"What's The Craziest Thing A Person Said To You And You Thought They Were Joking But They Were Being Serious?"

A coworker told me the covid vaccine has a microchip that tracks your location, controls your thoughts, and "makes you forget about God"

My reply was tht she didn't need a shot for that- she had already paid for one and put it in her pocket. The Location function on her phone was, in fact, on.

That Trump was appointed by god. Also in the same sentence they called me a stupid liberal which didn’t surprise me much. The fact that there are real people who are allowed to vote that think their imaginary friend in the sky appointed the current president made me fear for our future.

I have a friend who genuinely believes dehydration is a myth made up by Nestle to sell bottled water. It's her only truly bizarre belief and she's a very smart, well-educated woman with a master's degree. We've been friends for about a decade, I know her well, and it's the only weird thing and she refuses to drop it. Her bf apparently chugs water while making eye contact with her during arguments.

That as a disabled person I should not be expected to be paid for working and I should only do it “to pass time”.

This person is a licensed therapist who is very active in the disabled community and was recently promoted to director of a renowned clinic a few towns away. I feel so bad for her future patients.

My sister in law and another cousin got really into genealogy. At a family gathering they announced they had been doing months of research and traced the family tree back to Adam and Eve.

I started laughing and said, well everyone is related to them, I could have saved you some time. (No I don't really believe that but they're Catholic) I seriously thought they were joking.

They were not joking AT ALL and it was a very awkward thanksgiving dinner for me.

"Shut your mouth you dirty jew."

A "friend" (the owner of the LARP i attended, knew him for years) said that to me at a party once, but because of how he did it, I laughed, because I assumed he was just being ironically horrible. He did it twice more throughout the night, either on his own or through other people, and again, I laughed each time.

Until one of his closer friends finally took me aside and said "hey shiva14b, you have to stop laughing. He's not being funny. I've known this guy a long time, and its what he's really about."

Another friend of his once said to me "oh shiva14b, you're so smart, and funny, and beautiful, what a shame you're jewish!" And again, I laughed. Until again, a different friend took me aside and explained that the guy wasn't being funny.

Just wild. Really shook me, and made me rethink every interaction I'd had over the years. After that, I stopped laughing along with people being ironically horrible, and started to really look at what they were saying instead of just accepting it as a "joke."

ETA: I just want to add that everyone involved in this story was aged 30-40+. So not like, teen edge-lords. Adults.

"I don't hire women. Women are... *complicated*. This is a professional company; I can't take clients back here and see some woman weeping with tampons scattered all over her desk."

Until 2009, I had never encountered that blatant of sexism in person. The closest before that was a company public mailing list where a manager said, "I have not, and will never, take orders from a woman." But this was right in front of me when I asked why this help desk manager was dropping perfectly good applicants for help desk positions. I thought he was joking, or being ironic, but then he continued.

"I know you're progressive and need 'to be on the side of women's rights.' I get that. I want to be laid, too. But who in their right mind would actually hire a woman for a technical position? Tell me one time that you saw a help desk with a woman sitting there?"

"Uh, all my former IT jobs."

"Okay, well, you have led a very sheltered life. Real professionals in the real world know that when the chips are down, they don't need mommy's voice on the other end. It's bad for business."

Just... appalling. He was later "forced to quit before he was fired" but he got another help desk manager job out there right away.

In a wheelchair at the airport, and an older woman comes over and asks "Are you handicapped? You’re too pretty to be in that wheelchair." I gave her a mean stare, until she walked away.

I worked at a brewery, and one of the products we made was Kombucha fermented in whiskey barrels that we bought from a distillery down the road.

I was working the tap counter when a woman came in and asked if we had gluten-free beer. I said no, but we do have a hard Kombucha which is gluten-free, and its especially tasty on account of the barrel-fermentation.

This woman proceeded to lose her mind and told me that there was no way the Kombucha was gluten-free because the barrel staves were glued together, and "gluten is Latin for glue" so there was obviously "gluten in the barrel glue" and thus I was purposely misleading her. I laughed because it was one of the most insane things I'd ever heard, and I thought she was putting me on. Nope. Dead serious.

After I explained to her that the whiskey barrels were sealed with organic beeswax, she came around and tried some. She ended up buying 3 full growlers and left happy. Go figure.

The earth is only 6000 years old. I thought it was a bit nope. My mom turned into a young earth creationist. This woman dug up fossils in Montana with me. We were at the god darned shale beds together.

A coworker once said to me, "Of course you know the Moon isn't real!"

Not the Moon Landing, the Moon.

I pretended to not hear him because I was getting off in an hour, and that was going to be a four hour conversation that would end in him continuing to disagree.

My "friend" told me public school teachers are giving kids transgender surgery, and he said that knowing my mom is a public school teacher.

Had to quit work with no notice cuz my mom went into the hospital and they found cancer. She was transferred to a hospital about 2 hours away and they were planning on putting her in a rehab facility close by and we could handle her treatments going from there. I called my boss to tell her I wasn't coming back because my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and we were staying to handle treatment.

She asked, "are you sure you don't just want two weeks off? My mom had breast cancer and she was just fine." I told her no, my mom is in serious condition, and I plan on staying near my mom to help her.


I lost my mom to the cancer 4 days later. I went crawling back to my job about 3 weeks later asking to be rehired but she listed me as a permanent do no rehire. It's been 10 years and I still can't work for Pilot or Love's truck stops because of her.

I was making small talk with the fellow who was making my food. I mentioned something about the dreary weather we’d been having. He said something about people’s mood being bad. I nodded and said that our mood is certainly affected by the weather. He looked me right in the eye and emphatically stated that it was the other way around… that our mood and emotions MAKE the weather bad.

Just after my mom died in 12th grade, a guy in my friend circle at lunch said: 


"I would rather my mom die than have her breasts lopped off." 


F you, Scott.

I was with a friend at their community pool and talking with some neighbors of theirs that they are friendly with.

My phone accidentally fell in the pool but it was no big deal because it is waterproof.

The neighbor said “oh that’s nice, I can’t get a new phone because I don’t want the 5Gs changing my DNAs” pluralizing both “5G” and “DNA”.

I laughed because I thought it was a joke. She was VERY serious.

She also may have called in “D&As” instead of DNA but I can’t be sure.

Wife sneezed in a restaurant and I said gesundheit, the table behind me said “it’s god bless you!”

I turned around and she just looked at me deadpan. I ignored her then. Today I’m not sure I still have the ability to ignore religious b.s.

I’m not just an alpha male, I’m an alpha alpha male.

“You’re too calm… it makes people uncomfortable.” I thought they were joking. They weren’t.

Shortest possible short story short, my coworker believes she is currently engaged to a famous football player she met through a Facebook account that just shares the same name. When enough people brought it up to her that that’s insane her reasoning was “well, the guy we see on tv is a clone.. and I’m dating the real person.”.