That’s Not How The Earth Works, Tammy
“I had a boss named Tammy. One night, we were all working late doing stock intake and discussing the impending lunar eclipse. Someone asked what happens during an eclipse.
Tammy grandly explained that the eclipse would occur when the United States went in front of the moon, blocking our (Australia’s) view of it. She literally thought the earth stretched itself into like a U-bend or neck pillow shape, and half of it stayed in our normal orbit, and the other half stretched itself over and around to casually block the moon for the rest of the earth.”
Rare Chicken For Dinner
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“When I was in the Navy, there was a cook on my ship. He once served ‘rare’ chicken.’ I genuinely couldn’t tell whether he was trying to cover up his limitless incompetence or if he genuinely believed that rare poultry is a real thing. He was dumb enough to believe it. I was not aware that chicken sashimi is a thing.
Another time, he just filled a pan with ground beef and called it meatloaf. Then for a special occasion, he was supposed to make sugar cookies, you know, several hundred of them for the whole crew. He didn’t bother to read the label on the container he opened, and apparently, he didn’t taste the batter at any point, and he actually made salt cookies. He used up all the remaining salt in the pantry and we had unseasoned food for the remaining several weeks of the mission, during which time the captain assigned someone to be the cook’s bodyguard.
This cook was one of the stupidest and most dangerous comrades I’ve ever had.”
Where’s The Big Apple?
“I worked on a hay press for about a month. The hay press was a large machine that takes normal hay bales (and massive hay bales) and compacts them under very high pressure to make a very dense bale. They use these bales to ship hay to South Korea and Japan for their racehorses and other hobby animals. Most of my co-workers had a high school education if that.
One particular guy was telling me about a girl he was talking to on Tinder (or some various dating/chat app) when he said that she was in New York and that he wanted to go visit her. I told him that that’s pretty cool and New York City will be quite the change from our little town. He then asked me how close New York was. We were in Washington state and he had no idea New York was over 2,000 miles away.”
Not The Right Answer
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“Back in my younger and crankier days, I worked with a young woman who was hands down the dumbest person I’ve ever met.
Her highlights include:
-Winning a basket auction that included a copy of The Beach Boy’s album Pet Sounds and complaining because she ‘didn’t want to hear a lot of mooing.’
-On a day she was driving me up a wall, I convinced her to wait to open her bottle of Coke because the bottle said there was a winner every five minutes. She was disappointed she didn’t win after waiting exactly five minutes. I, however, enjoyed her sulky silence for the rest of the day.
-The best/worst one involved her chatting with a manager who was African American (she’s white). They were discussing their shared slightly uncommon name and then realized their families both came from South Carolina. She thought for a few minuted and then excitedly exclaimed: ‘I bet my family owned yours!’ She was so proud of herself for figuring out that historic connection. The manager didn’t say a word and just walked away.”
There’s Not Enough Wind
“My co-worker was anti windmills. When I asked why she said: ‘there are way too many popping up and we’re going to use up all of the wind.’
I was speechless. I’m never speechless.”
Where’d The Truck Go?
“We shall call this stupid man Chad. Chad was a guy I worked with years ago and he was terrible with directions. He had no idea where he was, or where he was going and was terrible at identifying landmarks. So we are working less than five minutes from our store on this particular day in a small residential area about a mile and a half down the road. Including the turn out of the driveway you have to make three turns, all right-hand turns, and cross one intersection and you’ll be at our store.
A short time into what is an all-day job, we realize we have some equipment at the store that would help us out tremendously. I ask Chad to go get it. He doesn’t know the way. I explain it to him. He stares at me. It’s three right-hand turns, Chad, I think you can do it. Chad wants a map. Fine. I draw a map. Chad leaves. 25 minutes go by. Chad should have been back by now. I call the store and I’m told that Chad left 10 minutes ago. As I am on the phone I hear the truck coming and he drives right by the house.
Well, shoot. Poor Chad forgot what house we were at. No big deal, the road is a giant circle and he will come around again in a moment. So I walk up the driveway, and sure enough, here he comes again. I wave, and he pulls in the driveway. As he gets out I laugh and say, ‘Haha, aww man, you forgot what house we were at?’
Chad deadpans, ‘Naw man, ya moved the truck.’
Chad was looking for the company truck in the driveway. The very same truck he was driving.”
The Man Who Will Live Forever
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“I work with a guy who honestly believes he will not die. He also believes that doctors are ‘part of the system,’ and that they lie to you for profit and personal gain. He does believe in Eastern traditional medicine, however. And if you’re interested to know his secret to eternal life, it’s six raw eggs a day and a ketogenic diet. He doesn’t use deodorant. I’m quite some distance from him, thankfully, so I can’t smell him too much.”
The Worst Soldier
“In everyone’s military career, there is ‘that guy’ you kind of want to help and then realize it’s a waste. My ‘that guy,’ didn’t just take the cake, he took the cherry on top too.
My first encounter with this guy was when I found his weapon in a Porta Potty. I walked out with my weapon and his, saw a higher ranking sergeant and turned the weapon over to him. Turns out this was that guy’s squad leader. Ten minutes later, I see that guy doing physical training in full battle rattle with a sign around his neck stating, ‘I forgot my weapon in the crapper, don’t be like me. I’m stupid.’ This would not be the last time he lost his weapon or important field gear. I found out later that the unit tried to dump this dude off onto another battalion. He got sent back to us for refusing to cut his hair and follow various other orders.
When we were overseas, he had a random outburst in the chow hall, shouting, ‘you don’t see a ding-dong in my hooha.’ We found out it was because his ex-wife was dating other dudes. Later on, he had his weapon taken away from him because he threatened to shoot people in his squad. Not long after that, he was found jerking off to Family Guy. There were a slew of other things as well.
After deployment, this guy got put onto my crew as my driver. He wasn’t allowed to drink because he would get white girl wasted and overdramatic. He once threatened me that he was going to turn himself into the sheriff’s office instead of reporting for duty because he got rejected by some girl. When I told him to do it because I’m not a babysitter, he started sobbing saying it was my job as his sergeant to fix his problems. Unfortunately, he showed up the next day on duty. For some reason he decided to tell the section he was a webcam model. We asked how he knew they were girls and not guys, he said, ‘you can tell.’ Turns out he was showing his dingy to girls and dudes for $2.99 a minute.
The night before going out to the field we do inspections to make sure everyone packed what they needed. He took it upon himself to wake up early to remove all his clean uniforms and clothing from his bags. So he left for two weeks in the field, where we couldn’t shower, with field gear and the clothes on his back. We figured this out on day three when his stench was billowing out of his driver’s hatch. Just add that to the stench and critter fest that was going on up there. More often than not my number one man would have to punch the crap out him to wake him up when we got fire missions.
He would give us life advice on how to scam the VA and other government agencies. He told us an easy way to get free cash is to put your name on class action lawsuits. At one point he told me that the army owed him his sergeant stripes because he had been in for nine years; and, it’s the least they could do for him. I told him I would never allow that to happen as long as I was in the Army.
He had no filter for saying stupid things. It was like his burn out brain was directly linked to his mouth. Unfortunately for the rest of us in the crew, we wore CVC helmets. Which meant you had constant communication with three other people. He was the bane of my existence for three years. In the end, I got him to get out of the Army.
We all end up reflecting on him. People get annoyed that he is basically scamming $2600 a month off of various assistance programs. I ask them, ‘Do you really want that guy in the workforce? This is the safest situation for all of us.’ We sleep easier at night knowing he isn’t in the Army anymore.”
Beach Blonde Nose Job
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“I had a manager named Roxanne (Rocky). She had bleach blonde hair. She literally bleached her hair once a month and then wondered why it broke and fell out. She was a bubblehead who only had the job because her daddy owned the restaurant.
Rocky was really obsessed with her looks and not much else. One day, she told me and a co-worker that she had her nose job done so that her eventual children wouldn’t grow up with the same nose as she had. She wasn’t kidding. My co-worker and I just looked at each other and walked away. We knew it wasn’t worth the effort.”
Oh, Buddy
“There was a guy I worked with named ‘Buddy,’ who bought a huge Snap-On roll-away toolbox for over $3,000, on credit. Two days later, he sold it to a coworker for $1,500 because he had some overdue bills and had to pay them.
Needless to say, he never paid Snap-On for the toolbox and he was off to the winds after he was fired for starting his fourth fistfight at work. One of the other guys I worked with told the Snap-On salesman where Buddy’s new job was, and last we heard they are now garnishing his wages.
Buddy was a nutcase though. He had very thin skin and the slightest thing would set him off. He would go absolutely nuts when he was set off though. He yelled at the security guard and threatened to have him fired because he didn’t like his tone. He almost got fired three times for fighting, but he was able to win the department manager over until the fourth time. He was good at making people take pity on him and he could weld. Oh, and one time he was told to put Caution Tape across a malfunctioning gate and he said: ‘I don’t know how.'”
Royconomics
“I worked with a man named Roy. Roy had theories about how to live life. Royconomics.
One day, he turned to me and the other member of the crew. ‘You boys wanna know how you get nice things?’ he asked. ‘You go to the store, and you finance everything. New furniture, new appliances, televisions, stereos, everything. Then, you don’t make any payments, and you don’t show up for your court date. They’ll end up garnishing your wages, but they take way less than the payments would have been!’
Then, about a week later, ‘You boys wanna know how you buy a house? You apply for every credit card you can possibly get, you take out your entire balance in cash from all of them, and you use that for your downpayment. Then, you don’t make any payments, and you don’t show up for your court date…’
For people thinking that they may know this specific Roy, I last saw him 10 years ago. At that time, he was in his early 50s, was rocking a grey/blonde skullet, and lived in a hamlet in the province of Saskatchewan.”
The Healing Powers Of Clay
“The stupidest man I know is this French-Italian guy I used to work with. I could seriously write a book about how ignorant, idiotic, and illogical this man was, but this story sums it up pretty well:
He’s against vaccinations because he thinks everything in the world is a government conspiracy and he’s also a nature freak who believes in homeopathy. He believes clay has a lot of almost supernatural healing qualities. When he lived in Denmark, he and his wife couldn’t enroll their son in kindergarten unless he had some basic vaccinations because that’s the law.
So they went to get the boy vaccinated, but as soon as he’s gotten the shot and they’ve walked out of the doctor’s office he took the bandage off and slapped a lump of clay on the boy’s arm right where he got the shot. This, he believed, would suck the liquid that was in the syringe out of the boy’s veins and get absorbed into the clay to be disposed of safely. So in his mind, he had basically ‘un-vaccinated,’ the boy and the silly reptilian surgeon general had no idea! Haha in your face, New World Order!
It’s kind of a happy ending though because his stupidity saved the day and the boy now has the vaccinations he should despite his insane father.”
The Clairvoyant Movie Attendant
“I used to work with this dumb kid at a movie theater. He claimed he could see the future and said he had a premonition that we would bring back the old Coke machines. The old Coke machines don’t even work anymore because they were scrapped for parts.
He loved to cosplay and was blown away by the number of cosplayers he saw when Justice League came out. We had maybe six customers that were dressed up. He thought he started a trend.
He showed up to work on his first day of orientation and training at 10:00 pm. He was scheduled for 5:00 pm. He lived on the other side of town and walked. When asked why he didn’t leave earlier if he was walking his reply was ‘I didn’t think of that.’ My manager started taking him home after realizing he had no means of transportation but no one would pick him up.
That same week he took a 15-minute break and vanished for 2 hours. When my coworker found him, he said the line at Subway was really long. He also turned in his two-week notice that he was quitting along with his shirt and name tag. He truly didn’t understand that a two-week notice means you will still be working for the next two weeks.
He said the first Jumanji movie was supposed to be about a video game but video games weren’t invented yet so they scrapped the idea.
He probably thought the world didn’t exist until he was born.”
A Total Idiot
“I work for a small retailer and we had ‘that guy’ for a while. He would call every day and ask the same questions. And no, not in different ways or something that could be construed as clever.
This same person also couldn’t figure out the key fob for his own car and had to have his 5-year-old daughter let him into his own car. He has kids, let that sink in for a second.
He’s incapable of basic math besides addition and subtraction. We buy stuff and we then tell him he gets 30% off he didn’t understand what that meant. He also asks every time how much he’s getting, despite not understanding the answer.
I’m not sure he actually knows how to drive. We have a dumpster in our parking lot and he manages to bump it every time with his car. Every time he leaves we have to go move it because he hits it on the way in and out.
Back to the fact that he’s a father somehow, he’s also an awful parent. We have witnessed him telling his kids they are worthless and terrible, stupid, dumb and any number of insults that are more applicable to himself. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can report to CPS.
I have watched him, on more than one occasion, fail to open the door to the bathroom and simply walk into it face first.
He once came in with a hamburger of some kind and while eating it, pulled a packet of mustard out of his pocket. He did not put this mustard on his hamburger, he instead bit into the packet and sucked the mustard out.
One time, he left his daughter in the car and she locked herself in with the key inside. Instead of walking two buildings down to the car repair place, he took a rock and broke the driver’s side window.
Our store has both a publicly accessible web page for making orders from home as well as in-store kiosks. Despite him owning a modern Android smartphone and using it to look up food, he claims he doesn’t have the Internet to use our website from home.
His wife calls him just about every time he’s in and he lies to her every time to say he’s on the way home and that he’s stuck in traffic.
As many of you might have guessed, he’s not particularly well-groomed although he usually has something in his hair. What that something is, I’m not sure.
I think that’s all I’ve got. He recently moved away so we don’t see him very often anymore.”
Stab In The Hand
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“The stupidest person I knew was this woman I worked with before she got fired. One day, she came to work with a broken arm and claimed that her boyfriend had pushed her during a fight and that she fell, damaging her arm. We all were extremely concerned for her until she came in a week later and said that she stabbed her boyfriend in the hand during another fight to get back at him for breaking her arm.
Then a few weeks later, she told everyone she was secretly trying to get pregnant because if she got pregnant her unemployed boyfriend would have to get a job and help pay rent. She got pregnant and her boyfriend immediately dumped her, which she probably deserved.”
The Great Impersonator
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“Literally, this guy got fired last week for doing this. Whenever a customer would enter the store he would mimic everything they said. While that was already bad enough, he would try his best to copy their accent too no matter what accent it was.
Multiple complaints to our store had been made about this guy and he had plenty of warnings. Well, last week he finally got fired while serving an Asian customer and in FULL view of our manager he says this. He wouldn’t do this to anyone with an accent from our country. I’m pretty sure he was either trying to get fired or he was just really racist.
‘HERROOOOO, WOULD YOU RIKE A BRAG?’
Got pulled into the office where apparently he still maintained he’d done nothing wrong and couldn’t understand why he was being fired. When he was told he was fired, he replied, ‘Ruh Roh.’ Definitely a stupid person.”