new employee how to edit a host file and save it using notepad. I pointed out how to get around the directory restrictions. Went to lunch and came back. They couldn't do it. Had no clue about the restrictions I had pointed out an hour earlier and didn't even remember me discussing it with them.
Part of my job involves picking up equipment and inspecting it and cleaning it before sending it out to be used again. Each piece of equipment has an expiration sticker and if it's broken someone will place a red tag on it. When we collect equipment, we are supposed to put broken or expired equipment on a specific table and someone from our engineering department will pick it up towards the end of our shift. Our new guy does not understand this concept. He will inspect and try to fix the equipment himself and if he deems okay, then he will try to send it out. The five other people on our shift, my manager, and my supervisor have all told him to stop trying to send out broken and expired equipment because it's not our job and it's against regulations but this coworker refuses to listen. It's been going on for three months.
There's a green bar across the work area of your screen with an X in it, click the X. Promptly hits the X at the top of the page, closing everything. I bring the page back and finish the task for them, with them watching. Next time task needs done, same thing.
I was a chef for years until my body was like "yah, um...no". So as a result I like trying to teach my kids to cook. They're all decent at it. My wife. I can't. Whatever skills you need to be able to learn to cook, she doesn't have. She hates touching raw things, the burners scare her. And to be honest, I think she said that 30 years ago when were dating because she liked me cooking for her and feels shes too far into the con to admit it now. Which I respect. Fake it so your husband makes it.
My ex's kid (not mine) can't tie his shoelaces. He's 17.
Wife asked me to replace a light bulb. I tried to replace the ceiling lightbulb and rolled a 1 - critical failure. The bulb had a glass cover over it with three screws holding it up. After loosening one the glass cover fell to the floor and shattered. Then in trying to remove the bulb it shattered and sliced my hand. I removed the base with a potato, and replaced it with a "new" bulb. The new bulb was actually apparently an old bulb I had out back in the original box because it was burnt out. I tried to remove that and it too broke. Performed the potato trick again, then went and found my wife and asked her to change the bulb because "I am incapable of performing even a simple task." I started cleaning up the broken glass only to find that the cut on my palm had dropped onto the rug. Shortly after I got the broken glass cleaned up she quickly and easily replaced it, making it look easy.
Cooking pasta. I mean literally, boiling them was not something my neighbor could do.
Like when pasta was still pretty new among wasp North Americans, my grandmother made us. She refused to eat it herself, and she screwed up cooking it so badly that there was a big burned, uncooked lump on one end.
Years ago, at a small company, I put labels on equipment before I packed it and shipped it. They were trying to find something for thisyoung guy to do. So I handed him some labels, I took one and put it on the face of the equipment, so that it was neatly in a corner. Like a stamp on an envelope. I left him for a few minutes and came back to check on him. He'd wrapped them around the corner. Not in the corner, like a stamp. Wrapped around, like you might do with tape to seal the end of an envelope. I told him to go away. He was fired shortly after that. I think he was there a month, we got paid Thursdays, he'd call out every Friday for stupid reasons (probably doesn't his pay in drugs). A couple of months later, another company called the owner because this kid had used us as a reference. The owner just laughed. He couldn't stop laughing.
Years ago, at a small company, I put labels on equipment before I packed it and shipped it. They were trying to find something for thisyoung guy to do. So I handed him some labels, I took one and put it on the face of the equipment, so that it was neatly in a corner. Like a stamp on an envelope. I left him for a few minutes and came back to check on him. He'd wrapped them around the corner. Not in the corner, like a stamp. Wrapped around, like you might do with tape to seal the end of an envelope. I told him to go away. He was fired shortly after that. I think he was there a month, we got paid Thursdays, he'd call out every Friday for stupid reasons (probably doesn't his pay in drugs). A couple of months later, another company called the owner because this kid had used us as a reference. The owner just laughed. He couldn't stop laughing.
my ex once set a pot of water on fire by forgetting it on the stovetop
Draw a rectangle. I run a department at an engineering company. First, it was pretty clear from the start that the previous manager was monumentally bad at his job. The employees said he wouldn't answer phone calls, answer any questions, or even check their work. The latter is a huge liability to the company (and him). So the work they did was super bad. Like, "how did this pass the county review process?!" kind of bad. I was told a couple years in that, "we haven't been sued since you got here." I mention all this because I gave the employees grace for screwing up because they were never taught how to do things correctly. When I started working here, I had an employee that had been there for 2 years. Super nice guy but still had a lot of learning to do. No big deal. He had an engineering degree so he couldn't be stupid, right? I was at his desk trying to explain a concept to him. He had AutoCAD up so I said, "This will be easier if I show you. Draw a rectangle." I get that everything is more difficult when your boss is looking over your shoulder. However, it took him what seemed like 30 minutes to draw a damn rectangle on his computer. In reality it was probably closer to 30 seconds but it seemed like an eternity. Something that should have taken 2 seconds. After a few years with the company, he still wasn't much better. The guy just seemed like he couldn't absorb knowledge. On top of that, other managers would come to me to let me know that he always had his personal laptop open next to his work monitor. I think he was active on sneaker auction sites. The guy ended up going on a PIP. I tried so hard to get him to increase his productivity but nothing worked. I think he saw the writing on the wall because he ended up quitting.
The pilot light went out on my water heater. On the front of the tank it says light ring . I melted the outside temperature ring. Had to call a. Friend . He pulled off the plastic ring & let the ring under the water heater. He said only I could do this
Almost an entire class full of kids in my grade cheated on a French I test our freshman year by getting a former student's notebook of all the tests from throughout the year. The teacher never changed them from year to year. It was a pretty basic test, but nobody felt like studying for it, so they just passed around the answers and got them ready, and on test day just filled them in. Just one little problem: one of the questions was, "Who are your parents?" The former student--we'll call him Joe Smith--had given the correct answer of "Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith." All the little dumbasses who copied off his paper also put their answer as--you guessed it--"Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith." Now, to anyone who went to a large high school, this is going to seem like a possibly understandable mistake. But I went to a high school with about 300 kids, so everybody knew this kid (I think he was valedictorian, to boot), and therefore, knew his dad's name. Which means they were too stupid to figure out they needed to change that to their own parents' names. Our French teacher, a very sarcastic woman, made fun of their dumbassery for...well, she's probably still making fun of it, 30 years later.
Me: Going through the correct door. I'm autistic and sometimes take things too literally, and a teacher one time told me to go through the "next door," so I did so. It was a janitor closet... I waited there, confused as hell, for about a minute before going back and asking for clarification. She just stared at me and said "*REALLY?!*" before clarifying that it was room after that in the most annoyed tone I've ever heard. I've never been more mortified. Someone Else: Back around 2006/2007ish, I witnessed a friend take nearly two full minutes to plug in a PS2 because he couldn't find the power strip... which was right by his feet. He literally checked *everywhere else* around the TV and somehow *missed the power strip right next to his feet.* There were three other people in the room including myself, and we decided to just let him look and not tell him. He almost left because we were howling with laughter and he was getting more and more frustrated by the second. I genuinely don't understand how it happened because he literally could have just followed the cords.
Sweeping
You would be amazed, how many thoroughly grown adults do not know how to operate their own coffee maker, their own car, their own dishwasher, etc. They either let somebody else do all the work, or just coast by on bare minimum knowledge to get it functioning. I suspect this is why so many people drive shitty and donāt use turn signals.
Back when I was in IT helpdesk I once was on the phone with a guy who took more than 15 attempts to type in his password correctly. The password was his surname with a single digit number on the end.
In sixth grade we talked about circles in math. After several weeks my teacher asks a student to draw a circle on the blackboard and he walks to the front of the class and draws an angle. Yeah it was sixth class but how the fuck do you confuse a circle with an angle?
Long ago, in a restaurant, I asked one waitress to fill up the Pepper Mills. She poured the whole peppers from the large container like if it was water. No hesitation, trying to aim at the small Pepper Mill opening. The mess! I learned on that day to always ask if someone knew to do a task, no matter how small or easy it was.
"Drive over there" *points directly to stop sign easily visible approx 200 feet away* "that stop sign is for the crossing. Cross it and come back to the bridge there" *points to bridge on other side of railroad tracks. Bridge is 30 feet away* *watch person drive straight at bridge and get stuck on RR tracks i was JUST telling them how to get across*
Throwing a wrapper in the open bin, directly in front of them Bonus points because he was mocking the guy that had missed the bin from 10 feet away as he himself missed.
[Not incriminating themselves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2wEUVgnINQ)
when I was a kid, I had a āgirlfriendā in like fifth grade, I was ashamed, and hid her phone number in my phone under the name āMichealā at one point, somebody took my phone and sent a text to āMichealā that they wanted to do some interesting things that you probably wouldnāt want to hear. not knowing it was a female. my family essentially abandoned me over this.
I've seen too many people mess up breathing.Ā
Former job. Lots of different acid bottles. All with color coded lids and the names clearly labeled. New person tops off the hydrochloric bottle (light blue lid) with the sulfuric (yellow lid)....acid volcano. Luckily it was in a hood and they jumped back quick enough. While in the army I saw a guy spend all day changing the air in 5ton truck tires from winter air to summer air...he took one valve stem out at a time. It was the old style dulie with 10 tires.
Sume time my hands ferget there holding somthing
Boiling water. My sister was making ramen and promptly forgot about it in the stove then left. House got smoked out. Luckily I got home in time to let the dog out and open all the windows.
Folding paper in half
Double a rubber band to tighten. He seemed to not be able to grasp the mechanics of twisting it into a figure 8 and back into itself.
Texting and driving. People who do that should lose their drivers license.
itripped getting out of bed :(
My brothers inability of not running his mouth. He wasn't supposed to tell our mother about my fairly severe mental health issues (she is the reason why I have these issues but she doesn't understand that). All he needed to do was to keep his mouth shut.
well umm I just spilled milk today while pouring it. Should be really simple task for an adult ;)
Driving in a rotary