Let’s talk about those times when life throws us serious curveballs and some folks just seem to miss the memo on how things roll. Imagine sharing a piece of your life puzzle with someone, and instead of a comforting nod, you get a look of genuine confusion. We’re diving into situations where understanding the world becomes a serious quest, and the lightbulb moment is more like a dim flicker.
Then there are those who, despite the seriousness of life, seem to be missing a crucial chapter. We’ll uncover tales of individuals facing life’s complexities without the guidebook, highlighting that the struggle is indeed real, and sometimes, it’s no laughing matter.
My boss told me about a friend of his, who told him of a “life hack”. She would get her bills in the mail, NOT pay them, and then wait a couple of months to pay. Then she would cry so the debt collectors would feel bad and waive the fees for not paying on time. That was her “brilliant life hack”.
A friend from college recently told me that he got a car (his first one). I was pretty happy for him and asked what he was going to do now? The conversation went like this:
Him: Dunno man, maybe go upstate to see the sites.
Me: Sounds cool, but what are you going to do about gas?
Him: What do you mean?
Me: You don’t have a job and your parents aren’t giving that good of an allowance, so what will you do if your car runs out of gas?
I swear to God this is what he said
Him: Awe that’s no problem! All I gotta do is find a pipeline in my backyard, dig it up, get the oil from it, put them into buckets, and leave ’em in my trunk for when I need to refill the tank!
I then awkwardly stared him down for a good minute, his innocent blue eyes piercing my soul, and told him I had to go.
My poor brother. At the time of this story, he was about 21 and living at home with my parents. He was working part-time at a Rent-a-Center making 12 bucks an hour and recently got a new girlfriend. He asked me if we could meet to go over details about what life looks like outside the comforts of having your parents pay for everything.
We meet at a coffee shop and analyze his finances. After about two hours, I explained to him he should stay at home and pay off some big debts he has, get good savings and look to get a more stable and well-paying job. Two months later what does he do? He rents a house from our uncle who is notorious for milking his tenants. A few weeks later, suddenly all his utilities turned off. He explains that he didn’t know he “had to pay for these things.” Then he buys a $5k ring and proposes to his girlfriend. He is over a week late on his rent the next week and he gets a late fee added to it and b*tches out my uncle for it.
I really thought I was thorough with him, but then I remembered our childhood and how he just never understood anything correctly. It’s like he is from an alternate dimension and has trouble understanding humanity.
My dad asked if he could borrow my cat. I said no. He replied, “It’s okay, I’ll just rent one.” I didn’t point out that cat rentals aren’t a thing. I still don’t know why he needed a cat.
A young girl I used to work with at Target. She was hired for the 6 am-2:30 pm shift, but she regularly showed up between 8-9 am without any good explanation. After the third time or so, our supervisor asked her if she had something to do in the morning, such as getting kids ready for school, that required a later shift. If so, she could be moved to the 8 am-4:30 pm shift. The girl’s response was, “No, I still want to leave at 2:30. I just don’t want to get up that early.” She was fired when she refused to acknowledge that you cannot make your own schedule.
A friend of mine saw a guy getting arrested in college- the kid was struggling and cussing out the cops like crazy- “Do you know who my father is?!” A cop humored him and asked. “He owns the number one used car dealership in upstate New York!”
We were in Massachusetts. They were unimpressed by his legacy and took him in.
My uncle raised his two kids in Hong Kong by forbidding them from watching any TV, taking public transportation, or being out by themselves at any time. they spend their days at an English-only international school, then come home after school and read English books.
One day we had a family gathering (very rare because apparently Chinese food is not good for them) and I realized that these kids are raised in Hong Kong but they speak no Chinese. They don’t know how to use public transportation, they have no friends, they are uninformed about what’s happening in the world outside of their school and their home, and they are just really uncomfortable around people in general. They turn 18 this year.
These two kids have no idea what the outside world is like.
My ex-girlfriend dumped me because she said “I don’t want to work when I’m 30”, with the undertone that I would not be able to support her stay-at-home lifestyle. She’s currently pursuing a master’s in Psych and she’ll finish around 26 or 27. Then she has 3 years which I assumed she’ll practice counseling until she wants to stop working… at which point she expects some dude to just pay her way. So she dumped me and found this chud who had his 10-year plan. He was gonna get his undergrad, go to business school and then go to law school. So he’s not even going to finish school until about 29. So then he’s got 1 year to start making enough money to support his wife who is no longer going to work for the rest of her life.
First day at college, the girl next to me raising her hand and waiting for the RA to call on her asks “What time will the cleaning services be cleaning our rooms.”
Man did she make me feel better, I was poor and got a scholarship. I was so stressed I’d do something stupid first but she totally jumped on that fire for me.
A student working part-time at my laboratory at a University came into my office and asked “So can I eat all in the refrigerator, I didn’t know I was supposed to bring my own lunch”. I looked at him, stunned and replied “Nothing, that food is what people brought for their own lunch, but you can use my grub hub to order”. He DID NOT UNDERSTAND. It took 4 tries to get him to realize he can’t just eat someone else’s lunch.
Same student: I walked into the lab room and told him I made a full pot of coffee in the office and he could help himself. Him: “A pot of coffee? What’s that?” He never used a coffee maker other than a Keurig before and didn’t even know it was a thing.
He was fired a month later for stealing chloroform.
My cousin and I were talking one day and I mentioned that I had a horrible sense of direction, where my brother could be dropped off in a cornfield and find his way home.
She replied that it was easy to find your direction, just remember “Never Eat Shredded Wheat” and you will know where North is.
I laughed and said that was for remembering the directions in order, not for finding which way was which. We argued for 20 minutes till I told her to show me how it works.
She stands up and points forward and says “Never Eat Shredded Wheat!” and points to the direction she was facing when she stood up. “That’s North!”
So I told her to face me and then find North. She does it again… “Never Eat Shredded Wheat!” and points at me and says “That’s North”.
So ask her if North just changed? She says no. “But North was that way a minute ago?”
She looks confused and says “Why didn’t that work?”
Got into a fender bender in high school. I was driving a car that cost me $300 (had been sitting on concrete blocks at a cousin’s, patched it and bought wheels) and I was absolutely devastated.
The kid who hit me wasn’t freaking out at all and kept saying his dad would get him another one, why was I so worried about an old car?
Once the dad got there, it turned out this was the third car his kid had wrecked. For that school year.
The other day, my 18-year-old brother-in-law got married to his high school sweetheart in a parking garage so that they could live off-campus at college together. The girlfriend’s, now wife, mother is an ordained minister. His parents, my in-laws, were very upset and he couldn’t understand why because “it’s just a fake marriage for school”. Oh no, sweet boy. You are MARRIED. I just laughed and laughed. I love him dearly. He is a dumba**.
A 23-year-old who is quite literally unable to take care of herself in any capacity beyond ordering fast food. I once heard her yell at her mother because she was filling out a job application and got stuck on a section. Her mom was trying to help her finish but she got frustrated and screamed, “Can’t you just fill it out? I want to go play my games.” Before you ask, no. There are no disabilities. She’s just lazy, spoiled and incredibly stupid.
I’m attending grad school in Barcelona, and there are these two Colombian girls in my class who I’m pretty sure have never had to work for anything in life. We just had our first final the other day, and while the test was hard I thought it was pretty straightforward. It was essay-type questions and you needed to draw on things we discussed in class to answer each question. A few minutes into the exam, one of the girls raises her hand and says she doesn’t know what to do. Fair enough, the professor tells her to use class theories to answer the question asked. She then said that she didn’t know how to relate any class theories to the question. I was literally sitting there, having already answered one question and having used 4-5 different class topics to answer it. I couldn’t understand why she was having such a hard time. The other Colombian girl then says, “Can you just write on the board which theories you want us to use to answer?”
She basically asked the professor of a grad school class to answer a question for her. The professor then goes a bit too far IMO and gives her a few clues. 20 minutes later she raises her hand and once again asks, “Can you read what I wrote and tell me if I’m right or should I do it again?”
A friend of mine decided to quit his job to become a Twitch streamer. Right off the bat, I thought this was a stupid plan. But the real kicker was his timeline for his streaming career. He told me he saved enough money to pay his bills for 1 month. ONE MONTH! And after that, he would be making enough money from Twitch to pay his bills. He seriously believed that after 1 month he would have between 2 and 3 hundred subs. He refused to advise or use any social media. He won’t play any triple-A games or even popular games. A year and a half later he’s lost his apartment his car basically everything but his girlfriend. who he lives with. But hey he just hit 50 followers on Twitch and got affiliated. To him, this endeavor has been a total success.
Someone at work asked if she needed to pay to use the microwave. She decided it was too complicated to use and bought a $150 thermal lunchbox so she could take food that was cooked by her hired chef to work without needing to reheat it.
She’s a 30-year-old heiress working her first job trying to be independent. her parents are covering all her expenses.
One a university field trip. The lecturer points out that a watchtower turned Starbucks.
“What do you see?”
One girl “Starbucks”
He goes “Yes, but what kind of building is it or seemed to be in the past?”
All the class said “Watchtower”
And she goes “Starbucks”
He asked her to look at it and she kept insisting. Then he explained that he understood but that it she needed to understand what it was in the past. (We were in a history class)
Former barista here. A customer came through the drive-thru one afternoon, ordering a custom drink that cost about $5. While on the phone, he dug change out of the corners of his van and handed me what amounted to less than $3. I continued looking at him with my hand extended, half full of dirty coins, when he just shrugged and said, “That’s all I got.” I repeated the total and said he hadn’t given me enough. “Can’t you just spot me with your tips?” Um, EXCUSE ME? First, no, that’s literally my grocery money, and second, our company had a strict policy against doing just that. But I simply apologized and said no, I couldn’t do that. He blew up at me, saying I wasn’t “being very neighborly.” I again apologized and explained how I relied on my tip money to, you know, EAT. Instead, he screamed at me again, “You suck, you REALLY suck!” before driving away.
“I don’t need to study, when I’m older I am going to be a YouTuber and I’ll win a lot of money”. This was said by a girl who was expelled from school by the ethics teacher.
My ex. Let me set up this story by saying we split about three months ago, all of her friends and family still reach out to me to tell me how she is struggling and I love it.
This is a girl that didn’t have any idea how to cook for herself, grilled cheese was beyond the realm of possibility. She never cleaned a thing in her life. Never helped with the dishes, did the laundry one time..said she hated it and never did it again. Didn’t like doing the grocery shopping or even going in the store because there were too many options.
Not to mention we were living off of my salary.
Her hobbies included Netflix, and listening to audiobooks while driving.
She broke up with me because I didn’t want to wear a gold sequined tie, suspenders, and shoes to the wedding. Let alone make my friends wear them too.
I thought she always understood how much I did for her and she appreciated it. I had no idea how wrong I was.
When her friend made a comment to her about how she is lucky to have me do EVERYTHING for her. She replied back with “Well, I’m the one that is doing more than half the wedding planning.”
I had a classmate in 5th grade who had very strict parents. They wouldn’t let her eat food that wasn’t organic, wouldn’t let her watch non-educational TV, wouldn’t let her stay past 8:00 PM, wouldn’t let her watch movies that are above G rating, wouldn’t let her play any form of sports or video games, and wouldn’t let her go on field trips unless one parent is present.
Towards the end of the year, she got chicken pox. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because her parents didn’t vaccinate her.
I have one that’s kind of been woken up from this.
My dad.
He used to be the typical Boomer, always thinking I was just being lazy and not doing things right.
Until he got injured, and could no longer work in an industry he had 30+ years of experience and seniority in.
It took him several months to get a new job of any kind and was shocked when he realized that he couldn’t just negotiate for higher pay. He was fired on the spot when he threatened to organize a strike and was barred from the premises.
When he had to move, it baffled him that he couldn’t just give the landlord a few hundred bucks and move in right away, but had to wait a week for his application to go through, and for the landlord to do a background check.
Probably my most satisfying one was when he finally decided to get into the industry I’m in. Truck driving.
He learned very fast that it wasn’t like it was in the movies from the 80s.
Truckers don’t now, nor ever have given a rats a** about one another. Sure some are nice to one another, but if it’s a choice of you or them, don’t hold your breath. Most big trucking companies in the US do not give a sh*t about you, or your family, and they’re only concerned about your safety because it saves them money on lawsuits.
After his third trucking job ended with him getting terminated, and is now living off my income, he stopped giving me sh*t about my problems and is still job hunting.
My mom was spontaneously in the city I live in and asked me to meet her for supper. I told her I was on the bus and it would take me 45 minutes to get to her, even though in a car it would be a 15-minute drive. She said, “Just tell the bus driver to bring you here now.” She has no concept of how public transportation works.
A roommate didn’t want my boyfriend over between 5 pm-10 pm, but there was really no other time that fit with both of our schedules (I had college classes, he had work and college classes, and we all had our own rooms so I didn’t think she cared with both of our doors closed). Bf and I were seeing each other about twice a week due to distance, and carefully following the rules set out in the roommate agreement.
While mediating this, someone asked how much time she thought we should be spending together. She answered, “Once a week for one or two hours.”
My family owned a restaurant for a few years. We had this dishwasher who was 18 and finishing up high school. One day at 3:30 PM he calls in for his 4:00 shift. My mom asked why and turns out he wanted to go to an NBA game that night and had just decided (would have been okay if he gave us an advanced notice). My mom said no and if you don’t show up you won’t have a job anymore. The guy doesn’t show up, but comes in the next day and is shocked when we tell him that he’s been fired and replaced. The kicker is the kid’s dad called and was mad that we fired him. He didn’t think it was a big deal.
I have a friend who’s an only child and has been completely sheltered/spoiled by her parents. She’s not a bad person per se, but has zero common sense and often adopts this “I deserve this and that so I don’t understand why I didn’t get it” mentality. This is especially true for grades(we’re both education and special education majors).
I have so many stories about her pertaining to this topic, but here’s the one where I realized that she was f*cked as a special educator.
So per our degree, we have to take a behavioral theories class, which focuses on emotional disorders in children(bipolar, schizophrenia, severe depression, and other stuff like that). With this course, we had to go in the field and observe children who were in a group home. To be noted, these children are SEVERELY mentally disturbed, so much so the principal of the school and the director of the House came to our class to brief us on what we could and could not do, as well as make sure we understood. Basic rules; don’t speak unless the teacher speaks to you, don’t interact with the students outside basic, MINIMAL conversation, don’t ask about anything in their lives, don’t engage in conversation, don’t be provocative(this quite literally translates to “don’t show any skin except your face because some of these kids are here on crimes for s*xual a**ault). It was a very “try to blend in, don’t draw attention to yourself” situation due to the intensity of the students emotional problems.
Well, one day, I ran into my friend in the dining hall and she just started crying. I ask her what’s wrong and she just starts wailing about how she got kicked out of the house and all her hours were retracted. Well, sh*t. What’d you do?
First, she got offended that I assumed it was her fault and I didn’t immediately take her side, but then proceeded to tell me.
Basically, she broke every rule we were given over the course of one conversation. First, the room was hot, so she took off her button-up sweater, revealing a tank top underneath. Teachers caught that quickly and made her put her sweater on. Then, she noticed one kid had a black eye(probably from a fight with another kid) and she asked him about it, then proceeded to PRESS THE QUESTION WHEN HE REFUSED TO SPEAK. And I cannot stress this enough, these children were extremely disturbed. She should not have been talking to them period, let alone pressing this child about a black eye.
After that, they asked her to leave, sent an email to our professor, and told her she was banned from coming back due to unprofessionalism. She kept talking about how it was unfair and she didn’t understand why she got kicked out and I didn’t, since we were in the building at the same time. I told her this isn’t a group project, she f*cked this up on her own (maybe I was an a**, but I can’t bring myself to coddle her when she feels she’s entitled to everything.).
Then she started begging me for my notes from the house and helping her finish her paper for it and I told her, frankly, to f*ck off. I didn’t get kicked from the house, you did. She then tried to use the friend guilt card and I told her to go to academic support if she wanted help.
There were a lot of moments I felt this friend wasn’t ready for the real world, but this(and other incidents) highlighted that she might not be ready to be an educator of any form.
Mine is a coworker. He believes that any time his ex does something with their daughter and he doesn’t agree with it he needs to call CPS. Ex has a daughter who shares a room with an older sister time to call CPS, he calls late at night and the kid is sleeping and ex won’t wake her up in time to call CPS and case workers, ex current husband won’t give the coworker his pay stubs time to call a case worker. The dude has CPS and his caseworker on speed dial. The dude doesn’t understand why CPS and his caseworker keep telling him that since the child is not abused and or neglected and his ex is doing everything the court has told her that she needs to do there is nothing illegal happening.
Dude is still trying to find ways to control the ex and what goes on in her house.
A guy I know once said; “I don’t get homeless people, just buy a house!”
He is a spoiled rich kid who has no idea how money works. Never had a job, has never done any hard work in his life and is barely scraping through University.
My ex-girlfriend was really guilty of this. We dated all through college and didn’t really understand the extent to which taxes are taken out of a paycheck. She also had an expectation that everyone also make 70-80k coming out of college. So with this reasoning, she expected to live a lavish lifestyle as soon as she finished her degree.
A friend of mine who lives in a city was complaining about how expensive coffee was now that he was no longer getting a commission at his job.
He was used to making almost 100K a year and he grew up pretty spoiled. So when they dropped him to hourly and he went to making $23 an hour he had to do things like getting a roommate in his ‘fancy downtown loft’ to help with the bills. But I had to set up the listing because he didn’t know how to use Craigslist and how other websites worked. Well later, I bought him a regular coffee maker, coffee filters and two different types of coffee to help him save money and for a Christmas gift. I came to visit him about a month later and he still hadn’t touched the coffee maker. I asked him why he hadn’t used it and he exclaimed he didn’t know how to work it. I asked him if he was serious because what kind of 50-year-old man can’t figure out a coffee maker and he just continues to buy Starbucks every day instead. It finally got to a point where he couldn’t afford Starbucks and he called me up on the phone to ask me, ‘How do you make the coffee maker work?’ I gave him very simple directions like you put a new filter in each time and you put a scoop or two of coffee depending on if you want it stronger and it took him about an hour to make his 1st cup. About 30 minutes later he calls me to complain that it doesn’t ‘taste as good as Starbucks’ and that he must be doing it wrong and for me to come over and help him make the coffee and show him. I asked him what kind of coffee he gets at Starbucks and he said it was always a Carmel Macchiato. I told him to try adding milk and sugar and call me back later. I just don’t know how someone could’ve gone 50 years in their life without coming across a coffee maker. On the plus side, he uses the coffee maker every day now and has been learning how to budget by doing things like dropping the weekly maid service and cleaning up after himself.
I had a student this year who was so-so academically, really full of herself and just generally unpleasant to be around. She found out that she was declined from a college she applied to and said that “it had to be a mistake.”
It was a pretty prestigious school. I could guess that more kids get denied than admitted. But I asked her why she thought it was a mistake (I used to work admissions a little so I thought I might be able to help shed some light on the process and ease her mind a bit.)
She told me “My mom wrote a letter of recommendation. I’m supposed to get in wherever I apply. That’s the way it is.”
She’s eighteen. I’m not going to touch her entitlement with a ten-foot pole.
My co-worker genuinely believes that raises are time-based, not performance-based. For example, he works a part-time second job at a BBQ place. Only works 2 nights a week, gives up every shift he can to someone else, and pretty much only works there so that he can steal food.
And yet, after a year he was talking about how he “deserved” a raise.
Same with the job we work together. Puts in very little effort, works at a very slow pace, barely ever takes initiative of any kind, and throws a fit when asked to do anything outside of what he considers to be his “job.” Still thinks he deserves a raise every year when his review comes up.
A kid once informed me that he didn’t need to pass the class I was presently substitute teaching (yay maternity leave!) because he was going to play professional sport. He had it all mapped out, like, down to the draft picks, with vast amounts of detail, and other students were just nodding along cheerfully.
So I said “Cool. And if you tear your ACL at practice, fail to realize the severity of the injury, get back up on it and wind up needing surgery, being benched for the season and not making varsity, what, precisely, is your backup plan?”
“…That won’t happen.”
“Really? You’ve never jumped over something high outside, never slipped on anything? You are magic and injuries simply don’t happen to you?”
“I could still play pro ball. Or I could be a manager! Yeah, I could be a manager!”
“Managers need a sports management degree and another in business, none of which are even close to possible without at least a C in this very class.”
“Are you sure?”
“Always have a backup for your backup plan, bruh. Trust me. Not everyone’s as lucky as I am, getting to teach you all.” (sparkly, half-joking teacher grins, kids giggle.)
“If you say so.”
Two weeks later, to my abject horror, a kid did tear his ACL at practice, and was about to get back up on it, when the kid I’d gotten after about his derpy life choices told him no, and to hold still, and the coach reckoned he saved his teammate from surgery, though, of course, teammate was benched for the season in a leg immobilizer. Everyone heard about it and the student was praised for his quick thinking, sitting with his teammate and sending another student to get the coach and some ice and call someone to get a teammate to the hospital, and when he got to my class, he came in quietly, a little before the other kids, looking like he’d seen a ghost.
“What do I need to pass for sports medicine?”
He might’ve started out clueless, but he graduated high school with his nurse assistant certification and is presently a biology major angling for pre-med. Decided to try for a biathlon scholarship instead of basketball because he preferred the odds and is doing quite nicely. Graduated in the top ten of his high school class, too, even with taking academic and vo-tech because he “wanted a backup plan,” and makes more at his part-time nursing assistant job than any two unqualified entry-level jobs would pay. Great kid. I was blessed to teach him even for just a bit.
We’re hiring and I’ve just received an email from this guy. Says he heard about the job, the position, and the duration (it’s a contract position).
That’s it. No questions, no follow-up, no “here’s my number.” Not even an attached CV.
I don’t even know where to begin. For all we know, he could be the most talented guy in the industry, but our fast-paced and constantly stressed-out team might kill him before he could demonstrate his skills.
I need to preface this by saying the woman in question is a really good person. She’s easy to get along with, down to earth and just has a real benevolent personality. The problem is, her mother did way too much for her and she did it for way too long.
The way she dressed was absolutely ridiculous. She had no clue about fashion, color combos, or really anything. Turns out, until she moved out of her mother’s house at 22 years old, she had never picked out her own clothes. Literally every day, her mother would pick out her clothes, iron them or put them in the dryer for a few minutes so they were warm and comfy. 22 years old and she had never independently dressed herself.
Food; not only did she not know how to cook anything, she didn’t know how to use a knife and fork. She had literally (and I mean literally) had never had a plate of food with something that would need to be cut (meat, lasagna, enchiladas, etc) that wasn’t already cut into bite-sized pieces.
Clean; she had never cleaned anything in her life. She didn’t know how to wash dishes, wipe down a counter, sweep, mop or vacuum. 2 things that were memorable were when she bought a new set of dishes because “the old ones got ruined” and when she asked a grocery store clerk where the elbow grease was. (a mutual friend instructed her on cleaning soap, hot water & elbow grease)
I really have to give her credit. At 22 years old, she ran away and moved out of her mother’s house. Though she was hopelessly unprepared for the real world, she kept on trying. She never had a bitter word or bad thought to anyone. She genuinely asked for help often, and was appreciative when she got it. When I first met her, I was dubious about being friends with her. I figured sooner or later the spoiled brat attitude that usually accompanies a princess like her is going to show. I’ve known her for 7 years now and it hasn’t shown up yet.
A friend of mine pulled her kids out of school to do a type of homeschooling called “unschooling,” which is basically just not doing any school. The idea is supposed to be that children will learn on their own and be motivated to pursue the things they’re interested in at their own pace. She is really big into conspiracy theories, like anti-vax and fluoride in the water. She thinks school brainwashes kids.
Her kids do nothing but play video games and sit on the internet all day. They have no social skills. If you speak to them, they don’t even speak back. She says, “They have to be used to you first.” You would think they were autistic, but they didn’t used to act like that. I think they’re just unsocialized now.
If they ever want to go to college or pursue a career that requires a degree, or even go get their GED, they won’t have a chance. They won’t even know mathematics, much less algebra or any advanced math. They are too far behind to ever catch up if they try to go back to school. And all this is somehow legal.
She has the nerve to get mad because her ex-husband, their father, refuses to pay the fees to the organization because he doesn’t agree with it, so she has to come up with the money herself.
