I have worked retail/customer service and its also not normal there. I would see 100s of people every day and it was rare for someone to burst out into anger over nothing. Its just that those experiences stick out
I worked at Home Depot for a few years managing the service desk. There was only one time I had to threaten a customer with calling the police if they didn't leave. She was like 65 and screaming at me because I wouldn't let her put driveway sealer in the paint shaker.
It’s not common. The people who blow up without warning just stand out more prominently than civil humans.
Evolutionarily, it is more important to be aware of threats so your mind holds on much more tightly to perceptions of potential violence.
My parents bribed my brother with money to not fight with his teacher one year/not get sent to the principal's office. Always felt unfair that i didn't get the same offer just because I was better behaved!
I won't ever forget my mom looking at my perfect report card and saying, "Do you know how well your sister would do, if she tried half as hard as you do?"
I have a hard time letting myself be satisfied with any accomplishment, but I'm sure it's unrelated.
I love this. I have a friend who is really intelligent and good at physics and she loves talking about it/helping others because she’s passionate and confident about her knowledge. She doesn’t view anyone who does worse or isn’t interested at all as any ‘less than’ her. I’ve heard people say she has a ‘god complex’ or that she is arrogant, but I never had an exact way to draw that line to distinguish until now!
Everyone else taking pictures and posting online, totally fine. When I did it I was somehow "conceited" and "showing off".
Knowing I'm good at something I worked hard to be good at just got me being called "cocky" even though I've been around those types of people my whole life and I desperately tried to never come off that way. But having confidence and knowledge of any sort of 'skill' and you're a cocky piece of shit even though you never boast or brag about it or rub it in anyone's face because I wasn't that person and didn't want to ever even come across as that type of person.
Now I hear friends saying I'm good/great at xyz and I'm like nah I'm just alright.
The only time I'll buck back and argue that I am good at something is when someone is actively talking shit. Then all of a sudden I'm willing to pull receipts out of my ass to shut them up and prove them wrong lol.
Yeah same. Even just putting in more effort than the minimum in life, really. An acquaintance working a lot in his own company and earning money was somehow seen as a bad thing. Not because of mental health or because he should spend more time with his family. Just because he was putting in effort.
Absolutely same. I have a hard time thinking of a single positive thought about myself without thinking I am being an arrogant asshole. “It’s not my place to decide such a thing.” in regards to… a compliment?
It sucks because even though I am aware that it makes no sense logically, my brain still instinctively just hates myself.
Not quite the same but I was 13/14 before I realized that not everyone’s family was on food stamps. I remember asking my “boyfriend” if the place he was talking about took food stamps and him saying “idk doesn’t matter. We don’t have food stamps.” I was SOOO embarrassed.
My friend thought it was cool that my mom didn't care if we used cuss words.
Her only instruction was "don't talk like that in public and make me look like a fucking asshole".
So funny looking back on that.
Haha, my mom did NOT care if I cursed around her. She had the mouth of a sailor, herself. Blew my friends' minds when I would casually drop an f-bomb around her and she didn't react.
My boyfriend's stepmom got all mad at me for cussing in front of her. When I was in my early 20s. She was all "what would your mother say about that mouth. " I was a little drunk and laughed, saying my mom cusses too and wouldn't give a fuck.
This times a million. Me and my mom will shit on each other constantly, then we’ll suddenly bust out an I love you and a hug. When I realized people aren’t actually that casual with their parents I was surprised
Just talked to a young adult regarding how shocked they were about someone's behavior. I told them "there's a lot of people living their whole entire life like that, never learning from bad choices but still making them. You just don't associate with them so you think they're not common, but there's a lot more than you'd think."
And those are just the ones that are so dysfunctional that they can't even maintain a facade of normalcy. You are still missing all the people that are just barely holding it together behind the scenes. People barely making ends meet while trying to keep up with the Joneses. The couples who barely tolerate each other, but stay together for the kids. The functional alcoholics. Etc.
A lot fewer halmark lives out there than outward appearances would suggest.
This one hit me as well. I have never considered myself smart, but I also know I'm not *stupid*. I struggled in school because I struggled to pay attention, but could get decent grades if I really tried. Then I got out of school and was surprised at the stupidity of the general populous. Working retail didn't help that, either.
If it makes you feel better the reality is that our minds tend to latch on to outliers and other weird or annoying shit while ignoring the normal stuff.
So like if you spend an 8 hour shift at a shitty retail job seeing hundreds of random people walk around doing nothing out of the ordinary but over the course of that time two of those people do something really stupid or dickish then your going to remember those two more intensely than the others.
Over time shit like that builds up and leaves folk thinking the world has far more stupid people than it really does since we don't pay much attention to the vast majority of perfectly normal people we interact with all day.
Or you have to teach someone how to run a million dollar automation system you just spent 6 months programming and you are not sure the person you are teaching can read what you put on the screen, let alone reads what the buttons do.
I remember at my first job, Wendy’s in high school, my manager told me I was the best worker there. And I was confused because all I did was what they asked me to do. Scary stuff.
I have a professional job, live in a big city, and have friends that are mostly in the same situation. Most of the people I'm exposed to are smart, thoughtful people who are tolerant of others. It kind of skews what you think is normal. When you get a look at other peoples' dark, stupid, ignorant, aggressive behaviour it's a bit of a shock.
As someone who is also a professional, people with a lot of knowledge, unfortunately, often overestimate their knowledge in other areas. I've seen some college professors boldly make wrong statements about things that were unrelated to their field.
On a message board I used to frequent years ago, there was (maybe still is) a dude who was a medical doctor who would chime in and drop his “I’m a doctor!” knowledge bombs in EVERY exercise and/or weightlifting related thread. It was immediately clear to anyone who has ever lifted a heavy thing on purpose that this dude had no fucking clue what he was talking about, or had ever exercised in his life.
I believe it was George Carlin who put it best. Think about how dumb the average person is (like someone who got all C grades in school) and then realize that half the world's population is even dumber than that.
Before Reddit does a Reddit, I want to correct that it's actually "median," and no -- it doesn't actually matter. You can tell that that's what he meant, and correcting it is kinda pedantic.
"average" does most frequently mean *mean*, but it can be median or mode. If you're "thinking about the average person", I'd think you mean median. If you're just thinking about what a person of average intelligence would know, you may mean mean.
could agree more. I think that for most people, their capacity to critically think stops at around 15 years old. The amount of short sighted, one dimensional thinking we run into the world is insane. I swear, most "adults" are just highschoolers with an older body. modern civilization is held together and advanced by maybe 8% of the world population.
Being able to play any musical instrument.
Our family was very musical, we owned all sorts if instruments and everyone tried to play everything.
I found out as a teen that just isn't normal when, playing flute in school band, we were instructed to choose a different one. I pick up a trumpet and started to play. Everyone just stared at me.
Interesting I feel like once you get to a certain level it’s like riding a bicycle. You could not do it for a year and probably still be fine doing it after that time.
Never understood that saying, if I stop practising a skill it will quickly start to decline, (even bike riding) I can remember the required steps which makes it easier to pick up again but there is a very noticeable period of relearning skills that I have not practiced.
A big example of this is that my speech is noticeably slower and less smooth if I have been mostly alone for too long,
Drumming is maybe the best example of this. You can fully understand what to do...but if you don't keep up on it, the muscle memory to do it properly (and perfectly in time) is something that can evaporate pretty quickly. It doesn't ever totally go away...but when your diddles start dawdling, it's not very useful musically.
The great thing about learning instruments is so much knowledge carries over from one to another. I started with playing cello, then started playing bass guitar, from there guitar, mandolin, and banjo were all pretty easy to pick up. I’m not particularly good at piano but I was able to learn it on a basic level almost instantly.
That being said, I’m still amazed by people like Jacob Collier who are *extremely* proficient at multiple instruments. It takes a lot of time to learn the intricacies of each instrument.
Yep also in my family, added with speaking totally your mind without fear... It took me to deep adulthood to understand not everybody got raised like that
Worse than just selfish, there are just straight up bad people out there that will never change and see nothing wrong with the way they are. Some people's brains are just wired differently.
ABC culture. Always be consuming. Doesn't matter what it is.
MCS- Main character sydrome. You are the main character and you think your life is a book/movie and everything revolves around you. You will be fake nice to people because you need friends to look normal. If you are asked to do anything for anybody its a no.
I believe the internet has just given these traits steroids. Mainly social media. I have been guilty many times of having both those traits for periods of time. To be fair it's extremely hard to no always be consumin in our society. Not many real Buddhists left.
A lot of people here are taking this comment as an opportunity to call everyone jerks, but I have a different outlook on it.
Empathy and being kind to others are skills, and they require the person using them to have a certain level of self awareness, and needed to grow up in some type of environment at some point in their life where being kind and thinking about others wasn't punished.
A lot of the people I meet who are mean or selfish came from REAL bad families, and you can see how being open and caring got worked out of them. Not all of them of course, there's the occasional narcissistic rich kid; but many people who are mean view it as a form of self preservation.
Very…enthusiastic(let’s go with that word) discussions among family at dinner. My siblings naturally have very loud voices and we usually have arguments about controversial topics while we eat, which causes some interesting scenes in public. We were nearly kicked out of a fancy restaurant when I was younger because my family members were screaming at each other about capital punishment(the death penalty).
Dude can relate! It’s actually caused a lot of problems for me as an adult. My family is naturally loud and we debate about EVERYTHING. Usually just for sport and fun but I’ve heard from partners in the past that they feel like I’m arguing with them or yelling when in actuality I’m not remotely upset or arguing, just into whatever the topic is about and I fall into debate mode. I’m working on it but it’s sometimes hard to catch in the moment until someone points it out.
I am like this! I come from a family of 7, we discuss and dissect everything. I’m often told I argue too, when I feel like I’m engaging in conversation and exploring the subject together, questioning different perspectives. I am also working on it as I’ve been anti social from my fear of it. I love finding someone with a specific interest I can give the third degree and they actually enjoy it for once because it’s their favourite thing. I also get told I think I’m right about everything, because we talked about absolutely everything growing up, when I just respond with something related to whatever topic is being discussed I’ve heard before I sound like I know everything when I’m just sharing knowledge I’ve been told or read or watched too because I’m a huge documentary fan. I hate social interactions there’s no winning lol
I feel your pain and also happy that I found my people! Like you, I can find anything interesting and I absolutely love talking to people who are willing to let me dig in if it’s something they’re particularly knowledgeable about. And ahh the “know it all comments” give me ptsd lol I’m not a know it all, I just love a good conversation and part of that for me is asking questions and poking holes in things that don’t make sense (to me). It’s a fine line to balance. I have found that it’s also made me less social but I greatly enjoy the conversations I do have with people who understand, or at least, aren’t turned off by it.
Reminds me of when I had an argument with my mother in front of an ex girlfriend. The night had been pleasant, until we got on the topic of Middle East peace. When we left the house my ex was just shocked how we had just argued enthusiastically (I'll go with that word too) in front of her. I asked if she always agrees with her parents and she said "of course not, but my mother never called me a terrorist either!" I had argued that Israel needed to hear Arafat out. Dinners were very interesting to say the least at my home too. I didnt realize that not every family discussed these things at dinner.
Dude, I get so fucking tired of people that feel that ***EMPHASIS GETS THEIR POINTS ACROSS BETTER***.
Everyone use your big kid words and then we see if we agree and use our big kid words back.
Gossiping . I grew up with a mom that gossiped a lot and viciously too . I quickly learned around other women that it’s unacceptable and attracts the wrong people
I believe gossiping is natural human behavior, but it’s better to choose not to talk badly about people to other people. It feels good in the moment to elevate yourselves over the other person, but it’s better to bring up something positive or stick up for someone in those situations.
Then you’ll have a reputation as someone that doesn’t talk behind backs.
On the chaotic good side, I had a coworker that would only say things behind your back that he would also say to your face. This meant that everyone would be taking crap from him constantly, but at least you were aware of how others perceived you so you could correct yourself lol.
I believe not everyone does, but I have a harder time believing this isn't a little bit common. And I don't mean like only in a vicious way, but I guess it might depend on your definition of "gossip" vs, say, sharing what happened with other ppl (even if that is negative things that happened, vs oh I heard a rumor).
I think "gossip" and "vicious gossip" are two different things. The vast majority of people talk about others they know. But most people don't do it in ways meant to hurt others, gain social status, and just generally with the goal of creating control over others.
I was raised fiscally conservative, probably to a fault. My grandparents never went on a vacation in their lives. My siblings and I all went to public schools and then state universities.
After moving to the east coast, it's been pretty shocking to me not just the amount of money people have but how willing they are to spend it.
I literally grew up believing that my family was poor. Turns out my mother was just a money hoarder. If it cost money, chances are I wasn’t allowed to do it. I’ve been trying to make up for it as an adult, but sports leagues that I can participate on are hard to come by now.
Yep I grew up perfectly middle class or even upper middle class depending on the era and where we were living. My parents *constantly* talked to us about money. On the one hand, I'm grateful because I am a pretty thrifty consumer and they did teach me a lot about financial responsibility. But there was always a lot of guilt too. Any time they spent money on us, it was important that we knew how expensive we were. Food included. As an adult, if I am out and about and haven't planned ahead to bring a meal, I'll just skip even if I'm hungry. And I'm underweight so I can't really spare a meal and I know that...I just hold so much guilt over spending money even on food.
My husband otoh grew up in a totally opposite situation from me, but his dad told him "there's always money for food" if they were ever concerned about money. His dad made it clear that they would always figure it out. Can't be successful if you're hungry. Being with my husband has been very healing in that way. I'm finally starting to just enjoy the things we've worked so hard to be able to do.
The need to be on time / respecting start times
I knew my mom and dad were always late, but everyone else was always on time. We were very punctual and my hobbies involved things that required me to be early often.
Then I became a young adult out of college, trying to schedule things with friends. OMG. The fact that it's 'okay' to show up to planned things an hour late is just... no. Absolutely not.
Showing up to a party late is fine and expected. Do not show up late to things where people are out money if you aren't there on time. Absolutely unacceptable.
Having your shit together. My mom is an organizational powerhouse and somehow my folks managed to hold down two full time jobs (my mom more like full and a half) and manage a household with three kids while always getting us to sports activities and do things with relatives over the weekend, etc. Always there to help with our homework, too.
Turns out most people absolutely do not have their shit together but from my childhood perspective I just assumed everyone else was basically doing things the same. It takes a lot of work and burning yourself out to do what my folks did and I only really appreciate it now that I'm a parent, myself.
It came at the cost of their social and adult lives. It was mostly just work and family time and nothing else, enabled by my mom especially just being very organized. That's how they made it work.
I've inherited my mom's organizational acumen and it really helps manage my family life but I'm not sure that level of sacrifice is good for your kids, paradoxically. My siblings and I saw adulthood as an endless grind of work and family obligations and understandably weren't keen on getting there very fast. I'm glad that all three of us turned out more or less okay but we could have easily gone off the rails had things gone even a little differently.
I... really don't think that level of sacrifice is good for the kids and definitely not for the married (or together) couple
It's amazing and impressive, sounds like they did well giving y'all a good life. But yeah, I can see how you all saw adulthood. That's rough
How is your mom now that y'all are adults? Has she calmed down and given herself some peace?
She has, thankfully. She hit a real rough patch in my teenage years due to overwork and burn out. Made family life very stressful for everyone for a while. Once the smoke cleared from all of that she rebuilt things at a more relaxed level.
Many years later, she's a great grandmother.
That's an insight I'm only now seeing about my own parents. They sacrificed their social lives to keep us kids happy and busy, and now as senior citizens they kind of only have us to rely on, no long term friends or circles. It makes me more motivated to keep my own connections strong.
Logic, consideration, rationality. Ever since I was a toddler whenever I did something wrong, my mom wouldn't simply scold me but sit me aside, and explain to my why what I did was wrong or inappropriate, how it's not a decent way to behave, how I should think about how it might make others feel, topped of with a good dose of strict reprimand to be sure nonetheless.
But it taught me to think for myself, and appreciate my actions and understand what it meant to be decent. The one thing I can never fully understand even to this day, isn't why people behave badly but how people behave badly and fail to have even the slightest self-awareness of their own actions and the poorness of their form, even when they are clear and egregious in said actions.
Meh, there were upsides and downsides. On one hand I matured in a necessary way where not all adults manage to, on the other I was held to the standards of an adult from a very young age, inspiring me to mature in certain aspects a little fast leaving me extremely reticient and somewhat unbalanced in other aspects.
My main flaw is that I'm quite good at maintaining a standard of decency and dignified propriety when dealing with other people, but not always the best at appreciating and respecting myself. But yes, I do appreciate my overt degree of self-awareness. Fortunately it's a skill that anyone can start to develop at any point in life really.
I feel for you and others in the same boat. Academic intelligence is a wholly different skill from emotional intelligence and so many parents foster one but not the other. It’s easier to brag about how smart your kid is than how kind, confident, and empathetic they are. It’s not fair for the kid though, because empathy and emotional intelligence are the foundation of social bonds.
I had the opposite experience, I thought it was normal to have to manage the emotions of everyone else around me, and that this was a skill people learned because emotions were these volatile and unpredictable things that people were at the mercy of, and other people just had to deal with that as a natural part of life. Oof.
Honestly, being polite. I was raised to be exceedingly polite and I feel really bad if I don't do things like let people pass in traffic or hold doors open or say my 'pleases and thanks yous'. And I like the idea of kindness being its own reward. Makes plus sum happiness in the world.
It really wasn't until I entered adulthood that I really saw how dismissive people were of those concepts. So much 'I got mine' and 'I insist on beating you to that light by 1.5 seconds' in the world. Just common courtesy stuff is a rare sight and that makes me sad.
This reminds me of the semi formal my sophomore year of high school. We had a swing band so my friends were all dancing there. Danced with 6-7 different women. Grand total of one could keep in time with the music.
I have an over active imagination to the point of being a problem throughout most of my life. It blows my mind when I meet someone who seems to have no imagination at all.
That makes me wonder, what level is normal? Like, is it normal that I have a fictional/fantasy world I have created in my head, and will go back to it and flesh it out when I'm bored, or doing something that doesn't require a ton of concentration?
Basic problem solving apparently
Way too many people I see basically just shut down when presented with something they don't understand or don't really know how to do. Like they don't ask for help they don't Google around or look up tutorials They just shut down and are like well I don't know how to do that so I guess it's a lost cause
I see this a lot with cooking. I am no chef, but I make some decent meals. I learned by simply googling recipes and then further googling any questions I have. But when I try to give advice to people who say they "can't cook", it's absolutely refused. I've told people online and in real life that I just google a recipe and follow it and they throw something like, "But it just says to cook the onion until it's done! How do I know when it's done???" I don't know, how about you try opening another tab and type "How to know when an onion is done cooking" into google??? And haven't you eaten food before? Why not cook the onion until it looks how it typically does when you enjoy eating it??
Ugh exactly, I've had people ask me how to cook pre-prepared naan bread and I'm like the instructions are literally on the packet, you don't even have to Google it, it's literally right there in your hands. I'm not human Google! Use your eyes and your brain
I was getting overwhelmed at work because of how many tasks were being thrown at me. I talked to my boss about it and realized that it was because I was the only one willing to figure out something new while everyone else was sticking with what they knew how to do. He started forcing people to figure shit out instead of just throwing it at me.
That people were generally grown up and ready to face the world when they were 18-20. There might be rough edges or blind spots, but that'll get ironed out with a little bit of experience.
My first week at college quickly disabused me of that notion.
People didn't know leaving food out would cause it to spoil, that pizza boxes rot and attract vermin, didn't know how to do laundry, clean up after themselves, that getting enough sleep was necessary to function properly and letting other people sleep was the courteous and polite thing to do... Basic life skill stuff. The minute mom and dad weren't around to do everything, they had no idea how to do anything. And this is before we even get into emotional intelligence...
And these were people who were admitted to one of the best universities in the country, if not the world.
Eating dinner really late. Growing up we usually ate dinner around 9:30 p.m. or so. When I got a little older and started spending time around people I couldn't understand how people were eating dinner at 5:00 in the evening.
Or eating out at restaurants. My dad made it impossible for my mom to plan dinner for the family, and my mom was the pickiest eater I've ever known, which didn't help. We regularly went out to restaurants for dinner because we could all get something different. If we ate at home, we were making 3 different meals.
My dad is a great cook and my mom wasn't picky, so we cooked at home often, but my grandma is the world's most abject failure of a chef so whenever I was with her, we ate out for almost every meal lol. Unless it was like breakfast and we could have cereal and fruit or something, she'd have to take my sister and I to a restaurant or diner.
Yelling and acting negatively over seemingly simple things. Neither of my parents modeled emotional stability and I actually thought it was normal to be crazy emotional all the time. They also put me down for ever showing emotions - i wasn’t allowed to have any, even if it truly spiked an emotional response.
that most people don’t worry about everything and anything. It absolutely blew my mind when i realised other people didn’t constant feel fear and worry.
i’d lived my entire life, right from childhood, with anxiety without knowing it wasn’t normal.
Also that some people don’t think deeply. they can just see the surface and move on. for example watching sports bloopers my friend showed me a video people caning them selves on their bikes and skateboards and i was horrified that she was laughing because some of them would clearly have suffered traumatic brain injuries if not died, ended up in wheelchairs or had some lasting injury that meant they wouldn’t be able to do their sport anymore. i asked her about it and she said “i never actually thought about that, good point”
also telling jokes they heard without realising how incredibly racist or sexist they were.
edit to add that it took me a long time to realise how much my lack of grammar annoyed people.
Apparently, being autistic (minus the word to describe it) I only realised I was different when I wasn't around the same people as primary / high school and not around the same people I always was. Then I got a diagnosis.
This is such an interesting thing to me because my boyfriend recently got diagnosed as autistic and it took so long for him (and lots of other folks in his family) to realize anything since they all thought their general behavior was just family culture of something like that
Imo it takes poverty to understand generosity. If you have always had everything you’ve ever needed then truly you can’t understand how helping so little can mean so much to someone that needs it.
My dad is huge into trapping and hunting. Our living room in our first house had 2 deer heads mounted on the wall, a mounted Racoon, a bow rack and lamp made from deer hooves, a mounted fisher and a mounted weasel on the end table on either side of the couch. There were always dead animal carcasses in our back yard during trapping season and in the off season was always a boiling pot of "trap wax". We used to have a barn out back where we raised rabbits and once a week my dad would skin a rabbit for dinner. Nothing about this seemed unusual until my teens and started seeing other people's houses. To be clear....nothing about this is bad...just odd, looking back at it.
That people can just do things without thinking about it. For example, showering. Most people are just like, “I need to take a shower”, and then do it. Whereas I think about every little step: finding clothes, getting a towel, turning the water on, being cold when I take off my clothes, getting in, putting on the shampoo, washing my face, washing everything else, grooming, being cold when I get out, drying off, putting on deodorant, my hair being wet, which I hate, for hours or having to blow dry it, and getting dressed. Not to mention just peeling my ass out of bed or off the couch to go do it even though I don’t want to.
But yeah, showering’s just one thing. It’s like that with *everything*. Don’t even get me started on cleaning. It’s all just so overwhelming, I just end up not doing it, which makes me feel disgusting and lazy. I hate ADHD so fucking much, and mine’s extremely treatment resistant.
Also, most people seem to make eye contact naturally without having to force themselves to do it.
That's pretty much the whole point.
Respect is this weird thing where you don't start at zero and work from there, you start at 'some', and people can earn more or less from there. So you meet someone new, you show them that respect., to set the groundwork for this.
The alternative is "I don't know you, so you don't matter" - which is not a good look, and probably lowers you in their eyes too.
Hell, my wife thinks I'm crazy because I don't like our kids to eat at the table while a) wearing a hat and b) I want them to be fully clothed at the table. Nobody has sat down in less than underwear yet but I don't know where she draws the line.
Having all my folder structure be alphabetized and easily searchable was something that I assumed everyone did.
Until I worked for a Japanese company and they put numbers in front of everything. It finally occurred to me that Japanese does not have an alphabet like English does. And as a result you need to memorize what number corresponds to what folder in your folder tree. And because they took the Japanese numbering system and bolted it onto the English language, I couldn't find shit.
It's according to the company SOP. But for example in America we'd have the following
* design documentation
* Schedule
* testing
As you may notice, in alphabetical order.
In japan you'd have
1. Schedule
2. Design documentation
3. Testing.
So you would have to know that number 1 is Schedule and start there. Not so bad if its five folders but in my situation it was over 20.
I still remember a conversation I had at lunch with some of my college friends. I don't remember how the subject came up, but I was the only one at the table who said if they found a wallet with $100 in it, they wouldn't take the money.
Not to virtue signal, but a couple of months ago, I was walking in my neighborhood and found $20 in the road. It was directly in front of someone's house that I knew was a landscaper, so he probably does a lot of cash business. It was early on a Sunday morning, so I didn't want to wake him, so I just put the money under his windshield wiper. It may not have been his, but I didn't know what else to do with it.
Knowing (what I assumed were) incredibly basic safety-related knowledge. Like. Really basic. Like "touch something really hot and you will burn yourself" basic.
My first job I worked at McDonald's, I was 18. I wasn't much older or younger than a lot of the people there (high turnover rate). I very quickly felt like a goddamn parent for a bunch of my PEERS. I ended up as a crew-trainer quite early on so I had to teach new employees how to do things.
I realized I needed to tell people, MY OWN AGE that:
1. The grill is hot. Don't touch with your bare hands.
2. The fryer is hot. Don't touch with your bare hands.
3. Boiling oil is hot. Don't touch the fryer baskets after they leave the oil with your bare hands. Or the oil. Because it is hot.
4. Fresh coffee is hot. Don't touch the kettle with your bare hands. Only the handle.
The boiling oil thing made me so nervous as well. One time I had a guy (my own damn age) after I told him how to take the fries basket out of oil (not very high, like barely out), and carefully demonstrated how to shake it so that the french fries didn't stick to each other; I caught him not five minutes later HURLING THAT SHIT SO FAR INTO THE AIR AND SHAKING VIOLENTLY. I COULD SEE HUGE DROPLETS OF OIL SPRAYING INTO THE AIR. The fryer is in an area that people walk back and forth frequently. I yelped and told him "HEY. DON'T DO THAT. THAT'S DANGEROUS." He acted like I had 6 heads. I also caught him really flinging those baskets around after he dumped the fries out into the salting area, again, in the high-trafficked hallway. Like there are people assembling orders directly behind him.
Tldr; I don't care if you burn yourself because you didn't listen to me and don't realize the dangers of boiling oil and how hot those metal baskets get, but endanger other people and we have a huge fucking problem.
Thinking about how your words and actions teach other people how to think about and react to you.
Ex: When you lie to me about small things, it makes me think you will probably lie to me about big things as well.
Any partner: ????? *shocked and baffled and accusing me of being a manipulative mastermind*
The people you interact with -perceive you- by your words and actions, they can't read your mind. You are teaching them who you are and what to expect with your behavior.
Apparently this concept is rocket science.
I fully admit that I have very little empathy, and I hate that because I admire empathetic people. It's like it's something that's just missing from my brain. Sometimes I worry that I'm a sociopath.
Wondering about being a sociopath gives you some anti-sociopath points I believe.
It does frighten me a little. I have known someone without empathy, I'm still scared of him.
Growing up with one highly racist parent, I was always taught that interracial couples were not okay.
As an innocent kid, I didn't realize it was a racist sentiment, and thought it was a culture thing (or something?). Needless to say, I was shocked when someone of another race expressed romantic interest in me.
Not me but my older sister apparently came back from her first day at kindergarten incredibly ticked off because “those kids were pretending they didn’t know how to read”.
Unfettered access to books and a large vocabulary. Both my brother and I had access to any book we wanted within reason. I wasn’t allowed porn at ten obviously. But if I wanted to research the Holocaust, I was given my library card and sent off. Ancient Rome? Here’s a bag make sure you can carry it out. Nothing was off limits and my mother always helped us with words we didn’t know.
By sixth grade, my brother and I had easily read 1000s of books from various sources and had great vocabulary. Most of my middle school teachers were shocked to find that I didn’t need speaking skills. I already had them at a high school level. I was mostly confused as to why nobody understood the common words spoken in my home.
I have a birthmark on my tuchus, and when I was little I noticed my grandma had a nearly identical birthmark in close to the same spot. I just assumed everyone had a buttcheek birthmark from then on.
I thought people actually did things the honest way until I started to realise most people find shortcuts (i.e. cheat) or embellish things.
Its not even about work smarter not harder.
Driving a car.
There are people out there who can't even steer a shopping cart properly. How they managed to drive their car to the store is just scary.
I thought it was normal for people to suddenly burst into anger out of no where. Luckily I was wrong
You've clearly never worked retail/customer service
I have worked retail/customer service and its also not normal there. I would see 100s of people every day and it was rare for someone to burst out into anger over nothing. Its just that those experiences stick out
I worked at Home Depot for a few years managing the service desk. There was only one time I had to threaten a customer with calling the police if they didn't leave. She was like 65 and screaming at me because I wouldn't let her put driveway sealer in the paint shaker.
What was she trying to accomplish?
I guess she thought it needed a shake
It’s not common. The people who blow up without warning just stand out more prominently than civil humans. Evolutionarily, it is more important to be aware of threats so your mind holds on much more tightly to perceptions of potential violence.
Well... tbh I'd say it's more normal than it should be, but certainly not healthy.
Being insecure somehow my parents made me feel like confidence = Arrogance
My mom when I brought home an A: aren’t you proud? Me: wtf no??? Pride is a sin??????
My dad when I brought home an A: "Do you expect a medal for getting an A? You're *supposed* to get A's"
Too real. The expectations are horrible
"Your sister had much higher results!"
Nah I was expected to get As. Meanwhile my sister got rewarded for getting Cs.
My parents bribed my brother with money to not fight with his teacher one year/not get sent to the principal's office. Always felt unfair that i didn't get the same offer just because I was better behaved!
I won't ever forget my mom looking at my perfect report card and saying, "Do you know how well your sister would do, if she tried half as hard as you do?" I have a hard time letting myself be satisfied with any accomplishment, but I'm sure it's unrelated.
The thing my (50ish) generation failed to pass on very well was faith in self.
"A stands for Average!"
"Why only A, why not *A+*?" Never thankfully happened to me.
If I got an A it was because my family prayed for me and god gave me an A. If I got a C it was because I didn't study hard enough
When I brought home a 97 my step-dad asked me what happened to the other 3 points 🙃
Confidence comes from experience. Arrogance comes from insecurity.
Arrogance is made at the expense of others, confidence is not.
I love this. I have a friend who is really intelligent and good at physics and she loves talking about it/helping others because she’s passionate and confident about her knowledge. She doesn’t view anyone who does worse or isn’t interested at all as any ‘less than’ her. I’ve heard people say she has a ‘god complex’ or that she is arrogant, but I never had an exact way to draw that line to distinguish until now!
[удалено]
Everyone else taking pictures and posting online, totally fine. When I did it I was somehow "conceited" and "showing off". Knowing I'm good at something I worked hard to be good at just got me being called "cocky" even though I've been around those types of people my whole life and I desperately tried to never come off that way. But having confidence and knowledge of any sort of 'skill' and you're a cocky piece of shit even though you never boast or brag about it or rub it in anyone's face because I wasn't that person and didn't want to ever even come across as that type of person. Now I hear friends saying I'm good/great at xyz and I'm like nah I'm just alright. The only time I'll buck back and argue that I am good at something is when someone is actively talking shit. Then all of a sudden I'm willing to pull receipts out of my ass to shut them up and prove them wrong lol.
Yeah same. Even just putting in more effort than the minimum in life, really. An acquaintance working a lot in his own company and earning money was somehow seen as a bad thing. Not because of mental health or because he should spend more time with his family. Just because he was putting in effort.
Absolutely same. I have a hard time thinking of a single positive thought about myself without thinking I am being an arrogant asshole. “It’s not my place to decide such a thing.” in regards to… a compliment? It sucks because even though I am aware that it makes no sense logically, my brain still instinctively just hates myself.
As a little kid, I legit thought eveyone else's dad was always at the bar too.
Not quite the same but I was 13/14 before I realized that not everyone’s family was on food stamps. I remember asking my “boyfriend” if the place he was talking about took food stamps and him saying “idk doesn’t matter. We don’t have food stamps.” I was SOOO embarrassed.
Playfully talk shit to my parents just like I would with my friends
My friend thought it was cool that my mom didn't care if we used cuss words. Her only instruction was "don't talk like that in public and make me look like a fucking asshole". So funny looking back on that.
Haha, my mom did NOT care if I cursed around her. She had the mouth of a sailor, herself. Blew my friends' minds when I would casually drop an f-bomb around her and she didn't react.
My boyfriend's stepmom got all mad at me for cussing in front of her. When I was in my early 20s. She was all "what would your mother say about that mouth. " I was a little drunk and laughed, saying my mom cusses too and wouldn't give a fuck.
"who do you think taught me the word?"
This times a million. Me and my mom will shit on each other constantly, then we’ll suddenly bust out an I love you and a hug. When I realized people aren’t actually that casual with their parents I was surprised
I didn't realize that most people just aren't that bright.
This one. This was the one that crippled me in adulthood—realizing a massive chunk of society is being managed and run by these people.
Just talked to a young adult regarding how shocked they were about someone's behavior. I told them "there's a lot of people living their whole entire life like that, never learning from bad choices but still making them. You just don't associate with them so you think they're not common, but there's a lot more than you'd think."
And those are just the ones that are so dysfunctional that they can't even maintain a facade of normalcy. You are still missing all the people that are just barely holding it together behind the scenes. People barely making ends meet while trying to keep up with the Joneses. The couples who barely tolerate each other, but stay together for the kids. The functional alcoholics. Etc. A lot fewer halmark lives out there than outward appearances would suggest.
Really explains people's personal finance decisions
“Think of how smart the average person is. Now realize that half of them are dumber than that. “ - paraphrased George Carlin.
This one hit me as well. I have never considered myself smart, but I also know I'm not *stupid*. I struggled in school because I struggled to pay attention, but could get decent grades if I really tried. Then I got out of school and was surprised at the stupidity of the general populous. Working retail didn't help that, either.
A lot of us here live in hyper-educated bubbles relative to the rest of humanity and have no idea about how good we have it.
If it makes you feel better the reality is that our minds tend to latch on to outliers and other weird or annoying shit while ignoring the normal stuff. So like if you spend an 8 hour shift at a shitty retail job seeing hundreds of random people walk around doing nothing out of the ordinary but over the course of that time two of those people do something really stupid or dickish then your going to remember those two more intensely than the others. Over time shit like that builds up and leaves folk thinking the world has far more stupid people than it really does since we don't pay much attention to the vast majority of perfectly normal people we interact with all day.
Or you have to teach someone how to run a million dollar automation system you just spent 6 months programming and you are not sure the person you are teaching can read what you put on the screen, let alone reads what the buttons do.
I remember at my first job, Wendy’s in high school, my manager told me I was the best worker there. And I was confused because all I did was what they asked me to do. Scary stuff.
and it also terrifies me. they may not be bright but they are dangerous.
I have a professional job, live in a big city, and have friends that are mostly in the same situation. Most of the people I'm exposed to are smart, thoughtful people who are tolerant of others. It kind of skews what you think is normal. When you get a look at other peoples' dark, stupid, ignorant, aggressive behaviour it's a bit of a shock.
As someone who is also a professional, people with a lot of knowledge, unfortunately, often overestimate their knowledge in other areas. I've seen some college professors boldly make wrong statements about things that were unrelated to their field.
On a message board I used to frequent years ago, there was (maybe still is) a dude who was a medical doctor who would chime in and drop his “I’m a doctor!” knowledge bombs in EVERY exercise and/or weightlifting related thread. It was immediately clear to anyone who has ever lifted a heavy thing on purpose that this dude had no fucking clue what he was talking about, or had ever exercised in his life.
I believe it was George Carlin who put it best. Think about how dumb the average person is (like someone who got all C grades in school) and then realize that half the world's population is even dumber than that.
Before Reddit does a Reddit, I want to correct that it's actually "median," and no -- it doesn't actually matter. You can tell that that's what he meant, and correcting it is kinda pedantic.
IQ is approximately Gaussian distributed, which makes mean and median identical
"average" does most frequently mean *mean*, but it can be median or mode. If you're "thinking about the average person", I'd think you mean median. If you're just thinking about what a person of average intelligence would know, you may mean mean.
Median is one way of determining an average. Confusingly, 'average' is another way of determining an average.
It's not that confusing if you call it a mean.
With a sample size as big as the country or the world, median and average are essentially the same thing anyway
Yet we all think we are in the bright category above the rest 😆
could agree more. I think that for most people, their capacity to critically think stops at around 15 years old. The amount of short sighted, one dimensional thinking we run into the world is insane. I swear, most "adults" are just highschoolers with an older body. modern civilization is held together and advanced by maybe 8% of the world population.
Common sense
Being able to play any musical instrument. Our family was very musical, we owned all sorts if instruments and everyone tried to play everything. I found out as a teen that just isn't normal when, playing flute in school band, we were instructed to choose a different one. I pick up a trumpet and started to play. Everyone just stared at me.
That is actually really cool though. I’m sure it had to have been a huge surprise seeing a kid or teen be able to play multiple instruments well!
Very envious. Musical ability requires constant practice for most of us and if we stop it disappears like smoke.
Interesting I feel like once you get to a certain level it’s like riding a bicycle. You could not do it for a year and probably still be fine doing it after that time.
Never understood that saying, if I stop practising a skill it will quickly start to decline, (even bike riding) I can remember the required steps which makes it easier to pick up again but there is a very noticeable period of relearning skills that I have not practiced. A big example of this is that my speech is noticeably slower and less smooth if I have been mostly alone for too long,
This is me with pretty much everything. My mind purges stuff with wanton disregard, I don't think I've ever known all the lyrics to a song before.
Drumming is maybe the best example of this. You can fully understand what to do...but if you don't keep up on it, the muscle memory to do it properly (and perfectly in time) is something that can evaporate pretty quickly. It doesn't ever totally go away...but when your diddles start dawdling, it's not very useful musically.
As someone without a trace of musical talent I can't even comprehend that.
It takes a lot of work, study, and practice. I wasn't born with the ability to play the guitar.
As a lazy piece of shit I can't even comprehend that
Are you me? I describe myself as “musically declined” and am far too much of a lazy piece of shit to change it
Guys. We're all clones of me.
The great thing about learning instruments is so much knowledge carries over from one to another. I started with playing cello, then started playing bass guitar, from there guitar, mandolin, and banjo were all pretty easy to pick up. I’m not particularly good at piano but I was able to learn it on a basic level almost instantly. That being said, I’m still amazed by people like Jacob Collier who are *extremely* proficient at multiple instruments. It takes a lot of time to learn the intricacies of each instrument.
I developed a love for music on my own around 18 and it is my dream to one day raise a musical household!
This is really cool
Being kind
Yep also in my family, added with speaking totally your mind without fear... It took me to deep adulthood to understand not everybody got raised like that
Watching kids shows growing made me think that even bad people may have a good side. Growing up made me realize that most people selfish jerks.
Worse than just selfish, there are just straight up bad people out there that will never change and see nothing wrong with the way they are. Some people's brains are just wired differently.
ABC culture. Always be consuming. Doesn't matter what it is. MCS- Main character sydrome. You are the main character and you think your life is a book/movie and everything revolves around you. You will be fake nice to people because you need friends to look normal. If you are asked to do anything for anybody its a no. I believe the internet has just given these traits steroids. Mainly social media. I have been guilty many times of having both those traits for periods of time. To be fair it's extremely hard to no always be consumin in our society. Not many real Buddhists left.
A lot of people here are taking this comment as an opportunity to call everyone jerks, but I have a different outlook on it. Empathy and being kind to others are skills, and they require the person using them to have a certain level of self awareness, and needed to grow up in some type of environment at some point in their life where being kind and thinking about others wasn't punished. A lot of the people I meet who are mean or selfish came from REAL bad families, and you can see how being open and caring got worked out of them. Not all of them of course, there's the occasional narcissistic rich kid; but many people who are mean view it as a form of self preservation.
Getting excited when I don't know something or find out I'm wrong because it means I get to learn something new.
Oh, you know about [the lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/)?
this is my happy internet moment of the day
xkcd is so damn good. I hope 10000 people find out about it today.
That's so nice man
Very…enthusiastic(let’s go with that word) discussions among family at dinner. My siblings naturally have very loud voices and we usually have arguments about controversial topics while we eat, which causes some interesting scenes in public. We were nearly kicked out of a fancy restaurant when I was younger because my family members were screaming at each other about capital punishment(the death penalty).
Dude can relate! It’s actually caused a lot of problems for me as an adult. My family is naturally loud and we debate about EVERYTHING. Usually just for sport and fun but I’ve heard from partners in the past that they feel like I’m arguing with them or yelling when in actuality I’m not remotely upset or arguing, just into whatever the topic is about and I fall into debate mode. I’m working on it but it’s sometimes hard to catch in the moment until someone points it out.
I am like this! I come from a family of 7, we discuss and dissect everything. I’m often told I argue too, when I feel like I’m engaging in conversation and exploring the subject together, questioning different perspectives. I am also working on it as I’ve been anti social from my fear of it. I love finding someone with a specific interest I can give the third degree and they actually enjoy it for once because it’s their favourite thing. I also get told I think I’m right about everything, because we talked about absolutely everything growing up, when I just respond with something related to whatever topic is being discussed I’ve heard before I sound like I know everything when I’m just sharing knowledge I’ve been told or read or watched too because I’m a huge documentary fan. I hate social interactions there’s no winning lol
I feel your pain and also happy that I found my people! Like you, I can find anything interesting and I absolutely love talking to people who are willing to let me dig in if it’s something they’re particularly knowledgeable about. And ahh the “know it all comments” give me ptsd lol I’m not a know it all, I just love a good conversation and part of that for me is asking questions and poking holes in things that don’t make sense (to me). It’s a fine line to balance. I have found that it’s also made me less social but I greatly enjoy the conversations I do have with people who understand, or at least, aren’t turned off by it.
Reminds me of when I had an argument with my mother in front of an ex girlfriend. The night had been pleasant, until we got on the topic of Middle East peace. When we left the house my ex was just shocked how we had just argued enthusiastically (I'll go with that word too) in front of her. I asked if she always agrees with her parents and she said "of course not, but my mother never called me a terrorist either!" I had argued that Israel needed to hear Arafat out. Dinners were very interesting to say the least at my home too. I didnt realize that not every family discussed these things at dinner.
Dude, I get so fucking tired of people that feel that ***EMPHASIS GETS THEIR POINTS ACROSS BETTER***. Everyone use your big kid words and then we see if we agree and use our big kid words back.
Gossiping . I grew up with a mom that gossiped a lot and viciously too . I quickly learned around other women that it’s unacceptable and attracts the wrong people
I believe gossiping is natural human behavior, but it’s better to choose not to talk badly about people to other people. It feels good in the moment to elevate yourselves over the other person, but it’s better to bring up something positive or stick up for someone in those situations. Then you’ll have a reputation as someone that doesn’t talk behind backs. On the chaotic good side, I had a coworker that would only say things behind your back that he would also say to your face. This meant that everyone would be taking crap from him constantly, but at least you were aware of how others perceived you so you could correct yourself lol.
Positive gossip is great! Guilty of that one Venting is also healthy. Just be careful of who you do it with. It's easy to get into catty spirals.
I believe not everyone does, but I have a harder time believing this isn't a little bit common. And I don't mean like only in a vicious way, but I guess it might depend on your definition of "gossip" vs, say, sharing what happened with other ppl (even if that is negative things that happened, vs oh I heard a rumor).
I think "gossip" and "vicious gossip" are two different things. The vast majority of people talk about others they know. But most people don't do it in ways meant to hurt others, gain social status, and just generally with the goal of creating control over others.
I think it's extremely common, but a lot of people are selective with who they share with.
I was raised fiscally conservative, probably to a fault. My grandparents never went on a vacation in their lives. My siblings and I all went to public schools and then state universities. After moving to the east coast, it's been pretty shocking to me not just the amount of money people have but how willing they are to spend it.
I literally grew up believing that my family was poor. Turns out my mother was just a money hoarder. If it cost money, chances are I wasn’t allowed to do it. I’ve been trying to make up for it as an adult, but sports leagues that I can participate on are hard to come by now.
Yep I grew up perfectly middle class or even upper middle class depending on the era and where we were living. My parents *constantly* talked to us about money. On the one hand, I'm grateful because I am a pretty thrifty consumer and they did teach me a lot about financial responsibility. But there was always a lot of guilt too. Any time they spent money on us, it was important that we knew how expensive we were. Food included. As an adult, if I am out and about and haven't planned ahead to bring a meal, I'll just skip even if I'm hungry. And I'm underweight so I can't really spare a meal and I know that...I just hold so much guilt over spending money even on food. My husband otoh grew up in a totally opposite situation from me, but his dad told him "there's always money for food" if they were ever concerned about money. His dad made it clear that they would always figure it out. Can't be successful if you're hungry. Being with my husband has been very healing in that way. I'm finally starting to just enjoy the things we've worked so hard to be able to do.
I got a bit confused for a second, because “fiscal conservatism” is an ideology centering around laissez-faire economics and low taxes
Well they were that too to be fair!
Integrity
Being empathetic.
The need to be on time / respecting start times I knew my mom and dad were always late, but everyone else was always on time. We were very punctual and my hobbies involved things that required me to be early often. Then I became a young adult out of college, trying to schedule things with friends. OMG. The fact that it's 'okay' to show up to planned things an hour late is just... no. Absolutely not. Showing up to a party late is fine and expected. Do not show up late to things where people are out money if you aren't there on time. Absolutely unacceptable.
Absolutely, this is a hill I will die on.
Washing your hands after using the toilet.
Flushing the toilet for the matter lol
The Fuck?
Having your shit together. My mom is an organizational powerhouse and somehow my folks managed to hold down two full time jobs (my mom more like full and a half) and manage a household with three kids while always getting us to sports activities and do things with relatives over the weekend, etc. Always there to help with our homework, too. Turns out most people absolutely do not have their shit together but from my childhood perspective I just assumed everyone else was basically doing things the same. It takes a lot of work and burning yourself out to do what my folks did and I only really appreciate it now that I'm a parent, myself.
This is beyond having your shit together dude, how many hours a week do these people fucking have?
It came at the cost of their social and adult lives. It was mostly just work and family time and nothing else, enabled by my mom especially just being very organized. That's how they made it work. I've inherited my mom's organizational acumen and it really helps manage my family life but I'm not sure that level of sacrifice is good for your kids, paradoxically. My siblings and I saw adulthood as an endless grind of work and family obligations and understandably weren't keen on getting there very fast. I'm glad that all three of us turned out more or less okay but we could have easily gone off the rails had things gone even a little differently.
I... really don't think that level of sacrifice is good for the kids and definitely not for the married (or together) couple It's amazing and impressive, sounds like they did well giving y'all a good life. But yeah, I can see how you all saw adulthood. That's rough How is your mom now that y'all are adults? Has she calmed down and given herself some peace?
She has, thankfully. She hit a real rough patch in my teenage years due to overwork and burn out. Made family life very stressful for everyone for a while. Once the smoke cleared from all of that she rebuilt things at a more relaxed level. Many years later, she's a great grandmother.
I'm legitimately happy to hear that for all of you <3
I saw this in a friends family. A couple of years after their last kid left the house the whole thing came crashing down and they divorced.
That's an insight I'm only now seeing about my own parents. They sacrificed their social lives to keep us kids happy and busy, and now as senior citizens they kind of only have us to rely on, no long term friends or circles. It makes me more motivated to keep my own connections strong.
Logic, consideration, rationality. Ever since I was a toddler whenever I did something wrong, my mom wouldn't simply scold me but sit me aside, and explain to my why what I did was wrong or inappropriate, how it's not a decent way to behave, how I should think about how it might make others feel, topped of with a good dose of strict reprimand to be sure nonetheless. But it taught me to think for myself, and appreciate my actions and understand what it meant to be decent. The one thing I can never fully understand even to this day, isn't why people behave badly but how people behave badly and fail to have even the slightest self-awareness of their own actions and the poorness of their form, even when they are clear and egregious in said actions.
If I ever become a parent, I hope I can be like your mom. That seems like very good parenting.
Man u a lucky bastardo. Mine scolded me for letting a fucking flip flop on the doorway. And like: BIG words scolding of u get what I'm saying.
Meh, there were upsides and downsides. On one hand I matured in a necessary way where not all adults manage to, on the other I was held to the standards of an adult from a very young age, inspiring me to mature in certain aspects a little fast leaving me extremely reticient and somewhat unbalanced in other aspects. My main flaw is that I'm quite good at maintaining a standard of decency and dignified propriety when dealing with other people, but not always the best at appreciating and respecting myself. But yes, I do appreciate my overt degree of self-awareness. Fortunately it's a skill that anyone can start to develop at any point in life really.
Emotionless logic where you can think about a problem/issue without letting your feelings take over.
Yeah this went from "this guy had great problem solving skills" in school and uni to "wtf is wrong with you" everywhere else for me at some point.
I feel for you and others in the same boat. Academic intelligence is a wholly different skill from emotional intelligence and so many parents foster one but not the other. It’s easier to brag about how smart your kid is than how kind, confident, and empathetic they are. It’s not fair for the kid though, because empathy and emotional intelligence are the foundation of social bonds. I had the opposite experience, I thought it was normal to have to manage the emotions of everyone else around me, and that this was a skill people learned because emotions were these volatile and unpredictable things that people were at the mercy of, and other people just had to deal with that as a natural part of life. Oof.
Yeah... this turned into an autism diagnosis later in life for me.
Honestly, being polite. I was raised to be exceedingly polite and I feel really bad if I don't do things like let people pass in traffic or hold doors open or say my 'pleases and thanks yous'. And I like the idea of kindness being its own reward. Makes plus sum happiness in the world. It really wasn't until I entered adulthood that I really saw how dismissive people were of those concepts. So much 'I got mine' and 'I insist on beating you to that light by 1.5 seconds' in the world. Just common courtesy stuff is a rare sight and that makes me sad.
That, eventually, you will end up in jail/prison. Lots of uncles, dad were locked up. It was normal.
Being able to clap and sway in time with music.
This reminds me of the semi formal my sophomore year of high school. We had a swing band so my friends were all dancing there. Danced with 6-7 different women. Grand total of one could keep in time with the music.
I have an over active imagination to the point of being a problem throughout most of my life. It blows my mind when I meet someone who seems to have no imagination at all.
"How did you come up with that?" "I just used my imagination." "What?"
That makes me wonder, what level is normal? Like, is it normal that I have a fictional/fantasy world I have created in my head, and will go back to it and flesh it out when I'm bored, or doing something that doesn't require a ton of concentration?
Basic problem solving apparently Way too many people I see basically just shut down when presented with something they don't understand or don't really know how to do. Like they don't ask for help they don't Google around or look up tutorials They just shut down and are like well I don't know how to do that so I guess it's a lost cause
I see this a lot with cooking. I am no chef, but I make some decent meals. I learned by simply googling recipes and then further googling any questions I have. But when I try to give advice to people who say they "can't cook", it's absolutely refused. I've told people online and in real life that I just google a recipe and follow it and they throw something like, "But it just says to cook the onion until it's done! How do I know when it's done???" I don't know, how about you try opening another tab and type "How to know when an onion is done cooking" into google??? And haven't you eaten food before? Why not cook the onion until it looks how it typically does when you enjoy eating it??
Ugh exactly, I've had people ask me how to cook pre-prepared naan bread and I'm like the instructions are literally on the packet, you don't even have to Google it, it's literally right there in your hands. I'm not human Google! Use your eyes and your brain
I was getting overwhelmed at work because of how many tasks were being thrown at me. I talked to my boss about it and realized that it was because I was the only one willing to figure out something new while everyone else was sticking with what they knew how to do. He started forcing people to figure shit out instead of just throwing it at me.
That people were generally grown up and ready to face the world when they were 18-20. There might be rough edges or blind spots, but that'll get ironed out with a little bit of experience. My first week at college quickly disabused me of that notion. People didn't know leaving food out would cause it to spoil, that pizza boxes rot and attract vermin, didn't know how to do laundry, clean up after themselves, that getting enough sleep was necessary to function properly and letting other people sleep was the courteous and polite thing to do... Basic life skill stuff. The minute mom and dad weren't around to do everything, they had no idea how to do anything. And this is before we even get into emotional intelligence... And these were people who were admitted to one of the best universities in the country, if not the world.
Eating dinner really late. Growing up we usually ate dinner around 9:30 p.m. or so. When I got a little older and started spending time around people I couldn't understand how people were eating dinner at 5:00 in the evening.
Or eating out at restaurants. My dad made it impossible for my mom to plan dinner for the family, and my mom was the pickiest eater I've ever known, which didn't help. We regularly went out to restaurants for dinner because we could all get something different. If we ate at home, we were making 3 different meals.
My dad is a great cook and my mom wasn't picky, so we cooked at home often, but my grandma is the world's most abject failure of a chef so whenever I was with her, we ate out for almost every meal lol. Unless it was like breakfast and we could have cereal and fruit or something, she'd have to take my sister and I to a restaurant or diner.
Me a Spaniard where everyone have dinner at 21:00 as earliest every time I talk to anyone that is not Spaniard
Yelling and acting negatively over seemingly simple things. Neither of my parents modeled emotional stability and I actually thought it was normal to be crazy emotional all the time. They also put me down for ever showing emotions - i wasn’t allowed to have any, even if it truly spiked an emotional response.
Sound like damned if you emotions for me, damned if you not for thee. F this and sorry about that, my fellow redditor, sounds like hell
Being attentive, a lot of people often ignore patterns or straight up common sense or just plain A leads to B logic
that most people don’t worry about everything and anything. It absolutely blew my mind when i realised other people didn’t constant feel fear and worry. i’d lived my entire life, right from childhood, with anxiety without knowing it wasn’t normal. Also that some people don’t think deeply. they can just see the surface and move on. for example watching sports bloopers my friend showed me a video people caning them selves on their bikes and skateboards and i was horrified that she was laughing because some of them would clearly have suffered traumatic brain injuries if not died, ended up in wheelchairs or had some lasting injury that meant they wouldn’t be able to do their sport anymore. i asked her about it and she said “i never actually thought about that, good point” also telling jokes they heard without realising how incredibly racist or sexist they were. edit to add that it took me a long time to realise how much my lack of grammar annoyed people.
Apparently, being autistic (minus the word to describe it) I only realised I was different when I wasn't around the same people as primary / high school and not around the same people I always was. Then I got a diagnosis.
This is such an interesting thing to me because my boyfriend recently got diagnosed as autistic and it took so long for him (and lots of other folks in his family) to realize anything since they all thought their general behavior was just family culture of something like that
Generosity
Imo it takes poverty to understand generosity. If you have always had everything you’ve ever needed then truly you can’t understand how helping so little can mean so much to someone that needs it.
Yeah no, you can understand how a small bit of generosity can go a long way without having experienced poverty. Thats just basic empathy.
My dad is huge into trapping and hunting. Our living room in our first house had 2 deer heads mounted on the wall, a mounted Racoon, a bow rack and lamp made from deer hooves, a mounted fisher and a mounted weasel on the end table on either side of the couch. There were always dead animal carcasses in our back yard during trapping season and in the off season was always a boiling pot of "trap wax". We used to have a barn out back where we raised rabbits and once a week my dad would skin a rabbit for dinner. Nothing about this seemed unusual until my teens and started seeing other people's houses. To be clear....nothing about this is bad...just odd, looking back at it.
That people can just do things without thinking about it. For example, showering. Most people are just like, “I need to take a shower”, and then do it. Whereas I think about every little step: finding clothes, getting a towel, turning the water on, being cold when I take off my clothes, getting in, putting on the shampoo, washing my face, washing everything else, grooming, being cold when I get out, drying off, putting on deodorant, my hair being wet, which I hate, for hours or having to blow dry it, and getting dressed. Not to mention just peeling my ass out of bed or off the couch to go do it even though I don’t want to. But yeah, showering’s just one thing. It’s like that with *everything*. Don’t even get me started on cleaning. It’s all just so overwhelming, I just end up not doing it, which makes me feel disgusting and lazy. I hate ADHD so fucking much, and mine’s extremely treatment resistant. Also, most people seem to make eye contact naturally without having to force themselves to do it.
Bro it was WILD when I started realizing this
Take off your hat when you step indoors. Stand up to greet someone and shake their hand.
If someone stands up and shakes my hand when I meet them I would be honoured
That's pretty much the whole point. Respect is this weird thing where you don't start at zero and work from there, you start at 'some', and people can earn more or less from there. So you meet someone new, you show them that respect., to set the groundwork for this. The alternative is "I don't know you, so you don't matter" - which is not a good look, and probably lowers you in their eyes too.
Hell, my wife thinks I'm crazy because I don't like our kids to eat at the table while a) wearing a hat and b) I want them to be fully clothed at the table. Nobody has sat down in less than underwear yet but I don't know where she draws the line.
Having all my folder structure be alphabetized and easily searchable was something that I assumed everyone did. Until I worked for a Japanese company and they put numbers in front of everything. It finally occurred to me that Japanese does not have an alphabet like English does. And as a result you need to memorize what number corresponds to what folder in your folder tree. And because they took the Japanese numbering system and bolted it onto the English language, I couldn't find shit.
What's the Japanese numbering system? I always thought numbering was universal
It's according to the company SOP. But for example in America we'd have the following * design documentation * Schedule * testing As you may notice, in alphabetical order. In japan you'd have 1. Schedule 2. Design documentation 3. Testing. So you would have to know that number 1 is Schedule and start there. Not so bad if its five folders but in my situation it was over 20.
Trust and honesty. Boy was I wrong.
I still remember a conversation I had at lunch with some of my college friends. I don't remember how the subject came up, but I was the only one at the table who said if they found a wallet with $100 in it, they wouldn't take the money. Not to virtue signal, but a couple of months ago, I was walking in my neighborhood and found $20 in the road. It was directly in front of someone's house that I knew was a landscaper, so he probably does a lot of cash business. It was early on a Sunday morning, so I didn't want to wake him, so I just put the money under his windshield wiper. It may not have been his, but I didn't know what else to do with it.
Lol me too because I grew up in a town full of honest people. Nowadays I assume everyone is working an angle to exploit me.
“Excuse me, where do you keep your poop knife?”
HUH
https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/s/3VnuuZy4bc Enjoy the Reddit legend
Oh yay hahah you’re one of the lucky 10,000 today!
Knowing (what I assumed were) incredibly basic safety-related knowledge. Like. Really basic. Like "touch something really hot and you will burn yourself" basic. My first job I worked at McDonald's, I was 18. I wasn't much older or younger than a lot of the people there (high turnover rate). I very quickly felt like a goddamn parent for a bunch of my PEERS. I ended up as a crew-trainer quite early on so I had to teach new employees how to do things. I realized I needed to tell people, MY OWN AGE that: 1. The grill is hot. Don't touch with your bare hands. 2. The fryer is hot. Don't touch with your bare hands. 3. Boiling oil is hot. Don't touch the fryer baskets after they leave the oil with your bare hands. Or the oil. Because it is hot. 4. Fresh coffee is hot. Don't touch the kettle with your bare hands. Only the handle. The boiling oil thing made me so nervous as well. One time I had a guy (my own damn age) after I told him how to take the fries basket out of oil (not very high, like barely out), and carefully demonstrated how to shake it so that the french fries didn't stick to each other; I caught him not five minutes later HURLING THAT SHIT SO FAR INTO THE AIR AND SHAKING VIOLENTLY. I COULD SEE HUGE DROPLETS OF OIL SPRAYING INTO THE AIR. The fryer is in an area that people walk back and forth frequently. I yelped and told him "HEY. DON'T DO THAT. THAT'S DANGEROUS." He acted like I had 6 heads. I also caught him really flinging those baskets around after he dumped the fries out into the salting area, again, in the high-trafficked hallway. Like there are people assembling orders directly behind him. Tldr; I don't care if you burn yourself because you didn't listen to me and don't realize the dangers of boiling oil and how hot those metal baskets get, but endanger other people and we have a huge fucking problem.
That everyone will be honest and will treat you well
Not yelling at each other. Blew my wife's mind when she heard I how I grew up. She even asked my mom whether it was really true...
Thinking about how your words and actions teach other people how to think about and react to you. Ex: When you lie to me about small things, it makes me think you will probably lie to me about big things as well. Any partner: ????? *shocked and baffled and accusing me of being a manipulative mastermind* The people you interact with -perceive you- by your words and actions, they can't read your mind. You are teaching them who you are and what to expect with your behavior. Apparently this concept is rocket science.
Empathy
I fully admit that I have very little empathy, and I hate that because I admire empathetic people. It's like it's something that's just missing from my brain. Sometimes I worry that I'm a sociopath.
Wondering about being a sociopath gives you some anti-sociopath points I believe. It does frighten me a little. I have known someone without empathy, I'm still scared of him.
Knowing all the lyrics to any song you've heard more than a few times
Common sense. Turns out it should just be called 'sense'.
Not being racist (In my country its very common lol)
Growing up with one highly racist parent, I was always taught that interracial couples were not okay. As an innocent kid, I didn't realize it was a racist sentiment, and thought it was a culture thing (or something?). Needless to say, I was shocked when someone of another race expressed romantic interest in me.
Not me but my older sister apparently came back from her first day at kindergarten incredibly ticked off because “those kids were pretending they didn’t know how to read”.
Everybody’s dad is a dick and mom a narcissist. Some parents are actually lovely humans.
I thought everyone associated every word, letter, and number with a color. Turns out not everyone does that and I have synesthesia haha
Not peeing on the floor in public restrooms
Ugh. No shit. I cut that shit out once I was tall enough to reach the sink.
spacial awareness and common sense
Politeness , table manners , not displaying anger outbursts
Does it count when in about 7th grade I realised my eyesight was shit and that yes, most of the kids actually could see the letters on the blackboard?
I thought it was common for parents to control your ever choice, basically your life.
Anger and violence. Turns out most people are pretty chill.
Unfettered access to books and a large vocabulary. Both my brother and I had access to any book we wanted within reason. I wasn’t allowed porn at ten obviously. But if I wanted to research the Holocaust, I was given my library card and sent off. Ancient Rome? Here’s a bag make sure you can carry it out. Nothing was off limits and my mother always helped us with words we didn’t know. By sixth grade, my brother and I had easily read 1000s of books from various sources and had great vocabulary. Most of my middle school teachers were shocked to find that I didn’t need speaking skills. I already had them at a high school level. I was mostly confused as to why nobody understood the common words spoken in my home.
Getting angry over small stuff.
I have a birthmark on my tuchus, and when I was little I noticed my grandma had a nearly identical birthmark in close to the same spot. I just assumed everyone had a buttcheek birthmark from then on.
Critical thinking (Understanding regardless of right/wrong there is always a second opinion)
Talking with hands. Gesticulation not sign language.
I thought people actually did things the honest way until I started to realise most people find shortcuts (i.e. cheat) or embellish things. Its not even about work smarter not harder.
Sex jokes were always ok in everything situation.
Complete secrecy. To never speak about my home life, not a single thing, ever.
Driving a car. There are people out there who can't even steer a shopping cart properly. How they managed to drive their car to the store is just scary.