
‘What’s the most patronising piece of advice you’ve ever received?’ – 23 examples of people being infuriatingly condescending
Nobody enjoys being talked down to, and they certainly don’t enjoy it when a condescending attitude is coming from the representatives of a service that they are paying through the nose for.
This happened to user MisterWednesday6 who posted this on the AskUK subreddit:
What’s the most patronising piece of advice you’ve ever received? Mine came courtesy of my water supplier, who says that it understands that I may be ‘concerned’ about the 30% increase it’s slapped on my bill, and supplies me with a list of songs lasting four minutes that I can sing in the shower to ensure that I don’t stay in there too long.
Oof. Our toes are already curled with sympathetic fury. And it turned out they weren’t the only person who has been addressed in an undeservedly superior manner, as the replies showed…
1.
‘I was struggling not to delete myself a few years back. Called a support line and was told ‘Have you tried thinking happy thoughts?’ I am fine now. But yeah. That did not help.’
–Yaseuk
2.
‘I was with a couple of friends, and one of their friends that I didn’t know, and started talking about my son’s frustrations with not being able to communicate his needs. He had just turned 5, and he is non-verbal autistic.
The woman I didn’t know actually asked me if I talk to my son a lot, and explained that talking to your children helps them mimic and learn words. I asked her if she genuinely thought that it never occurred to me to speak to my own child.’
–-cunningstunt
3.
”Have you tried going to bed earlier?’ when I was tired at work from insomnia due to stress. Gosh HR, what a genius you are.’
–Fruitpicker15
4.
‘Our energy provider suggested we could save a princely sum of £17 a year if we switched all plug sockets off every night. They said this when our energy bill literally doubled two Christmases ago.’
–slainascully
5.
‘At evening classes for adults, my creative writing teacher criticised my story about building a boy in a factory because ‘you can’t actually build a boy in a factory’— and I thought ‘Yes, teacher, I know.”
–Iamamancalledrobert
6.
‘I have endometriosis and I’ve been told ‘have you tried taking a paracetamol and an ibuprofen, it really helps!’ by multiple women over the years. That was the first flipping thing I tried when I started my period at 13. I’ve been menstruating for over 10 years and don’t need patronising, unsolicited advice from people that don’t understand how debilitating endo is.’
–miz_moon
7.
‘A man once tried to explain and show my mother how to open and close the door handle of my apartment building’s main entrance. Unprompted, she was literally just opening the door to leave, and succeeding.
‘No, no’ he said. ‘It opens like this’. She said ‘I know how to open a door’.
It was genuinely amazing and we still laugh about it years later.’
–ohnobobbins
8.
‘Moved into a flat which the management company said would have full fibre internet installed on day one. Took that flat on that proviso. A month in, no internet at all, the company who were meant to have the internet installed couldn’t because the connections were full for that service in the block of flats. Had to get another company to come out, took ages, nightmare etc.
Escalated up to the owner of the management company who said that ‘instead of wasting time on the internet maybe you should enjoy the parks on your doorstep’. I was raging.’
–jptoc
9.
‘I have a connective tissue disorder and got ‘have you tried fasting?’.’
–_TattieScone
10.
‘At a WW2 museum in July it was very hot inside. I said how nice it was to be outside in the breeze again. An old man said ‘If you’d been around in the war then that would have sharpened you up right quick.’
I said it was hot. I didn’t say I’d happily let Hitler invade the country in exchange for some shade. Get a grip, old man. He was too young to have been there anyway.’
–King_Lexus
11.
‘I was unemployed after leaving teaching for health reasons. I was getting a lot of interviews, however I suck at them so was not getting jobs. One of my downstairs neighbours, who was retired and had only ever been a housewife, stopped me in the hallway one day and told me that I should be trying harder to get a job. She seemed to think I was putting in no effort to get a job, despite treating it as a 9-5 job itself.’
–pajamakitten
12.
‘Team’s Speaking Coach told me not to use the term ‘Indian’ as it’s offensive and I should use the term ‘Native American’ instead. I was referring to people from India.’
–inspectorgadget9999