‘Tell me something dumb you’ve witnessed someone do?’ – 23 people who were idiotic beyond belief

Despite the fact that we are theoretically the most intelligent and sophisticated species on the planet, human being still manage to be monumentally stupid, in a variety of ways.

They’ve been chatting about our apparently innate idiocy on the AskUK subreddit after user undercovergloss shared their own example:

‘Tell me something dumb you have witnessed someone do?’

And they kicked off with their own next level example.

‘I’ll go first – when I was 19, me and my friends were hosting a Christmas dinner before we went home to our families.

‘My friend forgot to put the oven on, so she decided to put an entire METAL roasting dish with RAW chicken into the microwave. I don’t know what the hell she was thinking, and we were lucky it never blew up.

‘So tell me some stories of dumb things you have witnessed…’

And they were not disappointed by the answers.

1.

‘Police officer here. Seen people do a lot of dumb shit. Number one currently goes to the guy who punched me in the face because I told him we couldn’t give him a lift home after a night out.’
–AbsolutelyWingingIt

2.

‘When I was at Uni, one morning, half asleep and bleary-eyed while waiting for the train, a bloke on the other platform realised he was on the wrong side.

‘I don’t know what he was thinking but I think it was a combination of not wanting to miss his train and maybe being a bit ‘alpha’ but, rather than going up the steps and over the bridge, which would’ve taken probably less than a minute. He instead hops down on to the tracks and attempts to cross that way.

‘He confidently approaches the platform edge but it’s quite high and, as it turns out, he doesn’t have a lot of upper body strength. He can’t quite pull himself up on to the platform and starts to panic. I initially found it quite amusing seeing this clearly overconfident man making a bit of a tit out of himself but we all started to panic when the train started approaching.

‘He starts flapping and floundering and fortunately a couple of blokes waiting on the platform spring forward and pull him up. I was wide awake after that.’
–SunUsual550

3.

‘I was stopping for a fuel in, fluid out, fluid in stop at Beaconsfield services on Tuesday. I saw a guy come out a toilet cubicle after taking a shit, he ran his fingers through his hair and made sure his do was spot on… then he washed his hands.’
–Houseofsun5

4.

‘I lived in student accommodation whilst at uni, I have seen people almost kill themselves with stupidity in every way you can imagine. One of my flat mates used to make chips by spraying chopped potatoes with oil then microwaving them for two minutes in a bowl with fish fingers. Ate them both uncooked.

‘She also used to take frozen chicken out of the freezer, out of a packet and leave it on the kitchen counter to defrost. She’d leave it there, raw, unpackaged, not in a bowl just bare chicken on the counter for up to 24 hours. We kept telling her not to and then she caused one of the other girls to get food poisoning because of it. Idk how she survived.’
–Extra_Actuary8244

5.

‘I know someone who ate their chicken ‘rare’ when they were a student. Like steak. Uncooked.’
–r_Coolspot

6.

‘Another student accommodation horror story here. Fresher in the block opposite (top floor, so third storey) was deep frying something in a pan/wok thing. Oil catches fire, fresher panics, opens window, throws pan plus burning oil out of the window and onto the path below. It could have bloody killed someone. Another student called the site manager and they (understandably) went apeshit.’
–scarletcampion

7.

‘I used to work with a girl who was an astro physicist or something – super intelligent but zero common sense.

‘One Friday she was telling us in the office that she was cooking a roast for her boyfriend for the first time and was looking for tips. I said that the best thing that my mum had taught me was that once you’d par-boiled the spuds for roasties, you give them a shake to fluff them up and then pop them into nice hot fat.

‘On Monday she came in with bandages all up her arms and I asked what had happened. She said it was my fault. I had no idea how this could be but she said “I did what you said! I shook the potatoes and the boiling water went everywhere! I got second degree burns all up my arms!”

‘I hadn’t realised that I needed to tell her to drain the spuds before shaking them.’
–TomTheBadger

8.

‘My husband went for a walk quite late at night a couple years ago (as he often does). He saw this car had gone into the local canal… and a bloke just emerged from it, seemingly rather calm, having just driven into it, drunk!

‘Hubby asked if he was ok and if he needed an ambulance, to which his reply was something like’Ooh yeah I’m fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll just wait for the police to get here.’ Crazy!’
–ClarabellaHeartHope

9.

‘A few months ago in another country I saw a toddler standing on the back seat of a car, window half down, and he was holding onto the edge of the glass with two hands while chewing it.

‘His sister was half hanging out the other window but his mother in the driving seat was too busy watching the TV on the dashboard and playing with her phone to notice.’
–apeliott

10.

‘This isn’t dumb per say as it was down to panic. Some friends and I were spending a summer’s day relaxing on an extremely slow moving river. We had paddle boards we were messing about on. The river was shallow, waist high. One of the group was a guy that I had only known for a few months and had said that he can’t swim, I presumed he was joking. A couple of the group starting rocking his paddleboard and he fell off.

‘He started flapping around, screaming that he can’t swim. Again, I thought he was joking. Everyone was laughing, me included. He was shouting for us to stop laughing and help him. I thought he was taking the piss until the guy started going under and I realised that he was actually drowning. I grabbed him and said ‘stand up’. He instantly stopped drowning and simply stood up. Water at his waist. You could tell he was really embarrassed so no one made a big deal out of it.

‘The guy would have drowned in 3ft of water that he had walked into due to panic.’
–Cemaes-

11.

‘My ex flatmate decided the fuse box was dirty and sprayed it with cleaning fluid. I knew then I was not renewing the lease.’
–HauntingTheVoid

12.

‘I once went on a date with a guy. We were in his car and he needed to stop at a petrol station. He drove up, got out and saw that the filler hole was on the other side. So he got in, drove forward and did a u-turn to the other side.

‘For those paying attention, that does not solve anything. The hole was still on the wrong side.’
–fidelises