65 People Shared Their Stories Of Getting Wrongfully Assumed To Be Dumb

"When I was in 6th grade our science teacher asked what is the shape of the rainbow I instantly answered by saying it's a circle then the so-called "topper" of our class looked at me and laughed and did some trash talk afterwords when the teacher said circle is the correct answer whole class laughed at her."

"Was talking about binary star systems at a party, when suddenly, my ex says "That's not what binary is, are you dumb?" Then another friend looked up the word binary and read it out loud to him, his eyes bugged out. I told him: "Stop pretending to be an expert on things you don't understand. It makes you look like an idiot." My ex was thinking of binary computer code. He didn't consider that other things could be binary too."

"Some years ago some guys were talking about cars and engines and I don't even remember what. One of them was really condescending to me (F) and said, but you probably don't know anything about that do you? My husband set him straight and said, "she knows more about cars than I do so don't be so sure." Then of course he tried to prove he knew more. He did not. I grew up around race cars, and auto mechanics, who also thought everyone should understand their own car. I have to admit I know less now that they are all electronic and computerized. But this was back in the day."

"A tour group had a dad in it who insisted on trying to give his 2 cents on my animals and proceeded to put his fingers in the tank (despite my warning and practically yelling at him not to) with our stunted gators saying how hatchlings couldn't hurt a human only for the male to shoot out of his favorite hide and latch onto his hand... Yea I had to bite my tongue to stop laughing."

"I have a great one. I was once brought into a film company that was trying to start up. The head honchos decided for whatever reason that the only value I served the company was as a bargaining chip to get my dad's help with some investment stuff. Dad wasn't investing money, but he was still helping out in other ways. These guys totally jerked me around. They wasted a year of my life writing a script they had no intention of doing anything with, took me on a business trip to Cannes to supposedly mentor me and dismissed me, and ended up leaving me in a restaurant while I used the bathroom. They wasted my time for a year and a half, all because they thought I was a total idiot. They ended up funding another filmmaker's script later that summer... And the sh*t bombed to the tune of half a million dollars for a small-town production and bankrupted the company. Meanwhile, I took the story I wrote and am currently using it to pay for my law school!"

smolestfox said:
"Brought my 6-speed car into a tire shop to get a new set. The guy at the desk (who didn’t see me pull up) assumed my car was the one parked next to mine because I’m a small mid-20s Asian woman and he didn’t expect me to drive a sports car. He asked for the keys and then fumbled over himself as he asked me to move the car into the waiting area because he couldn’t drive stick."

CrowWarrior replied:
"He works at a tire place and he can't drive a stick? I had to find a new place to get my cat groomed because the old groomer left and they hired someone who was allergic to cats so they wouldn't do mine anymore. I'm sure I had the same shocked/are you serious look on my face that you had on yours when he told you he couldn't drive a manual."

"A Dutch couple visited my workplace (tourist visitor center) and insisted that the French translation on our map was wrong. The reasoning was that "Groenland" shouldn't be there because it was the Dutch word for "Greenland", not the French one. I told them that "Groenland" was also the French translation, to which they chided back, "And how would you know?"

"I'm bilingual. I speak french." I informed.

"Clearly, not very well!" they insisted, then proceeded to ask for the wifi so they could use google translate.

Well, I gave them the wifi, and to google translate they went. Sure enough! "Groenland".

They didn't even apologize, they just said "I guess the map is correct then" and left."

"I had a paper returned to me this morning because I didn't write out all the names of the authors in the manuscript. I took a screenshot of their submission guidelines detailing AUTHOR NAMES MUST BE FORMATTED WITH THE FIRST INITIAL FOLLOWED BY the LAST NAME and sent it back. Got an apology e-mail and a "submission received" notification a few minutes later. Academia, I swear to God..."

"When I worked as a cashier in a grocery store people would always want to argue about their produce. They would bring up heads of iceberg lettuce and then argue with me that they were green cabbage or vice versa. I would always just smile, void the product, and then charge them for what they thought it was. The best was seeing people come back later pissed that their cole slaw didn't work.
The best, though, was the "sweet potato vs yam" argument that I would have with people several times during the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Most of what we sell in the U.S. are sweet potatoes, though some sweet potatoes grown in one state (Louisiana?) are the "yam" variety of the sweet potato. But people often call them yams and will fight you over it, even though true yams are hard to find unless your store stocks stuff for Latin American customers. We did, but yams were rarely in stock and always more expensive than sweet potatoes.
Anyway, sweet potatoes would go on sale for the holiday and people would buy lots of them. Every time I rang them up, I would get told that they were yams and that I was dumb for not knowing that. So I would void them and ring them up as yams for four times the price. When customers would want the sale price I would kindly remind them that I had tried to give them the sale price but that they had asked me to ring them up as yams instead."

"I'm currently a junior in college and a couple of weeks ago when the semester started dying down I left the dorms to come back home and finish things out online. I also started working at the local grocery store as well. Around a week ago as I was checking out two customers when they told me they wanted to pay 50/50 with two cards. Our system requires us to manually enter the price so I did and the lovely gentleman told me my math was wrong and said he was a sophomore engineering student at a school nearby to help justify why he was correct. I respond "Oh cool. I'm actually a junior at (insert much much better engineering school). What are you studying?" while also pulling up a calculator and showing him he was wrong. Everyone always assumes the workers here are dumb so it's always nice to show them otherwise."

"I work at Starbucks, and I am a bilingual native Spanish speaker. Even though my English is not as good as my Spanish, it’s pretty good, but some people think I have a speech impairment. One time I was talking with my coworkers and forgot a word in English. I just stuttered and honestly seemed pretty dumb at the moment. One of my coworkers laughed and started making fun of me. She was a transfer and didn’t know I am a native Spanish speaker. A few minutes passed, and she was taking a drive-thru order which had a Spanish speaker that didn’t know much English. She had a lot of trouble taking the order, and no one knew what she was saying. I immediately took over the order talking in fluent Spanish. Since that day, she keeps being hesitant to look me in the eyes."

"Didn’t necessarily make anyone look dumb, but certainly made some people feel bad. I lived in Germany for a year after high school as part of an exchange program, and there were several times when I had to make phone calls. I had to call doctors, employers, program coordinators, etc. so I got fairly used to the whole telephone garb in german. I could speak pretty fluently on the phone, but since it’s not my native language I would of course make small grammatical errors and stuff like that. This led to the unfortunate situation where people would assume I was german when on the phone because I spoke well enough, but since I kept making mistakes I was also stupid. People were quite rude to me over the phone, assuming that was due to the assumed stupidity. After revealing I was actually a foreigner they always sounded so surprised and complimentary of my German and were much more helpful and polite afterward."

"My best friend at the time assumed herself as the smarter one. In Math class one day we both came to different answers to a problem so she starts to explain where I went wrong. Eventually, I said to her we should check the answer in the back of the book, only to find out that my answer was correct. She was not happy & it sparked the beginning of the decline of our friendship."

"Moved to a new city for work after graduating from university. Figured since I was sticking around for a while, I'd check out some local bars for extra, low-stress work. The hope was to work as a dishwasher for beer and meet people between dish loads. I actually pulled it off too, score! Well, one of the cooks had hate for dishwashers and just kept bad-mouthing me every night. Calling me dumb, and useless, will never amount to anything. I really didn't care as him running his mouth didn't phase me while I made good money at my day job. Figured he was projecting more than anything. Finally, the main cook with who I became good friends overheard jerkoff running his mouth again at me and told him all about my day job, graduating from university, and only working for beer and meeting people. Once he heard all that, he never came back after that shift."

"My boss asked me a basic question in French when I brought him a report- 'qu’est-ce que c’est ca', which basically means 'what's this?' I speak passable French, so I answered him in French. Yeah, that was his only fancy French phrase. Very very awkward situation."

"When I was in 8th grade, we’d just learned about the seasons and the earth’s rotation and all that; to my surprise, my teacher taught us that the Earth is actually closest to the sun during winter! But it’s cold because of the tilt on the axis, not because of proximity to the sun. The tilt determines the seasons. And then soon after that I went to math class and my math teacher said something about how it was freezing because we are so far from the sun. And of course, I piped up to tell him he was wrong according to what Mr. Science Teacher had just taught us. My math teacher went off ripping into me so hard in front of the class! (It was lighthearted— he was known for being funny and making fun of kids all the time). He and I were going back and forth for a while, and I specifically remember him saying “oh yeah, cuz when I’m cold I move away from the fire!! Yeah, that makes perfect sense!” And I kept arguing “No no it’s because of the Earth’s tilt!” And so finally he googled it and I was right! He at least gave me credit and admitted he was wrong after that lol."

"High school economics class. The teacher asked about a specific lottery jackpot and if you should take the lump sum and invest or take annual payments. I said take the lump sum and a girl in class said, "ha, for once jitsrotu I'm smarter than you!" The teacher then went on to explain why taking a lump sum was better. Didn't talk to her for 10+ years... Got married 8 years ago. Funny how life works."

"In Scrabble with my pompous ex-stepdad. I told him "yew is a word, it's a type of tree." I was 14, but I had learned it from playing on a MUD and general dorkery. He laughed and acted like I was a liar, so he got to consult the dictionary and he stfu (naturally with no apologizing or admitting he was wrong)."

"A director at work did this recently. We work with various agencies. He tried to rat me out in front of the other direction and our boss by saying I wasn't providing services to 2 places, one of which I claim I am. I told everyone why the one site didn't get any services. The site wasn't eligible for the services he was talking about. It was a zoom meeting so I asked to share my screen. I showed them the proof that this site wasn't eligible. I then asked why he thought they were, why he felt it upon himself to check in on my office's sites, and why he felt the need to make sure I was doing my job with he wasn't my supervisor, or director, and didn't work in my office. Come to find out he decided to check to see if they were getting their needs met because he had learned I also wasn't providing services at another site I claimed was getting services. I was easily able to prove that they indeed did get the services and that he was talking to the wrong person. In the end, he looked like an a*s who was overstepping and possibly trying to get me fired or steal our funding, and I looked competent and professional. People are still pissed at him for this and no longer believe anything he says."

"It was more along the lines of underestimating me in sports. In high school P.E. I was treated pretty badly by many classmates. I'm small, quiet, and passive and it made me an easy target. We were playing baseball one day and it was my turn at the bat. They all scooted in real close, shouting stupid remarks. I bit my tongue and blasted that goddamn ball out of the field. I walked my way around the bases and tried to hide my smile. I played some softball when I was younger and was fairly decent at it. And if I was pissed when I played, that ball would leave town. Worked pretty well for me that day."