How People Discovered They’ve Been Doing Things the Wrong Way for Years

1. Use that Cup Elsewhere

My family always had a cup next to the bathroom sink in case you needed to rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth or maybe get a quick drink of water in the middle of the night. My grandma had the same cup at her house. I used it for years whenever I was thirsty. One day she saw me doing this and said, “Don’t use that cup. That’s where grandma puts her teeth.”

2. People Find it Strange

I was dating an Asian woman some years ago, and when we got Chinese takeout, she completely unfolded the box and laid it flat like a plate.

She said that was by design, and for the life of her could never understand why her friends always scooped it out onto another plate when the box was the plate.

I now do this all the time and it weirds people out.

reddituser

3. Times of Regret

I used to think ice cream cones are made out of cardboard. I used to throw them away once the ice cream was finished. I only discovered they were edible out of curiosity and continued to eat the cone in secret until I found out other people do it in public.

4. Height Strips

Realized the multi-colored tape measures glued to the door frames of gas stations etc. are for identifying robbers, not for measuring yourself as you walk out. I mean, they can be, but that’s not why they are there. Unless you’re the robber.

5. They Fell for a Scam!

Back in the early 2010s, my boyfriend and I had a PlayStation that we used for Netflix etc since we didn’t have a smart tv. The controller was on such a short cord that we would always have to get up from the couch to change the program or push any buttons. My boyfriend also used to have to sit on the floor up close to the tv to play his video games, since the cord was so short.

One day my brother came to visit. We put something on Netflix and got up to use the remote like we always did. My brother proceeds to unplug the controller, hands it to us, and says “you realize this is a WIRELESS controller right?”

We are dumbfounded. Why would there be a cord coming from it? Turns out that’s just to charge our wireless controller.

Namrevlis1

6. Uncertain How it Works

Opening jars. I used to try everything – running it under hot water, using a dry cloth, using a rubber band around the lid… literally every method I could find on google. After five years in food service and thousands of jars, I finally figured out what I needed to do.

Just hit the sh*t out of the lid.

Take the lid off whatever jar you have to a hard surface, and forcefully tap around the lid in a small semicircle. The lid will practically fall off and still be able to form a sanitary/protective seal when you put it back on. Never opened a jar another way since.

mewithoutjew

7. Why Wait?

It wasn’t until near the end of high school I realized that I didn’t need to jump right into the shower once the water was turned on. I could wait to adjust the water temperature instead of standing in freezing cold. I’m not sure why I kept doing that.

reddituser

8. From the Bottom Up!

A few years ago when I read that monkeys peel a banana open from the bottom… because it’s way easier and it doesn’t mash the end of the banana – it just pops right open!

9. Feeling Blue

I owned a light blue colored microwave for about three years that a family member gave me for a housewarming gift. Thought it was cool; never seen a blue microwave before. One night, a buddy asked why I never took the blue plastic wrap off my microwave, then proceeded to peel it off for me. D*mn; that b*tch is silver. Still miss my blue microwave sometimes though…

10. Discovery Has a Strange Look

I learned how to eat a kiwi correctly. About a year ago I was peeling a kiwi like I always have and my aunt gave me a funny look and said: “why don’t you just cut it in half and eat it with a spoon?” It had never occurred to me to eat it that way. I felt so dumb.

Kodi_Jo

11. Fewer Drops in Your Eye

Cutting onions. I’ve always sliced the ends off before chopping. I recently discovered that if you leave the root intact the onion bleeds less which gives less cause for my eyes to water.

reddituser

12. There is a Problem

Literally just learned about the snipping tool on Windows today. Up to this point I had done a screenshot, then paste it into the paint, and then crop my selection from there. I’m a second-year grad student.

13. Not All Things Are Edible

When I was a kid, I was told that the paper that came on cupcakes/muffins was edible.

I would spend a decade eating them like this (paper and all), until a friend pointed it out.

1n5an1ty

14. Forget the Sides

If you’re cooking taco shells, you should place them so they are upside down. (Tips of shells touching the hot surface.) Not on their sides. Baking them this way makes sure the shells don’t collapse on themselves. Was a wonderful revelation.

15. Better Changes Came into Play

This sounds so stupid, but I was never told how to “flash” my lights whilst driving. For the first ~3-4 years of driving, I’d turn my full beams on and then off again really quickly. Then one time, I accidentally pulled it towards me, made it flash, and my life changed.

I noticed one of my friends doing my same old trick a few months ago, and when I pointed out the actual, correct way to do it, one of the girls in the back was like “NO WAY!” and the other one was like “Yeah that took me a while to figure out but was too embarrassed to say anything”

I’m not saying this is a widespread thing that people didn’t know, but I guess driving instructors in my town just don’t tell you that.

17. Made Fun Of

I used to pronounce “url” as “earl”… in my head. Until that fateful day, I said it out loud.

reddituser

18. The End Result

I taught myself to crochet from a library book when I was a kid. As an adult, I was stuck on a project because the pattern had an error and I turned to YouTube for help. I realised I had never watched anyone else crochet before. I do everything completely backwards, from the way I hold my hook and keep tension on the yarn to the way but I somehow still arrive at the same stitch outcome.

19. A Perfect Split

Disposable wood chopsticks.

I thought I was right in carefully tearing them apart, trying to achieve a perfect split through the connected wood.

But the end bit is supposed to be snapped off, and the little chunk of wood used to rest your chopstick ends on without touching the table.

Also, the snap produces a much better end than a near-perfect split anyway.

20. Use it a Lot Less

Washing my hair. I didn’t know you were supposed to massage it into your scalp for a few minutes before rinsing. I thought you just lathered up and rinsed.

Same with conditioner; I didn’t know it was only supposed to go on the ends of your hair. I was using it all over my head. Now I know why I always ran out of conditioner first. I use way less now and coupled with shampooing correctly my hair looks and feels so much better.

21. Checking Blind Spots

Using my side-view mirrors on my car.

So, for the longest time, like at least 10 years since I learned to drive, I’d always had them angled in a way that I could see behind me, like extra rearview mirrors, but they’re the side views.

It was only last year that I realized that if you angle them outwards, so you see basically right alongside your car, they pretty much reveal your blindspots perfectly, albeit don’t show right behind you.

Apparently, this is the ‘correct’ way to position them, and until I adjusted mine, I had to physically turn my head to check my blind spots. I still do, but I now don’t have to.

22. Before or After

My whole adult life I’ve been putting laundry detergent in after my clothes. I was informed a few months ago that this was incorrect. You should really put the detergent in before you add the clothes into the washer.

(This is for top-loading washers)

reddituser

23. Utilize Your Thumbs

Cracking eggs. I grew up cracking eggs on a sharp corner. Tried cracking eggs on a flat surface and opening with thumbs after seeing it on a cooking show. It’s so much easier and less messy!

24. Cooking Method

Pushing chopped vegetables off the ends of the chopping board and spilling them all around the pan like a f*cking barbarian – I learned only today that you are supposed to corral them through the ‘handle’

reddituser

25. Nearly a Decade

After moving to a new city I went to the laundromat and the Korean lady working was yelling at me about something I couldn’t understand. After some pantomime, it became clear that she was upset I was putting in the wrong detergent but it was the same kind I have been using for 8 years (since moving away to college and behind). Turns out I’ve been washing my clothes with only fabric softener for nearly a decade. They always smelled good so I never really thought about it. Not my proudest moment.

26. Someone Said It

I grew up in Texas listening to country music and for many years spelled the word straight as “strait” because of George Strait. It is also a real word so it never set off the spelling alarms in Microsoft Word.

27. All Parties

When attending a church wedding, I would sit on either side of the center aisle, according to the availability of pews.

I was instructed later that – as you enter the church – the bride’s family and friends sit on the Left, and the groom’s family and friends sit on the Right.

When I told the priest I was friends with both equally, he said I’d have to choose.

Back2Bach

28. Made a Mistake There

Found out I was lighting incense wrong. My boyfriend and I got a bunch to add to our collection of nice smells and we would light them and they would just start a little inferno. Convinced we were buying cheap, garbage incense we stopped using them. I proceed to buy a different brand in the hope those would work. I test the light and the same thing it just goes up in an inferno. Roommate informs us you are supposed to blow them out once they catch. Oops.

gorbaby

29. It is Not a Flavor

I always thought eggplant tasted “itchy”, like itchy was a flavor, like sour or salty. I Fed some to my baby and his face turned red wherever the eggplant touched, and I realized we were both just allergic to eggplant. And itchy isn’t a flavor.

reddituser

30. We Were All Wrong

Not mine, but my dad has been spelling his name wrong his whole life (he’s 51). His name is Jeffrey, and he’s been spelling it like that since he learned how to spell his name. A few months ago my mom pulled out his birth certificate, and we all learned it’s actually spelled, Jeffery. Not sure if he spells it correctly now, but it was definitely an “oh sh*t” moment for him.

31. With the Help of Some Thread

My wife and I have this ceiling fan/light in our bedroom in the house we moved into two years ago. It has a remote control for the fan and lights.

About a year and a half ago the lights suddenly stopped working. The fan works well and we didn’t have a ton of money so we’ve just lived with lamps in the room, always being frustrated with how d*mn dark it is.

I was scrolling some other thread on TIFU a few weeks ago and the top post was a guy talking about how his lights stopped working years ago, and then he found out that it was just dimmed (which you do by holding down the button on the remote).

It sounded so much like our fan I went and tried it.

Dimmed.

32. Suddenly, it Made Sense

Living in a foreign country where I was actively learning the language. Social cues go a long way when learning a language on the spot. That being said, someone once said a phrase to me while serving a hot dish, which I assumed as meaning “excuse me”. After going through crowds and lines, replicating the same phrase in an attempt to be respectful of those around me, I abruptly found out that the phrase actually meant “enjoy”. Hindsight completely makes sense. The odd looks I would get by saying “enjoy” while squeezing past people all of a sudden made sense.

33. The Color of Things

Not cause I’ve been doing something wrong my entire life but saw it wrong. I’m colorblind and my entire life I thought peanut butter was green until I turned 19. And when I found out it was brown my mind was blown. It took so long because no one really talks about the color of things like that.

34. Tip Twice?

When I first got a debit card and would go out to eat at restaurants with my friends, I would leave a cash tip on the table. when I got the receipt to put how much I was paying I would write down how much money I left on the table. for at least 6 months I gave double tips to every waitress I had…

reddituser

35. Once a Year, Do it

That you do, in fact, need to disassemble your laundry drier and clean the lint out from underneath the drum once per year.

I’m 31 and never knew this, no one ever said anything, never saw anyone do this. The crappiest thing is that my parents also learned this the hard way and never bothered to give me a tip when I bought my first drier.

Luckily, the wife and I discovered the lint buildup when changing the rollers. I said to my parents “wow it really builds up in there!” and they were like “oh yea you need to do that like once a year”.

WAAAAAAAT

36. Some Sort of Deity

Well… This was a few years ago. I was the director of IT for a very large company. I was given a new cellphone and told to set up my voicemail.

I don’t know that when I recorded my name it would be played to whomever I leave a voice mail for.

Well, the name I recorded was, “Dooder84 Corporate IT Godddd!!!”

I worked there for 4 years until someone in the hallway referred to me as the “corporate IT GoD!”

I was so embarrassed…..

37. Awestruck by the Wife

Since the dawn of time, I would pick up the silverware and utensils out of their tray in the dishwasher and put them away in their drawers then go back and pick up more out of the dishwasher. Then one day I saw my wife lift the tray out of the dishwasher and I legit stood there with my mouth open.

38. Anything But Cheese

I am lactose intolerant. I genuinely did not know this for the first 25+ years of my life. I always had to go to the bathroom after eating something with cheese in it. One day it just clicked: I bought some Lactaid, took it before the next time I ate cheese, and I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.

…it was mind-blowing. I have no idea how I didn’t make the connection for years. So I guess you could say instead of having an “Oh sh*t” moment I had a “No sh*t” moment.

reddituser

39. Sofa Bed Right There

Reminds me of when my mum bought a new sofa. About six months later she’s hoovering under the cushions when the base fabric pulls back to reveal some sort of metal and… a mattress? Turns out we had a sofa bed. Made my friends sleep on the floor with a sofa bed right there.

40. Such a cute name!

When I was 5 a pizza hut employee told me that the powder on the breadsticks was called fairy dust. Ordered extra fairy dust on my breadsticks until I was around 14 when an employee said ‘do you mean garlic salt?’ It still devastates me to realize how obtuse I was.

41. Twists and Turns

Do you ever buy soda in a 6- or 8-pack of bottles, and then struggle to twist and pull a bottle out of the tight plastic rings? There’s a pull tab connected to a serrated line through the plastic. You can just pull that and then the plastic will break easily when you pull at the bottle.

My aunt taught me about this over 20 years ago, because no one in my immediate family was aware of it. I let my fiancee in in the secret just last week.

42. Two Things

When I was a kid I loved drinking coffee but didn’t know how to make it. My mom taught me but the coffee ratio she told me to use was like 1 tbsp per 1 pot of coffee as opposed to the actual ratio of 1 tbsp:1 cup of water. Fast forward about 13 years to a couple of months ago and I was reading the back of my Folgers coffee thing and there was a little diagram showing how much to actually use. I then realized my mom had told me the wrong amount so I a) wouldn’t drink all her coffee, and b) wasn’t super hyped up going into school.

43. Surprise Space

I lived in a house for 6 years with a bathroom with no “shelf” or cupboard to put toiletries into. I was very disappointed and ended up using a window sill that was WAY too small to fit everything.

Anyway, one day we had a friend over and he asked why we don’t have anything in our bathroom cupboard. I was confused so he showed me.

It turns out that the mirror I had been using for 6 years has a hidden compartment behind it. It was a mirrored door to a mounted cupboard on the wall. I was astonished and IMMEDIATELY moved all my stuff from the window into the new space.

My friend was baffled that I had never figured out there was a space behind the mirror. There was an obvious gap between it and the wall that I SOMEHOW failed to notice.

44. Course for Disaster

When I was a kid and was acting up, my dad would always threaten to leave me at this mean old lady’s house. Her name was Helen Handbasket. Fast forward about 28 years later and it clicks out of nowhere while I was on a customer call at work.

Customer: This whole network is going to h*ll in a handbasket.

Me: HA! I’m an idiot.

Customer: Did you figure it out?

Me: OH! No. Not yet.

45. Why Did I Not Know That

So… I was fortunate enough to buy my own home due to unfortunate circumstances. I moved in and the thermostat thing was set to about 70 degrees (F). As time went on, I couldn’t figure out why there was no visible way for me to change the temperature. My electric bill would be through the roof every month. The thermostat is well above my eye level and I lived alone for quite some time, though family and friends did visit regularly.

After several months of leaving windows opened or closed to adapt to the change in weather, I finally asked my niece (I think?) to check the thermostat for a way to change the temperature. She looked around for a bit and saw that there was a tab I was supposed to pull to reveal all of the buttons and settings of the godd*mned thermostat.

“Oh, sh*t.”

46. Much Like a Woman

Well, to start off I’m a male who grew up with my grandma and mom. So growing up I had very few male influences and I’m 34 now so the internet sucked. Anyway, when I was 12 my mom decided to move us in with her boyfriend. The first night in our new place I walked out of the shower with my towel on. My stepdad says “what are you doing, you’re not a girl”. I looked confused and said “I know, why?” he then said, “guys don’t wear their towels like that!”. I then realized, I had always worn my towel up to my chest, since that’s all I saw growing up, not realizing it was so they would cover their boobs. I was so embarrassed. So yea, long story short, I wore my towel like a female until I was 12.

47. The First Half

I had watched side 2 of Goodfellas not knowing it was a 2-part DVD. Didn’t realize this for years and my opinion of the movie was “it starts off fast and felt rushed and didn’t build up the characters enough — I think it’s overrated.”

Then I remember seeing a part I had never seen before and thought “holy sh*t did I accidentally only watch half the movie?”. I rented it later that week and realized as soon as it started that I hadn’t seen the first half.

It’s my favorite movie of all time.

Apostate1123

48. Greatest Shame

I was about 16 when I learned that there’s paper around Reece’s peanut butter cup. Growing up my family only bought like those small ones that you can eat in one bite, so I’d never had a chance to bite into a regular one and actually see the paper.

So one day me and my sister were talking about what candy we wanted to hand out on Halloween, and I mentioned that peanut butter cups were good apart from them having a chewy piece in them; which really confused her, and we spent the next few minutes arguing over if they were chewy or not. Then she stopped talking in the middle of her sentence, and I could see that something had clicked for her. She went to the kitchen and grabbed one, and told me to eat it, and started laughing her *ss off when I put the entire chocolate still wrapped in the little brown paper into my mouth. It’s still to this day, my greatest shame that I can’t live down.

doctor4th

49. Money Back

I worked at a hardware store in high school. On my last day there, the owner was waiting for me to ring out my last transaction before leaving. It just so happened my last transaction was a return. I processed the return as I always did: on the computer. Turns out, I forgot about Step 2 the entire time I worked there: run the return through the card swipe machine thing so the customer actually got their money back.

This was not a sophisticated computer system – the computer was super old and not connected to the credit card swiper, so there was never a prompt for the customer to swipe their card or confirm the amount that would be returned to their card.

I’m not sure how many returns I rang up in my time at this store, but none of those customers ever got their money back that I know of. Sorry guys.

reddituser

50. Hope No One Saw

Some years ago everyone started to hype about Edamame, so I gave it a try. I love beans and peas in general, so I wondered why it tastes so disgusting. And for some (embarrassing) few weeks I ate whole Edamame when someone ordered them to share in a restaurant. Cuz that’s what cool kids eat these days, right?

Guess what. By observing others I found out that you’re not supposed to eat the skin. Since then I love Edamame!

…I’m still wondering if anyone noticed I was doing it wrong…

51. Add Some Salt!

My father was 71 years old before he tried sprinkling salt on fresh tomato slices.

He had always HATED fresh tomatoes, and I suggested he add some salt.

He lost his mind at how amazing it tasted and would ask everyone he met if they knew about putting salt on tomato?

He died of heart disease one year later but that was probably unrelated, right?

52. How She Was Looking

I took my then-girlfriend to a fancy baja bucket joint in San Diego, and we each ordered a variety bucket full of shrimp, lobster, carne asada, chicken, etc.

Trying to be suave and playful, I went to feed her a single shrimp tail from my bucket.

She giggled and I put the shrimp in her mouth but held the tail… because nobody eats that.

And she bit down, I pulled the tail away. And she chewed… then stopped… then chewed once more and stopped, and she stared at me with a “. what the F are you doing?” look on her face.

This is when I learned about “peeling” shrimp.

53. Friends with Benefits Meaning

I thought the phrase, “Friends with benefits” meant a person who’s not really your friend but calls that person a friend due to you gaining something from them if you stick around with them.

Like they might be able to help you get a position at a job or something along those lines. Then I found it doesn’t actually mean that but a friend whom you have sex with but don’t love each other and just do it for the sex. Boy, I’ve been using it wrong my entire life. At work, I was joking with a female colleague and we were messing around saying we aren’t friends blah blah blah. Then I told her we’re friends with benefits. She looked at me and then started laughing. She told me that what I said isn’t what I think it means and told me I’m so innocent. I searched for it up later that day and cringed so badly. Apologized the following day and she said not to worry about it. I was wrong my whole life.

54. Totally Misunderstood

When I was about 18, one of my friends dropped a large sandwich on the ground but said it was fine because of the five-second rule which I responded to with, ” There is no way you can eat that whole thing in five seconds.” That’s when I learned that I had misunderstood the rule my entire life.

55. Instant Face Palm

I had the brightness set at 40% on my home theater projector.

For five years.

Best Buy installed it and I just thought it was a dim pile of sh*t.

Turns out I was the dim pile of sh*t.

rhialto

57. Zero Chance

I thought Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson were the same person. I remember always being really impressed because I thought this guy became the best basketball ever and then went on to become a great singer after going crazy and deciding to be white. I was not a smart kid, I think it was around 3rd or 4th grade when someone finally explained it to me.

58. Unintentional Discovery

I went the entirety of grade school and college not knowing in Microsoft Word you can press the tab key to indent a sentence. Every time I started a new paragraph I’d just press the space bar 5 times and figured out the right way completely by accident.

59. His Face Said it All

I told my boyfriend not to cut the crust off the bread because that’s where all the nutrients are and his face said it all. My mom lied to me my whole life that the crust on bread was the healthy part just so she didn’t have to cut them off.

60. The Light Never Turned Off

Got thrown into a huge workload at my new job right away, and had to miss “phone training.” Promised to read the manual. Yeah right.

One year later, I found out that the little red light on the console meant I had messages. That light was on the first time I sat at my desk, I thought it meant the phone was plugged in.

With no way to know when I had new messages, I would just check them when I remembered to. Which was not that often. And I deleted old messages as I received them, but must have never deleted that first one because the light never turned off.

I think co-workers were too polite to call b*llsh*t on my lack of promptness in returning calls, and then just accepted it.

“Nice guy, but if you want to talk to him, you have to walk to his office. Dude will NOT return a call.” Oof.

61. Life Altering

My family had dial-up internet for years when I was a kid. It started with one phone line that the phone and internet shared and we’d have to do the whole leapfrog of loading up a page, unplugging it so mom can make a phone call, then back and forth when the phone was in and out of use. It would take me all day to get anything done on the internet. This included school work, playing games, or finding tutorials on how to draw whatever kind of mid-evil war tech I was thinking of with my young brain (from when I was like 7 until I was 12 or 13) when I was 13ish we got broadband for the first time (this was around when YouTube was brand new before google bought it). For some reason, it wasn’t until we got broadband that I realized I could type things in the web browser. Like anywhere. I was navigating the internet with nothing but the mouse for like 5 or 6 years. I had mental maps to get to where I wanted to go from a series of clicks starting from the yahoo homepage. On dialup internet. Having made this realization right when we got broadband it was like I went from crawling to driving a race car in an instant. I’ve never told anybody about this in real life and I intend to keep it that way.

uboofs

62. It All Starts With The Right Decision

After failing to lose weight through exercise for the past 20 years I saw my friend lose 50 pounds in a year by counting calories and changing his diet. What I realised is that losing weight starts with what you put into the body.

I’ve been counting calories and eating healthy and balanced for 6 months now and am 6 pounds from my target weight. Have also started weight training to gain muscle. Never been this motivated for anything in my life.

63. If Only This Were the Case

My guy friend thought periods only lasted for around an hour until I had to tell him otherwise when we were around 17. He thought that women feel cramps and sit on the toilet for an hour until it is done. I’m not entirely sure about why he thought this, but my guess is that he had seen some of the girls in high school go to the nurse’s office if they had cramps for around that length of time. If only it were true!!

64. Weird Name Things

It took me 15 years to realize that I actually go by my middle name…

This truth bomb hit me on my very first day of high school. During attendance, the teacher kept calling for Richard (last name) I thought “sweet! Someone with the same last name as me.” I corrected the teacher and told her it was actually Alex and not Richard.

That night I was telling my mom that they enrolled me in the school by what I thought was my middle name (Richard) her and my dad laughed hysterically and said that Richard is in fact, my real first name and that I go by Alex (middle name) because they didn’t want me to be called DIck by my peers.

WELL, DIDN’T I F*CK UP BY EXPLAINING THAT THE NEXT DAY TO MY TEACHER AND I WENT THROUGH MY MOST IMPRESSIONABLE YEARS BEING CALLED DICK BY ALL MY PEERS!!

D*ck move by them I’d say…

PeepDurple12

65. For the Lazy

I didn’t know I could pee standing up until middle school. I guess my parents thought it would be less messy to potty train me to pee sitting and I didn’t use public bathrooms as a kid, so I just never realized it was a thing for guys to pee standing.

I still pee sitting down at home because I am lazy.