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Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I’m not going to waste energy trying to convince you that olives are an elite pizza topping if you hate them, and you’ll never be able to change my mind about autumn being the best season. But there are certain things that we should all be on the same page about, especially if they can be backed up with facts.
Redditors have been recalling the most ridiculous arguments that they’ve had with other adults, so we’ve gathered some of their facepalm-worthy stories below. From people being adamant that bacon is a vegetable to swearing that space doesn’t exist, enjoy reading through these stories that might make you feel like the smartest person in the world. And be sure to upvote the ones that you find most amusing!
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#1
I can't believe there's full grown adults with working brains that still believe abortion should be outlawed.
#2
I was discussing the need for contraception with my brother and his wife if they did not want to have a child. She stated she did not need to use contraception. I said that she would, and she promptly replied "No I don't, I'm infertile. Just like my mother."
To be fair, that stopped the argument.
#3
I used to take a train downtown and then a bus to work. One day, the train was a few mins late and so I literally had to sprint to catch the bus or be late to work. I got hot from running and pulled out my water bottle from my bag and some guy started an argument with me about there being no food or drink on the bus... while holding a Starbucks coffee.
His argument was that he wasn't drinking it, so there was no chance for it to spill where as my water bottle could have spilled. I ignored him, but for 10 or 15 mins he wouldn't shut up and was really getting in my face (and I'd long put the water bottle away). So when I saw my stop coming and felt the bus slow down, I jumped up, "accidentally" knocked his coffee out of his hand and onto his lap and then shrugged and said "oops, I guess it can spill" and jumped off the bus.
#4
That bacon wasn't a vegetable.
Had ordered a bacon cheeseburger at a fast food restaurant and asked for "no veggies." When I got the burger, there was no bacon. I went to the cashier to ask for the bacon and she just smiled and said, "You asked for no veggies." Thinking this must be a joke, I asked her, "since when was bacon considered a vegetable." With a completely straight face, she replied, "It's always been a vegetable. My boyfriend and I are vegetarians and we eat bacon all the time.".
#5
Why two tablets of vitamin B6 do not equal one of B12...
#6
I had a grown adult who was in possession of car keys and (presumably) a wallet with money they earned through employment… yell at me once that I was a “f*****g moron” because I was watering the plants for sale outside the grocery store I worked for. When I replied that it was hot and we were making sure they stayed alive for people to purchase she said “You’re too stupid to live. EVERYONE knows plants make their own water!!!
😳
Um. No?
Before I could react, she got in her car and cut the wheel too much while backing up and ripped off her entire front fender on the concrete barrier beside the car 🤦🏼♀️.
#7
No joke, I went to pick up an item at the grocery store and it was labeled "1/3 lb" and an older lady tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a competitive item next to it for the same price, but was labeled "1/4 lb". She said, "It's smarter to buy the larger package for the same price. Your wife would know that." She could absolutely not be convinced that 1/3 lb was larger than 1/4 lb. Even explaining the math and showing her the weight in ounces on the package, she wasn't having it. I just laughed to myself and walked away.
#8
My friend's boyfriend thought that she got her period because she cheated on him...he was saying that they hadn't had sex recently and "all of a sudden" her period started
I had to explain to a fully grown, 23 year old man, that periods are part of a menstrual cycle and most women have them in varying degrees, and are not a direct result of vaginal sex, afterwards it went something like this
"so where does the blood come from"
"tissue from the lining of the uterus sheds which causes the bleeding"
"so girls get their period after sex then"
"why do you still think that?"
"because you're penetrating the uterus"
"the vagina is different from the uterus, you're penetrating the vagina"
"I thought vagina was the word for how it looks on the outside"
and that's also how I found out (it became increasingly obvious with each new sentence) that this guy is a total idiot who doesn't know anything about the female reproductive system or anatomy.
#9
We live in Canada.... and we were on a road trip. we stopped to take a p**s and a tumble weed comes rolling across the way. he tells me that "did you know tumble weeds come from Texas" at first i thought i was a joke. but the guy was dead f*****g serious. these things just tumble across 100000 of kilometers across the mountains and countless fences, river and lakes. it was the dumbest conversation i ever had. and he's one of those guys that always thinks he right. so me an all my buddies call him Texas tumbleweed Bryce. still do to this day.
#10
I met someone who didn’t believe in space. Not space travel, outer space. Just didn’t think it was real.
#11
With a 40 year old woman in South America. I had to explain where babies came from. She had like 17 kids and didn’t know why god kept blessing her with more children. She just wanted it to stop as she had been pregnant pretty much her entire adult life. I’m not sure if her husband knew or not.
#12
I had to have a long chat with someone in their 30s about Mexico not being a US state. She was sure that Cancun was an American city because most of the people there were white & black Americans and not Mexicans. I asked how far outside the resort she had gotten and she said “what do you mean?”.
Full of Giggles 2 months ago (edited)
My grandmother is one of those people who tells anyone she hears speaking Spanish, “This is America. Speak American.” I told her Puerto Ricans are Americans and they speak Spanish. She countered with “Ricans speak Spanish because they’re owned by Mexico” and then proceeded to tell me that I needed to go back to school to learn geology.
#13
Someone who was an ELECTED OFFICIAL at the time was completely unaware of the fact that the seasons are at opposite times of year between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Convinced that I was "f*****g with her" when I tried to explain that Christmas is observed in the summertime in Australia, she took to google, confirmed the date for xmas being 25th of December, and decided that I was indeed full of s**t...
Michael P (Perthaussieguy) 2 months ago
Scary that the voters were just as dumb, it would seem, to vote for another dumbass
#14
"STD's aren't real" and also, "I've had syphilis in the past" from the same person.
#15
I once had to explain that going 60 miles per hour meant you would literally travel 60 miles in an hour to a colleague. We were both in our mid 20s at the time. I don’t know how they passed math class ever.
#16
That a child should be able to say if they want to be hugged or not🤷🏽♀️.
#17
Reindeer are real, I am not trying to convince you that there are actually flying deer that pull Santa Claus' sleigh.
#18
I knew a lady who had two sons.
We were visiting and I had to use the bathroom and I was on my girly time. Even though I wrapped it up you can see the wrap in the trash can. She approached me and started screaming how I was a w**re out of nowhere.
Long story short, she was under the belief that a woman only had a period if she was a w**re. Because it was God's way of punishing a woman. I had to sit and explain to her that a period was a natural thing that women had and it was not some divine retribution
Again, this was another woman. And she had two children which means she had all of her body parts. And obviously they functioned correctly because she had children. Which means she has had periods in her life
She wouldn't believe me, just went completely wild screaming until I had to leave because she wouldn't stop screaming how I was a w**re and my period was proof of it.
#19
When I was a kid my neighbor had set cage traps for a possum that was tearing up his lawn at night searching for bugs, apparently.
One day I came home from school and noticed a cat in the trap, obviously someone's pet as it was wearing a collar. I walk over into his yard to free it and the guy comes out and goes berserk as I was trying to let it out. I explained it was a housecat, which he could obviously see but insisted to keep it trapped. I told him to p**s off or whatever and let the cat out. He continues to yell at me as I walked away and ignored him. F**k that guy, 30 years later and it still pisses me off!
#20
That Africa is NOT a country in and of itself, it's made up of many countries. A paraprofessional in my classroom started to argue with me as I was teaching my students about continents. She was trying to say that Africa is a country and I said Nooo, it is made up of many countries. I had all the kids pull out their laptops and Google the countries of Africa.
#21
I had to argue with a woman that thought Africa was the center of the earth and it was a giant island... not connected to the crust... that just floated around and all life came from it and any humans that weren't African were gross malformations of genetics that the glorious people of Africa kicked out for being bad genetic code.
.
.
.
This is NOT a s**tpost I swear to God this is a real converstion that I had with a woman who called me things like *rice rascal* (I'm fillapino).
#22
That the first amendment protects both your right to follow any religion AND your right to abstain from it. There are apparently people who believe that it only means freedom to follow a religion of your choosing, which is insane.
Brenda 2 months ago
God isn't mentioned in the US constitution, although it does reference religion (1st amendment [freedom of religion] and Article 6 [government not taking religious tests].) God IS mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. People forget that they are not all one document
#23
I had a co-worker say “how do you know this stuff?!?”, when I told her that the Winter Solstice was the shortest day of the year.
The subsequent conversation was hard to have without using my speaking to a child voice.
Sarah 2 months ago
Co-worker told me I wasn't a good manager because I used big words that made people think I was a snob, and that she had to keep a dictionary at her desk to look up words after we spoke. She was another manager in my department. The word that prompted this feedback was "exhausted."
#24
I argued with someone r/Aww that because male cats are mammals, they are going to have nipples.
He spent the entire day arguing that male cats don’t have nipples since they don’t breastfeed.
I went through his post history just to see if it was a s**tposter, nope, it was a man working as a mechanic.
#25
Trying to convince my spouse that Electric Bills are more important to pay than buying LuLu Lemon clothes, while the electricity was cut off by the utility company.
#26
They thought that the universe is 5000 years old and dinosaurs is a lie.
#27
I had an undergraduate university professor (subject: French) who would not, for the life of her, believe her students when we told her that a kilogram of feathers and a kilogram of stone weighed the same. It was a true or false question on an exam and she graded us all incorrectly on it.
#28
My cousin was bagging his own groceries at Walmart, those bags are thin and weak as hell so he was double bagging. The check out monitor lady came up and said that he isn’t allowed to double bag, it’s too wasteful. He informed her that their bags were c**p and that he didn’t want his groceries to fall out. Her solution was to take half of the groceries in that bag and put them in another bag.
He explained multiple times that this would be using the same amount of bags but she couldn’t understand how that was the same thing.
After awhile he just said F it and went about bagging his groceries.
Beth Wheeler 2 months ago
Sounds more like she's just an idiot. I've never had any of them say anything to me about double bagging.
#30
Met someone who believed he didn't need to brush his teeth because he had some gene that made his teeth have some kind of self-cleaning abilities. Apparently, the gene he was referring to actually just meant he was less susceptible to build-up than others may be. I argued with him about the general hygiene, odour, and his inability to get a date if he continued to avoid brushing. Thanks to this argument, he finally started to brush his teeth...at 24 years old.
#31
I was managing a chuck e cheese, two kids redeeming prizes, 2 parents, The kids were being kids bouncing between the two prize windows even though they are the same, parent 1 is annoyed with kid 2 and asks parent 2 to control their kid, I inform the kids and parents that both prize windows are the same so each kid can look in one, kids continue to be kids and are flip flopping from side to side like a fish in a boat hoping to find water. Parent 2 was seething from the comment parent 1 made so when kid 1 touches kid 2 parent 2 says parent 1 needs to control their kid and the parent start to yell at eachother, when I address the adults as kids, "Can we all act our age and I'll get you both out of here as soon as I can?"
To which parent 2 looks me dead in the eye and says "She started it!!"
I responded incredulously "How old are you?" Thankfully that shut them both up and the kids picked their prizes.
#32
I was the dumb one. I had the "ducks can fly?!" realization after arguing with friends that ducks just sit in ponds and quack, quack, waddle, waddle only.
XenoMurph 2 months ago
I think we'd all be amazed at the silly things we said, just because we'd never thought about it before. How many of us have not thought deeply about ordinary things, and just assumed our experience was universal. I'm sure I'm someone's story of "this dude actually believed this"
#33
That adhd doesn’t in fact exist. That adult was my mentor teacher that said that it isn’t real in front of her whole class. Me… a 17 year old had to respectfully take her out of the class for a second to tell her “what are you doing? These are six year olds.” She responds with “it’s only because their parents never say no. It’s not real.” Me: ”ma’am I have Adhd, tell me to my face it’s because my parents didn’t know how to parent me.” She froze so I ended the conversation with “at least my parents gave me knowledge.” She told my teacher she didn’t think I was fit to be one.
#34
A coworker insisted Okinawa was a Hawaiian island and couldn’t be convinced otherwise.
#35
That bigger circuit breaker panel doesn't mean you are gonna have a bigger electric bill 😂. The client called and said that the circuit breaker panel is big and it's gonna use a lot of electricity and that's the reason why I need to replace it with a smaller size one. 😅.
#36
That making hollandaise sauce with vanilla soft serve ice cream was not acceptable in this universe or any other.
ॐBoyGanesh 2 months ago
It’s not a sauce with arbitrary ingredients. Sure, the acid can be varied, but it’s pretty specific 375 year old sauce.
#38
Cheating on someone isn't just a mistake or an accident.
TheBlueBitterfly 2 months ago
Oh no, accidentally tripped and fell on a penis! I thought it was a snake, and it looked cold. I was just trying to keep it warm, poor lil thing! /jk 🤭
#39
That LGBTQ people are a hoax to keep women enslaved to men. She was around 30 or so and I was 15 at the time. So this women came up to a 15 year old boy(me) to ask if I knew about what men were doing to keep women enslaved.
I have to admit it was quite entertaining.
#40
That washing with soap thoroughly after sex does not "get rid of" any stds you could have caught......no matter how fast you do it........grown a*s man jfc.
T'Mar of Vulcan 2 months ago
Jacob Zuma took a shower to stop himself catching HIV after having sex with a woman he was not married to.
#41
I once needed to actually give a lecture of poultry reproduction to a 45 year old man who was claiming that chickens are hermaphrodite and that they do not need to have sex to procreate 🙄 it was surreal.
Sweetie Dahling 2 months ago
And then there are some people who call eggs "chicken periods" 🤦🏻♀️
#42
Explaining to my 2nd grade teacher that Alaska is bigger than Texas and yes, the picture on the wall map is smaller, but that is because they are at different scales.
#43
This is going back quite a few years now. Back when I was in college, I had a teacher who was a flat eather... you can probably guess how that went.
#44
Somebody very close to me thinks all of evolution is a lie. Not even a strongly religious.
#45
Why concentration camps were dehumanizing... yup, someone I know thought they were good...
#46
That dictionaries are better source of definition of words than twitter is.
They said western dictionaries are propaganda and can't be trusted for the definition of words.
Edit: Their point was not even the use of words in the general population of twitter users(which still doesn't represent the total population), it was the definition according to a handful of posts by some twitter accounts.
#47
Drinking rubbing alcohol can kill the coronavirus bacteria and cure you.
You cannot believe how triggered I was, after hearing this.
#48
A friend of mine believes wholeheartedly that there are fairy people and giant people living secretly in new zealand, and that giant people were also the ones who built the pyramids.
He's convinced that he is actually a hybrid too, that he doesn't truly belong in human society.
He's 40.
#49
I once had to explain to a grown-up that you can’t just microwave metal. They were convinced it would be fine because “it’s just a little bit.” I mean, come on! I thought we all learned that in middle school. 🤦♂️.
#50
My dad had to explain to my sweet mother that hamburgers were made out of cow meat, not pig meat. She had gone forty years of her life at the time not knowing.
What do you think ?
Myoviridae 2 months ago
A few years ago I had to order something by phone. The customer service person insisted that my zip code meant I lived in Arizona (I live halfway across the country and had done for many years). I had her repeat the zip code back to me and even looked it up on the post office website for her. No dice... she kept insisting I lived in Arizona. By the time I finally hung up, she had half convinced me that I really did live in Arizona.
Pablo Ramos 2 months ago
Back when I was in college, engineering, a group of classmates were discussing petroleum production. The number of 3 million barrels per day was mentioned. I asked one person in the group the following question with evil intentions: "Can you imagine selling THREE MILLION BARRELS PER DAY!? Where do they get so many barrels?" To which the person responded: "Well, I guess whoever wants oil have to bring their own barrels."
The Doom Song 2 months ago
Got halfway through.... I feel MENSA smart after reading these... I cannot believe people are that stupid
Comment Deleted 2 months ago
I live in Canada. Before cell phones we had to stop to use a phone booth. We stopped in front of two booths. 1 booth said Bell Canada , the other AT&T. Boyfriend stepped into the AT&T booth and I watch him step out and go into the Bell Canada booth. I asked him why . He said because the AT&T booth was only for calls to the USA. Confused I asked him to explain. He said that the phone booth provided by AT&T was a direct link to the USA. You pick up the phone , put your 25 cents in and you can call anywhere in America. The Bell Canada booth was for Canadian calls only. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed by a long shot but this mid thirties man was just to dumb for me. No amount of explanation could convince him otherwise. He was convinced that for lowly sum of 25 cents you could just step into that AT&T phone booth and call ANYWHERE in the USA. He did not believe that AT&T was just the company that provided the phone booth.
Melissa Harris 2 months ago (edited)
This entire article remains me of an interaction I had with a grocery store cashier a few years ago over mushrooms. I was buying oyster mushrooms and when she looked at them in the paper bag she clearly didn't know what they were, so I told her "oyster mushrooms" expecting her to look them up on the produce code Rolex. Instead she insisted they couldn't be that as they weren't oysters but couldn't tell me what my mushrooms actually were! She asked me why they'd be called oysters mushrooms if they're not oysters. While I sympathize with the question on an intellectual level I wasn't about to Wikipedia dive about the etymology of mushroom naming in the checkout line. The cashier was so adamantly dumbfounded that my fiance had to get a manager to check us out.
JessieJ&LilyLovebug 2 months ago
Having worked in a retail pharmacy most of my life, I can sadly say I find none of these outside the realm of possibility.
I AM A LOLLY SNEK (she/her) 2 months ago
On year six camp i was gonna go outside for a little bit because i felt like walking around. One of the people i was sharing a room with said "Dont go out there, it's to cold. You'll get sick". I tried to explain to her that my mother, who i told her had a medical degree and was a certified doctor told me that the cold does not give us colds. "Then why are the called colds?" "Because they were named hundreds of years ago when they thought the cold made people sick" "Well i believe my mum not yours" "Mine literally has a medical degree" "I dont care". This same person believed blood was blue and could not be swayed.
DeoManus Argentem 2 months ago
I'll admit, I was 35 when I went to Home Depot (US home improvement store with a garden center) looking to buy pickle seeds. Sad part is, I've grown all kinds of herbs and veggies since I was a kid and even as an adult now have set up an entire bedroom as an orchid conservatory (grow lights, fan, humidifier, etc) - so I love gardening! Didn't start an argument, but I spent a long time looking for those pickle seeds before it finally hit me, lol!
Miranda Veracruz de la Joya Cardenal 2 months ago (edited)
Had to set a Hulu account for a client, she wanted the no ads plan. She calls me the next day saying her shows have ads. After questioning, I found out she was referring to live tv shows having commercials. I kinda had to explain the difference between live tv and streaming
Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl) 2 months ago
I knew a social worker who believed the earth was flat. I laughed in his face.
Myoviridae 2 months ago
A few years ago I had to order something by phone. The customer service person insisted that my zip code meant I lived in Arizona (I live halfway across the country and had done for many years). I had her repeat the zip code back to me and even looked it up on the post office website for her. No dice... she kept insisting I lived in Arizona. By the time I finally hung up, she had half convinced me that I really did live in Arizona.
Pablo Ramos 2 months ago
Back when I was in college, engineering, a group of classmates were discussing petroleum production. The number of 3 million barrels per day was mentioned. I asked one person in the group the following question with evil intentions: "Can you imagine selling THREE MILLION BARRELS PER DAY!? Where do they get so many barrels?" To which the person responded: "Well, I guess whoever wants oil have to bring their own barrels."
The Doom Song 2 months ago
Got halfway through.... I feel MENSA smart after reading these... I cannot believe people are that stupid
Comment Deleted 2 months ago
I live in Canada. Before cell phones we had to stop to use a phone booth. We stopped in front of two booths. 1 booth said Bell Canada , the other AT&T. Boyfriend stepped into the AT&T booth and I watch him step out and go into the Bell Canada booth. I asked him why . He said because the AT&T booth was only for calls to the USA. Confused I asked him to explain. He said that the phone booth provided by AT&T was a direct link to the USA. You pick up the phone , put your 25 cents in and you can call anywhere in America. The Bell Canada booth was for Canadian calls only. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed by a long shot but this mid thirties man was just to dumb for me. No amount of explanation could convince him otherwise. He was convinced that for lowly sum of 25 cents you could just step into that AT&T phone booth and call ANYWHERE in the USA. He did not believe that AT&T was just the company that provided the phone booth.
Melissa Harris 2 months ago (edited)
This entire article remains me of an interaction I had with a grocery store cashier a few years ago over mushrooms. I was buying oyster mushrooms and when she looked at them in the paper bag she clearly didn't know what they were, so I told her "oyster mushrooms" expecting her to look them up on the produce code Rolex. Instead she insisted they couldn't be that as they weren't oysters but couldn't tell me what my mushrooms actually were! She asked me why they'd be called oysters mushrooms if they're not oysters. While I sympathize with the question on an intellectual level I wasn't about to Wikipedia dive about the etymology of mushroom naming in the checkout line. The cashier was so adamantly dumbfounded that my fiance had to get a manager to check us out.
JessieJ&LilyLovebug 2 months ago
Having worked in a retail pharmacy most of my life, I can sadly say I find none of these outside the realm of possibility.
I AM A LOLLY SNEK (she/her) 2 months ago
On year six camp i was gonna go outside for a little bit because i felt like walking around. One of the people i was sharing a room with said "Dont go out there, it's to cold. You'll get sick". I tried to explain to her that my mother, who i told her had a medical degree and was a certified doctor told me that the cold does not give us colds. "Then why are the called colds?" "Because they were named hundreds of years ago when they thought the cold made people sick" "Well i believe my mum not yours" "Mine literally has a medical degree" "I dont care". This same person believed blood was blue and could not be swayed.
DeoManus Argentem 2 months ago
I'll admit, I was 35 when I went to Home Depot (US home improvement store with a garden center) looking to buy pickle seeds. Sad part is, I've grown all kinds of herbs and veggies since I was a kid and even as an adult now have set up an entire bedroom as an orchid conservatory (grow lights, fan, humidifier, etc) - so I love gardening! Didn't start an argument, but I spent a long time looking for those pickle seeds before it finally hit me, lol!
Miranda Veracruz de la Joya Cardenal 2 months ago (edited)
Had to set a Hulu account for a client, she wanted the no ads plan. She calls me the next day saying her shows have ads. After questioning, I found out she was referring to live tv shows having commercials. I kinda had to explain the difference between live tv and streaming
Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl) 2 months ago
I knew a social worker who believed the earth was flat. I laughed in his face.
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