Embarrassed People Share Their Biggest 'I've Been Doing This All Wrong!' Moment.

Have you ever had a moment where all of the pieces come together and you slowly begin to realize your mistake?

Here, embarrassed people share their biggest “I’ve been doing this all wrong!” moment.

1. So much unnecessary physical exertion.

When I learned that you don’t need to hold down both shift buttons to type a capital letter.

LunaTokyo

2. Praise be.

The day that I didn’t have any clean plates and had to put my spaghetti in a bowl.

My God it is so much easier to eat spaghetti out of a bowl.

minpinerd

3. To be fair, that makes a lot of sense.

I used to think it was Denz L. Washington. Like Samuel L. Jackson.

DetroitAintHoppinShh

4. Just laugh it off.

I work at a dollar store. When I was trained they told me that if an item doesn’t scan, just scan another. What they didn’t tell me was that I had to write down what the item was on the list of tasks they give me every day. Got about 4 months in when I was training a new person and my manager was strolling by as I was explaining this part to her.

He mentioned that I didn’t write down the item description. I played it off as a one time mistake. But damn, I probably messed up hundreds of units of inventory, maybe more.

Ponyboy414

5. At least he had a 50/50 chance of being right.

I was embarrassingly old when I realized that you push the elevator button for the direction you want to go.

I thought you should push the direction the elevator should move to get to you. It was a really stupid system since I had to guess where it was.

And I’m not talking 5 or 10. I was maybe 15 before my brain caught up with the elevator.

InternetProp

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6. Revolutionary.

You don’t have to wash your pants everyday?!

Seriously – I grew up in a house where you put your jeans in the hamper after one wear. My mom did the laundry so it was no skin off my back.

While living in the dorms in college, I realized the norm is 3-5 wears. Now I wear two pairs in a week and wash them both Sunday night.

Kryssa

7. The agony she must have endured.

You can turn the shower on before you get in it. I would turn the water on, then get in the shower, turn the nozzle to activate the shower and jump back to try (and usually fail) to avoid a blast of cold water which was quite unpleasant early in the morning.

My family looked at me like I was an idiot when I finally figured it out at 21.

Colleoni

8. No reason to panic.

That if I close a tab by accident, I can just Ctrl + Shift + T and recover it. I used to actually go the history page of Firefox/Chrome and look for it there just to reopen it.

SuperNightshade

9. The things you can learn from bathroom reading material.

Deodorant/Antiperspirant. For the past three years my armpits sweat so much that I would have to change my shirt every hour or two, no matter the temperature. One day I headed to the bathroom to take a poop but forgot my phone. I reached for the nearest thing, a stick of deodorant, and read the back. “APPLY AT NIGHT TIME ONLY.”

That was a real WTF for me so I looked it up. Turns out Deodorant/anti perspirant is a night time thing because your body produces less sweat when you sleep, allowing the deodorant to soak into your pores. I rarely sweat under my arms now.

Leatherpuss

10. Definitely not how that works.

Just yesterday my missus came to me in a panic because she flushed her poo down the “wrong pipe.” As in she used the low pressure button and thought they were separate.

[deleted]

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11. Bottoms up!

I grew up at a ski resort and was very familiar with waxing boards and skis. I went to the ocean one summer and bought a skim board the the lady grabbed a bar of wax and tossed it in as if I should have known to buy it. Feeling dumb I bought the wax and went to the beach, covering the bottom of the board in wax. I did this every summer until recently when I moved to CA and started surfing. One day I set the surfboard down and grabbed the skim board when suddenly I realized I had been applying wax to the wrong side for years.

Vectran

12. Better late than never, as they always say.

I was complaining to a coworker about my shoes constantly coming untied, and he said, “Let me see how you’re tying those”

I realized at that moment that I probably didn’t know how to tie my shoes. I’m 27, though, so I insisted I did and cut him off. I still don’t know.

PouponMacaque

13. Something tells me there are a lot of people who say “uh-kai.”

When a girl had to explain slowly to me that acai was pronounced, “ah-sai-ee” and not “uh-kai.”

I have been eating dried acai berries for years.

TriTheTree

14. Nope, that phase definitely wasn’t over.

Today I learned that the word “segue” is pronounced “segway.”

I thought it was pronounced “se-goo,” and that “segway” was a different word that meant the same thing (in addition to being the name of a dorky-looking vehicle). I don’t think I ever actually really used my incorrect pronunciation in a conversation, so I was never called out on it. I only figured it out because I was watching Netflix with subtitles.

I’m 21 and I thought the “learning you were wrong about word pronunciation” phase was over.

Aubreythez

15. Run for cover!

When I figured out that you could simply close the cap again when a soda was about to fizz and explode. I always thought that you were just screwed and I would try and run to the nearest sink.

Mrxirish

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16. Yikes.

When I picked up my knife to cut spaghetti at my first dinner with my Italian in-laws.

Everyone dropped their fork and stared at me.

Pytheastic

17. “B” careful how you say things.

I pronounced the silent b in subtle until my friend looks at me and says “…..Um, the ‘b’ is silent…..are you okay?”

TheAppalaciaRose

18. Not how you keep gingivitis at bay.

When I went to an adult dentist for the first time they said it looked like I don’t floss at all and I informed them I floss all the time. They had me show them how I do it. They then immediately showed me how to do it properly. I had no idea you could go between the gums and the tooth, I had always just gone between the teeth themselves.

Polio23

19. A small trick can go a long way.

I’ve had long (steadily growing longer) hair since my last year (maybe two) of high school, when I stopped going to a school that had a strict dress code. It could easily take me 20 minutes or more to finish brushing all my hair.

Someone on reddit commented on a picture of Rapunzel something like “she brushes her hair from the top down to the ends. Everyone with long hair knows that you start at the ends and work your way up! That is the one thing I don’t like about this movie, and from a studio that usually pays such close attention to detail!”

…So now it takes me a minute or two to brush my hair.

Skztr

20. A lightbulb went off in her head, too.

Turning the car lights on and off rapidly to signal someone. Then I learnt that u could just flick the stick towards u to flash the lights.

Muhe95

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21. Something was a little fishy about that pronounciation.

I said the word ‘salmon’ wrong for 20 years. No one told me. Then my ex and I went to the fish market and he laughed his butt off.

Angryavocadotree

22. Now iKnow.

Realizing years after having multiple iPods and iPhones that really all I needed to do was double tap the shift button to write in capitals rather than pressing it after every letter.

Oliviajc16

23. Pleased to meet you.

During a Catholic Mass, there is a brief moment where participants are encouraged to offer each other “a sign of peace.” Most people shake hands with everyone near them and say, “Peace be with you.”

This was almost always mumbled and said in a quiet, inside-voice-like whisper… And said not only to people you know, but to strangers sitting near you.

It wasn’t until 4th grade, when an older gentleman refused to let go of my hand, that I realized I was doing it wrong.

“What did you say?”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Uh… It’s peace be with you.”

….

Yeah. I used to say “pleased to meet you” whenever offering the sign of peace at a Catholic Church service.

HughJBawles

24. That sounds rather, erm, TUMultuous.

My first year of college I shared a dorm with my best friend from high school. One day he was complaining that his stomach was hurting. After he described it I told him it sounded like heartburn – he apparently had never experienced it before.

Luckily I am addicted to eating spicy stuff and had Tums on deck. I handed him the bottle and told him to take a couple. Later he mentioned how he “didn’t know how I could take those things” – I looked at him like he was crazy and said I actually thought they tasted pretty good.

Then he says it – “They’re just so damn hard to swallow.” I almost died laughing. This guy swallowed two Tums whole.

Predsvols

25. Thank you, UPS man!

That if I ever locked myself out of my house, instead of calling for someone to bring me a key or calling a locksmith, a lot of doors can be unlocked with a driver’s license. My UPS man taught me that.

[deleted]

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26. How very Freudian of you.

For the longest time, I was always really confused as to why, in British television/films, men would quite often refer to women as “mum”. As an Australian, I call my mother that, so I was always thinking “why do they keep referring to everyone as their mothers?” It wasn’t until relatively recently that what they were essentially saying was “ma’am”, and not calling every woman they meet their mother.

Teils

27. A raspberry buffet does sound rather nice.

I’ve been singing Prince’s song – Raspberry Beret thinking it was Raspberry Buffet.

I’ve been singing this for years and always pictured what a buffet of raspberries would look like. (It looks good) Nobody ever corrected me.

Deegeecoo

28. Whoopsies.

Worked at Target for six months and was never told that the coupons customers used needed to be saved for processing so I threw out hundreds of them without realizing.