They say "There's no such thing as a stupid question." The phrase implies that the quest for knowledge includes failure and the fact that you know less than others must not prevent you from learning. But whether or not you think it's true, I think we can agree that sometimes people present their questions in such a funny way, you don't know if you should just laugh or answer them seriously.
Interested in these situations, Reddit user u/Yurtle_212 submitted the following question to the platform: "What was the stupidest thing someone has asked you 100% seriously?" And everyone immediately started replying with their stories. As of this article, the post has nearly 37K upvotes and 25K comments. Below are some of the best ones.
#1
The insurance company asked if there was a chance that my dad's amputated leg would grow back.
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458points
#2
Waited on a woman who asked me what kind of meat was in our beef taco salad.
Lady: what kind of meat is in your beef taco salad?
Me : Beef
L: what kind of beef?
Me: Beef, ground beef seasoned with taco seasoning.
L: No, I mean is it pork or chicken?
Me: Ma’am, it’s beef, it’s from a cow. It’s beef.
455points
u/Yurtle_212 said they don't remember what exactly inspired them to make this post.
"Some people just don't think before they ask something, but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing," the Redditor told Bored Panda.
"There definitely are stupid questions. But asking them doesn't make you stupid. [That is if we disregard the ones that are self-explanatory, like] 'What day of the week is Good Friday on?' or "What time is the 3 o'clock parade?'"
#3
My 21 year old sister once asked my entire family at dinner if Nuns don’t have sex where do they get more nuns. That takes the cake for me.
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393points
#4
I'm a postpartum nurse. A patient asked me "when will the doctor be here to pierce my nipples so I can breastfeed?"
392points
#5
Because I am a dwarf I get a lot of hilarious ones, but one of my favourites was "do you need to get a smaller engine for your car?"
I really wish I could have seen your internal process that led to that question, lady.
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370points
#6
People visiting Alaska on a cruise would walk onto the dock-- a dock portruding into the pacific ocean-- then look up at the mountains and ask what elevation we were at.
1 foot, ma'am. You are standing on a dock which is at sea level.
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342points
#7
It was me. I'm white, ended up dating a long time friend of mine, who is black.
We were talking about going to the beach the next day, and I mentioned that I needed to buy some sunscreen. GF tells me she has some, so no worries. I asked her why she had sunscreen.. She was puzzled, for a moment.
She then responded "Yes, black people get sunburned. Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen."
And she was right, I just assumed, in all my whiteness, that black people didn't sunburn. She still makes fun of me for this. I am in my 30's..
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309points
#8
Someone was placing an order once at my family’s restaurant, and they had asked me for a side of French fries without the potatoes. I assumed she was joking, so I laughed...she wasn’t joking. She got offended and left the restaurant
291points
#10
The Scene: Meeting some new people in a college class.
I introduce myself, "Hi, I'm LoveIsLegallyBlind."
New classmate: "Don't you mean DifferentNameThatSoundsALittleLikeMine?"
Me: "No..."
He thinks it's time to double down. "Are you sure? Why not?"
Me: "Because that's not what my parents named me..."
Like what? Who corrects someone on their own name? I have a somewhat unusual name. People misspell it or mispronounce it all the time, but this was special.
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282points
#11
I was asked how far the luggage plane usually flies behind the passenger plane. The person who asked me went to an Ivy league medical school.
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277points
#12
While working as a butcher, I showed a deli clerk how to break down a whole chicken into pieces. I show her, "two breasts, two wings, two legs, two thighs." she looks at me and asks, "which part does the turkey come from?"
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270points
#13
If it was possible to even land a plane on Japan because it's so small.
Because, you know, maps are a 1:1 description of the world
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261points
#14
"What time is the 3 O'clock parade?"
I worked at Disney World. This is the #1 most common question you'll get asked as a Cast Member in the Magic Kingdom.
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260points
#15
First day working a tech support job, I answer a phone call from a woman whose laptop won't turn on. She's at the airport trying to get some work done and is very frustrated because she had been working for several hours during a layover and the laptop suddenly shut off. I asked her if she had the laptop plugged in when it shut off, or if she was just running it on the battery. "It can be plugged in? I thought it was supposed to be wireless."
I honestly thought I was being pranked because I was the new guy. After a lengthy pause to decide if this was a serious call, I advised her to try plugging it in. Laptop turned on, she was amazed that it didn't just recharge itself when she wasn't using it.
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255points
#16
“Do we have the ability to open digital files?”
This is the guy who would print PDFs from our server then scan the print to his email so he could save them to his desktop...
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243points
#17
In high school, we were warming up before a baseball game one evening and some really ominous ,dark clouds started rolling in. One of my teammates very seriously asked “Is that a storm or is that just night coming?”. I will never forget that.
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241points
#19
Not me, but our safari guide in South Africa said he once heard a woman ask her husband, “Honey, is that the same moon we see in Texas?”
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215points
#20
For context, I work in a phone shop.
Customer: What is this? (Hands me his bill)
Me: This is your bill.
Customer: But I already paid it.
Me: Well then, don't worry about it.
Customer: No, I mean I paid it last month.
Me: Oh, this is just your second bill then.
Customer: BUT I ALREADY PAID IT!
Me: Last month's bill, yes. This is your next bill.
Customer: YOU MEAN THEY KEEP SENDING THESE EVERY MONTH?
Me: ... yes ... that's what a phone contract is. You signed a contract for 2 years didn't you?
Customer: Yeah.
Me: So you will get a bill each month for 2 years then.
Customer: WHAT A RIP OFF!!!
He legit thought he would only get a single $90 bill for his brand new iPhone over the entire 2 years of his contract...
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215points