Ever been having problems with your computer, then you turn it off then on and it suddenly starts working again. Well, it turns out sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.
Here, people share the simplest solutions to problems that actually worked.
A couple of my friends, who party super hard, take their 16 year old daughter to music festivals with them. She hates all the drunks, hates the music, and usually stays in the camper the whole time reading. It’s like she’s rebelling from her parents by not partying.
William_Morris
I bought a set of couches from Art Van Furniture this summer, complete with 24-hour warranty and replacement service. Once delivered, I discovered that one of the legs arrived cracked. I spent some time on the phone with their customer service hotline, only to get 15 minutes worth of run-around. I decided to go back to the store, with the broken leg in hand, and just get a replacement.
The customer service desk told me there was no way I could “just get an extra leg” from the store; I would need to file a claim over the phone, have my invoice number, etc etc. I realized that I was dressed about the same as the delivery guys, so I walked into the loading bay and told the first guy I saw that “I need another leg to match this one.” He didn’t ask any questions, just took one off of another matching couch and handed it to me.
irwinlegends
One of my friends is a teacher and he was finding it hard to deal with his kids dabbing in class. So he started doing it.
In a super “white dude awkwardly trying to fit in with no rhythm” way.
The kids stopped.
WagnersWorkshop
I went to cancel a doctor’s appointment and they said it was a $200 charge without a week’s notice. I asked how much it was to reschedule, they said it was free.
“Okay, so I need to reschedule for two weeks out.”
“Is three weeks okay?”
“Yep.”
“Alright, you’re all set for three weeks from now. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Yes, I need to cancel my appointment.”
“We need a week’s notice.”
“My appointment is three weeks away.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure.”
“Thank you.”
Couldn’t believe it worked.
Stellapotamus
My car got pummeled in a terrible hail storm. Little dents over every surface of the car. My insurance would only write it off as a total loss, and I didn’t want to give the car up. A friend pointed out that since I live in the desert, the heat will likely fix a lot of those dents over time. That’s exactly what happened. A year later, you had to look carefully to find dents where there used to be a hundred of them.
Ignoring the problem fixed it.
Scrappy_Larue
Drove to a neighboring town 80 miles away with one burned out headlight, remaining headlight went out while in said town. I had no money, and shops were closed regardless. These were dual beam, so although I had lost both headlights, the high beams worked. I didn’t make it out of town with getting honked at and flashed repeatedly by angry passing motorists, and understandably so. What was I to do? I continued down the highway and made it about 15 miles before I’m pulled over by the first officer to see me. I explain the situation, officer has no suggestions (this was before cell phones), tells me I can go but that I won’t make it home without getting stopped again. I pull over at the next exit, get a free water, dump it in the dirt, make a thin mud, and smeared it over my lights. Worked like a charm, no more honks or flashes, passed multiple officers.
SSmtb
Apparently Napoleon’s army was having great difficulty conquering the Austrians who had a strong defensive position along the Danube. The only access to the area was over the Tabor bridge that the Austrians had wired with explosives.
Two of Napoleon’s marshals, with a few grenadiers, decided to walk towards the bridge bearing white flags and laughing.
As they neared the bridge, and while obviously acquiring the attention of the Austrians, they yelled out that there had been a signed armistice (truce).
The marshals were so convincing that the Austrians literally threw all the explosives into the water. The Austrian commander hearing news of this “armistice”, decided to head to the bridge. After witnessing both the French and the Austrian armies standing together, he had no choice but the believe that the war was indeed over. As a result, he handed the bridge and the area over to the French.
Moments later, the Austrian commander and his army were astounded to find themselves prisoners to the French.
2ezyo
My psych professor told us about this patient. She was a woman in her late 40’s, suffering from OCD and paranoia. Everyday while she drove to work, she would panic that she left her curling iron on, and it was going to burn her house down. So she would turn around, drive home, make sure it was unplugged, and then leave again.
But as time went on she started making multiple trips home, sometimes in the middle of the day, and she was about to lose her job over this. No therapy was working, her medications weren’t working, coping techniques weren’t working. Nothing could calm this woman.
Then she saw my professor. And my professor told her to bring her curling iron in the car with her. So if she got nervous that it was still plugged in, she could look over and see that it was next to her.
pastelroyalty
Had to send in a letter once, the envelopes had no sticky adhesive and couldn’t find the tape at home. My dad who’s pretty much as old as Confucius just grabs a grain of rice out of my bowl and used it as the adhesive. It worked so well.
Digitalqueef
I couldn’t connect to the Wi-Fi. My Wi-Fi adapter wasn’t working right and wouldn’t connect to anything. So I right clicked on the adapter in the control panel, clicked diagnose and Windows fixed it automatically. Only time I have seen it work.
Dr_Doorknob
Nurses here will recognize this one.
Once I was dealing with an extremely agitated and fearful Alzheimer’s patient who had been “sundowning” since 3pm (sundowning is an occurrence in some Alzheimer’s patients where their mental function gets worse and worse as the day goes on/once it starts to get dark). This sweet old lady was having an absolute fit. All through my shift I was running in and out of her room. The bed alarm kept going off, she was so confused, afraid… I desperately wanted her to go to sleep. Mind you I had 7 other patients!
I finally walk her out to the nurses station and plop her down in a seat next to me while I do my charting. She is yelling at me and throwing things. I’ve had it at this point and I’m running out of ideas. I finally look at her and say, “how will I ever finish with the wash? My husband will be so mad when he gets home! Would you help me finish??”… she looks me right in the eye, clear as day, and says “dammit sister don’t you ever learn? Give me that laundry!”… so I grab a stack of folded towels and mess them up real quick and plop them in front of her. She folded all of them. I would say oh look at that! She turned around and I would mess the towels up again. This went on a few times until this sweet lady just passed out, exhausted from being so worked up earlier (and maybe from all the towel folding). I slowly push her in the desk chair down the hall and gently get her back into bed. She started to wake up and I leaned down and whispered, “all the wash is done. You have nothing else to worry about!” She slept throughout the night. We were both happy. I am the grandma whisperer.
weeniskisses
Swedish male train workers wore skirts to beat the heat because the company’s dress code prohibited shorts. This made it into the news and the company changed its dress code to allow shorts.
-LifeOnHardMode-
Our family cat hated our family dog. Rubbed the dog all over with fresh catnip. New best friends.
MissNickels
We had a problem with an order so I wrote an email (from my email address) to customer support asking them on how to proceed. They told me that since the order was done in my girlfriends name they couldn’t give me this information for privacy reasons. So I just replied (still from my email address) with:
I hereby
Regards,
Apparently that was proof enough for them to give me said information, which actually was just to call a certain number. Why that information fell under their privacy policy in the first place, is still a mystery to me.
fragrantvegetable
My sister was hospitalized at 4 years old for a buildup of fluid in her head. She refused to drink any of the milk being offered by the hospital because it didn’t have the “cow in sunglasses” on the side of the box that the other hospital’s milk had.
Her being a sick child in for literal brain surgery, the hospital went above and beyond sending someone to the local grocery store to try and find this milk brand with the cow wearing sunglasses. When they never found it, I googled the image, asked if they had a printer, and taped the cow to the side of their milk carton. I still think it’s adorable that worked.
Hunting_Bears
When applying for college they never sent me my student ID with my student number and everything I needed. I call in and they made a big deal about having to fill out forms and get approval from someone and all sorts of bullshit.
So I just walked in to the front desk and said I lost it, they printed a new ID and gave me my number right then on the spot.
BlatantConservative
Bought a “not chargeable” iPhone 5s from a second hand store for bargain. Used a toothpick to clean the contact. Phone is chargeable now and works perfectly.
Dante_2
Back in the 1850’s when John Snow went around telling everybody that the London Cholera outbreak was being caused by a water pump it was seen as pretty ridiculous.
Back then the leading theory on the cause of disease was that diseases were caused by miasmas or “bad air.” John Snow realized everybody that was getting Cholera was also visiting this one water pump, so he got the city to replace it. Lo and behold, the Cholera outbreak stopped.
Nowadays doing this would probably be on par with suggesting you could stop Alzheimer’s by sleeping without a pillow or something
bovovo
There was a nuresing home in Germany and the patients with dementia kept wandering off.
They installed a fake bus stop in front of the nursing home so when dementaion patients got out of the building, they would go sit at the fake bus stop and wait for the (non-existent) bus. The bus stop was clearly visible from the main offices, so whenever staff saw someone out there, they would just go and retrieve them.
Solved the problem completely.
Kasper-X-Hauser
A tick crawled into the headphone jack of my phone.
The next two searches on my phone were: What eats ticks? Guinea hen mating noises.
After about fifteen seconds of female guinea hen sounds, the tick crawled out of my phone.
moak0
Shutting it down for a couple minutes and starting it up anew. Let the capacitors lose their charge, let everything cool down completely. Then turn it back on. Once you’ve restarted, clean out the programs you don’t want, delete files you don’t need, check out what start-up programs/processes you don’t need to have running all the time. Give your computer the equivalent of a shower. Then restart it again.
It’s the next best thing next to a reformat, which is only fun after hours of updates and reinstalls and setting fixing.
Batmaners
Several months ago I was working in an ICU… when a pipe burst in the ceiling and began to leak into my patients room.
The supervisors solution was, “move him into the hall”, however that would have killed this particular patient.
Thankfully, it had been a rainy weekend… so I propped my umbrella up on the patient and the water ran off harmlessly into the floor.
The surgeon had a tiny heart attack when he saw it a bit later, but he got over it I suppose.
DeLaNope