Not Always Right / Alternative Character Interpretation

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Not Always Right

In several of the stories, it's unclear whereas the customer is genuinely so stupid, is pretending to be stupid in order to attempt to scam the store, or is merely trolling the workers for shits and giggles.
There are many stories where the customers get angry at the cashiers or other workers for not doing what they want them to do, even if it goes against policy or is otherwise impossible. Not Always Working provides many stories that would explain why some customers act that way; they've dealt with so many workers that actually were lazy or unhelpful that they instinctively assume the worst.
In this story about a cashier trying to get enough money out of a customer who is setting up a cable account for her friend, said customer says at one point "All right, fine, but now I’m giving you my money!", implying part of her stubbornness with making the full payment was because she'd been given only the original $40 from her friend and was frustrated that she had to pay the remaining $83 out of her own pocket.
The wife in this story is probably from a part of the US where "Coke" is used to refer to soda in general, making her dismay over actually being given Coca-Cola a case of culture shock rather than stupidity, especially given that she seems to have expected OP to ask what kind of "Coke" (soda) she wanted. That said, it would probably be smarter to ask for the specific drink you want, rather than just the category, in the first place, no matter what term you use for "soda".
There are quite a few anecdotes where the Extra Stupid tag only makes sense if they're from the same culture they're currently in and/or if they have a certain assumed baseline education that may not be a fair standard to call people stupid about. It makes sense to tag it stupid if they're in Advanced Studies of X and fail to grasp basic 101 information about X; in the absence of that context, it makes far less sense if they simply don't know a particular word or a particular detail of biology, or if they confuse a couple of minor wars or the like.
There's a story about a man who gets some grief from a server who notes that he said he was allergic to tomatoes, but was eating his fries with ketchup. The man explains that he's only allergic to raw tomatoes; the substance that triggers a reaction is destroyed during cooking/processing. Perhaps this is also the case in this story, where a man describes himself as deathly allergic to tomatoes but orders a sandwich with extra ketchup, to the bemusement of the submitter.
This woman repeatedly asks for peanuts, but what she really wants is cashews. Is she just being stubborn, or does she think peanuts and cashews are the same food?
One person who needed to fast before some tests at the hospital answered "No" repeatedly when asked multiple times if he'd eaten or drank anything, including medicine. Then he finally says at the end he drank milk to take his medicine, then ate a plate of eggs. Did he really, or was he being sarcastic because he got annoyed with being asked the same thing over and over again?
The mother in this story.^note Was she an overprotective mother trying to teach her son about "stranger danger", or was she just at the end of her rope after listening to her kid's non-stop talking?
When the manager tells the submitter to go home at the end of this story, is it a punishment for receiving the complaint, or is it more in the vein of "Go home and cool off before you have to deal with any more morons"? If it is a punishment, is it because the manager thinks that the employee is lying, or is that SOP for complaints and his hands are tied?
Most stories where the customer is Sarcasm-Blind tend to have most of the commenters point out that people in customer service aren't supposed to sass customers or be sarcastic towards them.
The cat owner in this story refuses to take her old cat to the vet to treat something which could be either constipation, a UTI, or a blocked kidney, the latter of which could necessitate emergency treatment. Is she being callous and uncaring towards her unwell cat, or was she simply not able to afford the procedure and is just trying to make light of that fact in an attempt to cope?
In this story, a man calls a video game store several times and hangs up each time a female employee picks up the call. At one point, the OP (a woman) disguises her voice to sound like a male, but fails to maintain it right as the caller starts asking if the store has a specific game in stock, causing the guy to abruptly hang up. Considering that the game that the caller was asking for isn't described in the story, was the caller a sexist guy who thought women couldn't work well in a video game store, or was he attempting to order a porn game and felt embarrassed when a woman took the order?
In this story, the OP is getting a coffee when a guy with a large backpack bumps them and causes them to spill a bit of it. The OP retaliates by dumping the rest of said coffee into the guy's backpack when he isn't looking. The OP gives no indication of said backpacker's demeanor or whether he slammed the OP on purpose or not, so it's anybody's guess as to whether the backpacker did this to be a Jerkass for no reason and was purposely ignoring the OP (making the OP's actions justified), or if they had accidentally shoved the OP and said nothing because they legitimately had no idea they bumped them (making the OP appear rude and their actions needlessly petty).
In this story, the customer of a sandwich shop tells the employee that he is a heart surgeon and should already be operating on a critical patient (he's half an hour late), while telling the worker to hurry up. Was he really being unprofessional and uncaring, or was it something he just made up to try to force the employee to hurry up? Considering that he returns just to ask for extra dressing, we can only hope it's the latter.
In this story, a person phones a call center to request proof that the packages sitting on their own desk have been properly delivered. The submitter (who is the operative that took the phone call) is implied to think it's incredibly stupid, but it could be a thing where the person knew full well the delivery was completed properly, but needed to officially record external confirmation of the delivery for some bureaucratic reason.
The driver in this story ignores the mechanic's offers to fix up her neglected car (which, among other issues, had no coolant fluid and oil long overdue for a change) at a substantial discount, and when the engine blows up in the middle of a road trip in 40 degree Celsius weather (again, no coolant), she forges the invoice to make the mechanic look like she was at fault. While this might be a simple case of Never My Fault as is typical for the site, it's noted later that the driver's car, even in pristine condition, wouldn't even break quadruple digits in value; the way the driver "maintained" it, it'd be lucky if it was worth its weight in scrap. This opens the possibility that the driver knew her car was worthless and not long for this world, and saw an opportunity to still make some easy money off of it. Doubly so when her forgery job almost fools the submitter's boss, meaning her plan might have succeeded if the submitter wasn't eagle-eyed enough to spot several threads.
This customer is treated like the stupid one for not realizing that "breadsticks with cheese" is what the OP's workplace calls "cheesesticks". However, in some places, cheesesticks are what some would call mozzarella sticks. If the customer thought that's what the OP meant by cheesesticks, then his insistence on "breadsticks with cheese" makes more sense.
A woman is in a horrible car accident that kills the other driver involved and is eerily calm while filing a report of the accident to the submitter. The submitter (and whoever titled the story) seems to believe that the woman is a sociopath who doesn't care that she just accidentally killed someone, but the comments for the story suggest that the woman may have actually been in shock from the ordeal and was trying to keep herself sane as she filed the report.
This woman appears to be the typical entitled customer, making a fuss about prices and refusing to let other customers through while she transferred the money to pay, all while citing her injured arm as a reason others had to put up with her crap. However, the fact that she kept griping about medical expenses, as well as the fact that she took 10 minutes to transfer the money to pay for her groceries (using an app that the submitter notices should have been able to do so in seconds), has made some wonder if she was hoping someone behind her would foot the money for her groceries, and only forked over the money once she realized that wasn't happening.
The mom in this story is shown using what are presumably gift cards her children got from their grandparents for Christmas to buy groceries and cigarettes. Is this a case of a mom callously using her children's Christmas presents for her own purposes or (as suggested by the comments) a case of the kids not wanting to use the cards at the store that they were good for (which also makes sense given that a store that sells groceries and cigarettes probably doesn't have as good a selection of kids' stuff as, say, a full-on toy store), so the mom was just using them in exchange for giving her kids the equivalent value of their Christmas money to spend at a different store?
Bigoted Christians make frequent appearances as the villains of various stories, but as they always throw fits about the same very narrow range of topics (generally LGBT+ people existing or workers trying to enforce their place of employment's rules), always shout and scream at the slightest provocation, and always say "I'm a Christian and will not stand for this!" or some variant thereof, some readers have begun to wonder if these people presented their (admittedly unreasonable) complaints more evenly, and the people submitting those stories simply made them out to be far more unpleasant for the sake of drama.
This lingerie store customer tries to buy a "gluten-free bra" and mentions she knows from their website that said store indeed sells them. Comments wonder what she actually wanted; she probably misunderstood labels like "organic" from the website, but she also may have tried to buy gluten-free edible underwear after finding some on an adult online store and then went to the wrong store.
This customer is made out to be an idiot for thinking a declined card would be accepted with repeated attempts. Several comments point out that it's not impossible for a card to be declined due to a momentary malfunction of either card or reader, with a couple even having their own anecdotes where that happened. This makes wanting to try a couple more times more reasonable, just in case that was the problem.
The customer in this story is treated as being very unwise with their money for passing on a promo deal at a restaurant that would have made buying a burrito with a drink two dollars cheaper than buying a burrito without a drink. However, the commentators suggest that the customer didn't want to get a drink that they may not drink all of anyway and/or waste a drink cup (some even saying that they do this themselves), or simply just did not want a drink with their food with no special reasoning behind it, and had enough money that they considered two dollars to be nothing.
The comments are quick to point out that the woman in this story was likely trying to con her way into paying a lower price for a dress she wanted, pointing out that the "stick-a-clearance-sticker-on-a-full-priced-item" trick is a (sadly) common scam trick.
In this story, a man is called by a telemarketer (the submitter) who tries to sell him a security system; he refuses for a silly reason (his girlfriend's cat always follows everyone who enters the house until they feed him, so any trespasser would quickly be annoyed and leave). Is the guy a Cloudcuckoolander, or was he pretending to be one in order to end the call without sounding rude?
This customer ordering pizza gives ridiculously specific directions on how to prepare a vegetarian pizza without getting any meat in it because she and her family/peers are strictly vegetarian... then without missing a beat orders a pepperoni pizza along with it. The story seems to present the customer as not being a very good vegetarian, but the comments point out that she was almost certainly also ordering a meat pizza for those with her who weren't vegetarian or vegan.
In this story, a grown woman throws a childish tantrum while her two sons are being quiet and behaving. However, some users in the comments have suggested that she may have been trying to show her kids what they look like when they throw tantrums. Some parents in the comments admit to doing similar things with their own kids (that is, when their kid does something inappropriate in public, the parent does the same thing to show how embarrassing/annoying it is).
A woman with a pollen allergy buys local honey in order to build a resistance to local pollen. OP is worried about this woman accidentally killing herself through exposure to allergens, but many commenters think the woman merely has hay fever rather than anything potentially lethal. (For the record, it is possible to cure allergies via small exposure over long periods, but we here at TV Tropes must discourage you from trying without a qualified medic.)
This woman pays for her groceries, but then leaves them behind at the checkout and drives off while refusing to acknowledge the multiple employees telling her that she forgot her groceries. Was she in so big of a hurry that she forgot her groceries and tuned out the employees trying to run her down, hard of hearing and simply unable to hear the employees, or hiding stolen goods in her clothes and intentionally ignoring the employees (which is the interpretation most of the comments go with)?
This guy says that he would let the OP "ride [him] like a horse" in exchange for a discount on his purchases. Commenters can't seem to agree on whether his offer was meant to be a sleazy pick-up line or an innocent suggestion of a piggyback ride (though it can certainly be interpreted as the former, so the man saying it to a complete stranger was poorly thought-out at best).
This person is painted as a liar pretending to be homeless for benefits after they claim that they left their Homeless SNAP card "at home". The comments suggest that the "home" the person is referring to could be their car, a homeless shelter, or a makeshift living space somewhere and that the OP is jumping to conclusions about what the homeless person means when they say "home".
In this story, a man repeatedly gives the wrong address to a pizza restaurant, bothering the resident of said wrong address so much that they ask to be taken off the pizza place's delivery system, which pisses off the man when the employee at the pizza place tells him that they don't deliver there anymore, claiming that it was their right address. The comments theorize that the man was intentionally ordering pizzas to the "wrong" address in order to annoy the person who lived there, and he got mad when he learned the pizza place would no longer be delivering to them because his fun had been ruined.
This woman claims to have a potentially fatal peanut allergy; yet if her story is true, she bought peanut butter and assumed the peanut flavor was artificial without checking the jar. People with peanut allergies, especially potentially fatal allergies, wouldn't be anywhere near that careless (if they were, they would probably die young); they'd check not only the ingredients list, but the allergy warnings, which are mandatory and strictly regulated ^note in the European Union (the story takes place in Germany), even if it means getting approval from the Department of Redundancy Department. There are two options here, both of which make her look like an idiot for expecting the supermarket to refund her for her alleged mistake: she was genuinely allergic and therefore Too Dumb to Live, or she made the allergy up as an excuse to get a refund because it turned out she didn't like peanut butter.
This story, where someone tries to get a wrist brace for a hand that is described as feeling like Rice Krispies, had several people point out the location and pitch the possibility that the guy couldn't afford to go to the hospital. This is a common interpretation of any story that involves someone trying to do a DIY treatment for a serious injury and is either stated or implied to take place in the US.
Is this story a Perspective Flip of this earlier one that adds further context, or is it a Fix Fic detailing what should have happened to the Designated Hero of the latter story?
This story has a US corporal go to an MP office (where almost everyone is a woman) to deal with some red tape, as his files have a common glitch, and instead of listening when the female lieutenant tells him that the issue can be solved by going to another office in the building, he tries to argue in an unprofessional way and only relents when a male sergeant brought into the quarrel threatens him to throw him in jail. While it has the "bigotry" tag and implies misogyny is the cause of the mess (the sergeant involved seems to think it is as well), the discussion with the female lieutenant doesn't sound sexist (rude, yes, but the corporal doesn't make any blatantly sexist remarks) and the corporal addresses the male sergeant the same way he talked to the lieutenant (not mentioning his rank, interrupting him several times), which makes him look less like a misogynist and more like someone who is just rude and unprofessional in general.
In this story, a customer asks for a teacher discount (20% discount for goods bought for their classroom) and is unable to provide proof that they really work as a teacher when the submitter asks for verification (and they ask the customer for just one of 8 different ways to check, which includes just calling a phone number to prove that the customer really is a teacher). While asking for such a discount without being able to justify it could just have been the sign of being very absent-minded, some comments point out that it could have been a scam attempt from someone who actually isn't a teacher.
This visitor asks the submitter if there is anything violent in the museum. The submitter and editors seem to find the question to be incredibly stupid (the story even has the "Extra Stupid" tag) since it is a military museum, but comments speculate it may have been a poorly worded attempt to ask if the museum featured anything visually graphic (such as real photographs of war scenes).
This story has a bride who crapped herself in her bridal dress right before the ceremony. The submitter thinks that it was caused by stress, but some commenters speculate it might have been a failed attempt to hold back until after the ceremony.
This story has a phone call where the caller is very polite while speaking with the submitter, then suddenly yells at someone in their house to get them a pen, then go back to their initial politeness while resuming the phone call. Was the caller a jerk and their apparent politeness to the submitter was an act? Or was the caller a nice person who was enraged by the idiocy of the other person they interacted with (bringing a flyswatter after being asked for a pen)? For that matter, was the flyswatter/pen incident a genuine blunder made by someone really stupid, or was the other person intentionally screwing with the caller?
On the surface, the woman who insists that the OP clean the women's bathroom despite the only thing wrong being a misplaced sheet of toilet paper seems to be the queen of the Neat Freaks. However, a couple of commenters pointed out that distracting employees with nonsensical complaints and insisting that the employee investigate the molehill of which they're making a mountain this instant, drawing them away from the aisle, is a common shoplifting tactic.
This story has a young man making withdrawals from a bank account that he shares with both his parents so he can spend money at college. Later, the parents arrive and are shocked that a lot of money has disappeared from their account (which their son had spent). The comments debate whether the son was knowingly misusing his parents' savings account, or if he'd thought it was a college fund he could use however he wanted (which, as the OP notes, is a common arrangement).
OP is the driver of Car 3 in this story. Car 1 abruptly stops, forcing Cars 2 and 3 to do the same, miraculously without hitting anyone. Car 4 hits them, causing a collision with Cars 2 and 3 as Car 1 speeds away. OP has no idea why two women, who were sitting in the café in front of the accident, tried (and failed) to convince the responding officers it was OP's fault. The most popular theory in the comments is that the women and the driver of Car 1 were partners in a failed scam, followed by female misogyny because OP was the only female driver. Alternatively, the two women found the fourth at-fault driver attractive and were trying to impress him.
This story involves a customer saying that she's planning to make masks out of the lace she's buying. While a protective mask made purely out of lace is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, a handful of commenters believe that she meant to say that she was making normal cloth masks and just planned to use the lace to decorate them, or that she was planning to make some other type of masks (such as masquerade or costume masks).
This customer is treated like an idiot for asking if their omelet contains eggs. While she could have worded it better, some comments suggest that it might have been a poorly-worded attempt to ask if the omelets used real eggs from the shell or boxed liquid eggs.
This story is submitted by a worker who is cleaning a popcorn machine (covered in extinguisher chemicals after catching fire) in the parking lot of their workplace, and a passerby asks if he could get some of the tainted popcorn. He proceeds to eat a handful of it without waiting for a proper answer, then later refuses to confirm that he indeed ate it. The text speculates the man was a Cloudcuckoolander or a Manchild who later refused to acknowledge he ate the popcorn due to fear of being in trouble for stealing food, but some comments speculate the man deliberately decided to eat tainted popcorn in order to get sick and then earn money by suing the place.
This story features a high customer with a friend who has been caught attempting to shoplift. Some comments speculate the man wasn't actually high, but pretending to be in order to distract the shop's staff from his friend's shoplifting attempt.
In this story, the submitter makes a mistake while using the paint mixer in their shop, resulting in a gallon of gray paint instead of the green shade the customer wanted. The customer is satisfied anyway, to the bafflement of the submitter's boss. Some comments think that the customer may have been colorblind.
In this story (set in an American bookstore) has a customer who asks for "Shakespeare in English". A few comments think this was a poorly-phrased attempt to ask for versions of Shakespeare's play "translated" into modern English (such as No-Fear Shakespeare, which has both the original text and a modernized English version).
This customer orders a burger combo with fries and a drink, but takes everything off of the burger so it's just a bun with ketchup. The OP's best guess is that he planned to make a french fry sandwich ^note, which many commenters agree with—it'd basically be a poor man's Chip Butty.
The comments for this story, about an airline traveler being expected to transfer his own luggage after his flight is canceled, are divisive over whether the failure is on the traveler for not understanding "you need to get your stuff from the old flight and check it onto the new flight", or on the airline for not having their luggage handlers read the luggage tags and sort it onto the new flight themselves.
In this story, a woman pounds on the door of a housing facility, insisting she wants to see her son, who supposedly has been kidnapped and is made to work there against his will. The son is actually there of his own volition, works elsewhere, and is 34 years old. He eventually tells her he doesn't want to see her, and she reacts by attempting to attack him. Considering that the housing facility is a halfway home for felons that have completed their sentences, several commenters have theorized that the son may have ended up in prison due to illegal possession of drugs in order to deal with his mother. Other commenters have pointed out that the crime he committed may have been a form of rebellion against his mother (likely to get away from her and/or her unreasonably tight boundaries).
This story involving a manager trying to find someone who can go hand out some promotional posters, but everyone is scheduled. When the submitter asks why the manager can't do it, he says it's because "[they're] the HEAD of the department". Did he mean that he's above that kind of work, or did he mean that he had to remain here to keep an eye on the workplace?
In this story, the submitter is baffled when a customer calls the craft store they work at asking if they have geese. Commenters suggest that the customer likely meant a ceramic/porcelain goose or a goose yard decoration, but didn't communicate it well.
In this story, a customer is overheard reading aloud the "for external use only" warning on some hand sanitizer and then said that they had been planning to use the hand sanitizer as a douche. While the author and editors seem to think the customer was serious (the story has the "Stupid" tag and is titled "DO NOT DO THAT"), some comments believe that the customer was being sarcastic.
In this story, a woman's boyfriend throws a tantrum in an upscale restaurant due to another couple proposing when he wanted to and ends up getting dragged out by the police. The woman then thanks the staff for saving her from a horrible marriage and gives them a wad of cash as a tip/payment. Quite a few commenters think that the woman had already been having doubts about the relationship and this was the last straw, rather than this incident causing her to see his true colors for the first time.
This woman calls a bakery and says she wants a "big, fancy cake", and then refuses to give any details such as how many people it needs to serve or what flavor it is. While refusing to tell the bakery anything beyond "big and fancy" is poorly thought out at best, some commenters theorize that the woman was ordering a wedding cake and was giving as few details as possible in order to avoid paying a "Wedding Tax" (inflated pricing on things meant for weddings).
This woman enters a donut shop 30 minutes before they open and demands a hazelnut coffee with five cream and seven sugar. When the coworker asks her what size she wants the coffee to be, she just repeats her order more irately and doesn't even notice that they're closed until she exits the shop. Was she drunk, addled from Sleep Deprivation and ordering the coffee to wake herself up, or just nutty?
In this story, a woman tells her six-year-old son to lie that he is only five to get a discount. He asks if he will have to drop out of first grade, then when she says, "You will be six tomorrow", he asks for a birthday party, prompting his mother to give up. Did he genuinely think he was actually aging down and back up the next day, or was he trying to stop his mother from doing her scam? And if it's the latter, is it because he knows it's wrong to lie, or is it because he feels immature pretending to be younger?
This story has a customer at a fast food place telling an employee to hurry up their order because they have to be at the local jail in five minutes. Comments speculate that the person was either a guard whose shift was about to start, an inmate who was working outside and would be in trouble if they were late, or a visitor (like a journalist or lawyer) who has an appointment there.
This story has a customer going to a grocery store's meat counter to ask for advice about how to make The Human Centipede in real life but with chickens. Some comments point out the customer was more likely trolling the worker rather than being an aspiring mad savant asking for tips.
In this particular tale, was the customer being obnoxious by refusing to pay the tax, or was he from a country where the tax is not included in sales prices?
Some commenters on this story wonder whether or not she was actually lying about having looked where OP found the needed folder; many of them point out that Failing a Spot Check becomes much easier when you're stressed or otherwise distracted, so it is entirely plausible that the mother-in-law did indeed look there but missed it because she was already high-strung. However, they all agree that this doesn't excuse her overall behavior.
In this story, a little girl claims she likes drawing dinosaurs covered in blood. The submitter thinks that it's because she's seen Jurassic Park in spite of its age rating, but she could also just have a vivid imagination and be in a dinosaur phase.
In this story, the submitter is in a packed restaurant and allows two women to sit at the large communal booth as them. Shortly afterward, they tell the submitter that a friend of theirs has arrived and ask them to give up their seat for this friend. The submitter says no (since then they would have to stand up with their laptop and other stuff), and the women begin acting rude to them, giving the submitter no incentive to give up their seat. They then sit there for nearly half an hour while the women keep hemming and hawing over the submitter not leaving until they finally give up and leave. Some commenters noted that the ladies' friend was never stated to have arrived nor did the ladies seem concerned about waiting for said friend to come in before they left, causing some to speculate that the "friend" didn't actually exist and was just an excuse to get the submitter to vacate their seat so the women could have the table all to themselves.
In this story, the submitter comes back to a table with a large party to find a young child in the group playing under the table. The submitter tells the girl's mom to not allow the kid to keep playing under the table as there could be glass under there, and although the mom snaps at the submitter, she does call her daughter back to her seat. Afterward, however, every time the submitter comes back to the table the kid is back under the table. As you'd expect, the kid cuts her thumb, and again as you'd expect, the mom immediately dogpiles on the submitter and begins threatening to sue and/or make a huge mess for the submitter to clean up out of spite. Although the mom is treated as just your typical Obnoxious Entitled Housewife who's just being selectively oblivious, the comments speculate that the woman was either turning a blind eye to her daughter repeatedly going back under the table or was, in fact, telling her to go back under the table after the submitter warning of possible broken glass under the table gave the woman the idea of causing an incident for compensation.
The customer in this story is treated as a hypocrite for having a meltdown over his coffee having sugar in it, claiming he has diabetes and that eating sugar will kill him...only to immediately wolf down several sugar-glazed donuts from the box of donuts he demands as compensation. Many comments believe the customer didn't actually have diabetes and was trying to scam the coffee shop, not only because he scarfed three sugar-glazed donuts without hesitation despite his claims that he would literally die from eating sugar, but also because the customer gets details about diabetes completely wrong (diabetics can have sugar, provided they take the appropriate amount of insulin; if the customer had taken the appropriate amount of insulin beforehand, the small amount of sugar that goes into a coffee shouldn't have made that much of a difference). Commenters also claim the story warranted a cross-post with Not Always Working since the manager let the supposedly diabetic customer take a dozen donuts no questions asked, without apparent regard for the possible legal issues the store could face if this customer claiming to have diabetes had a medical episode as a result of eating the donuts.
In this story, an Obnoxious Entitled Housewife verbally abuses a teenage employee to the point of tears and is clearly willing to continue when the OP shows up. The customer is making a vegan mirror-glaze cake for the school bake sale, but was about to buy animal-based gelatine for the glaze. The first employee had recognized the customer and asked if the animal gelatine was really what she wanted, triggering the rant. OP decided it wasn't worth trying to explain animal gelatine vs vegan gelatine and gives her the animal gelatine she wanted. Immediately after the bake sale, the teenage employee posted to the school's Facebook page that the "vegan" cake contained animal gelatine, at which point the customer got dogpiled by anyone who had ever bought one of her cakes. Some commenters suggest that the OP should have recommended a vegan gelatine rather than let her serve animal products to vegans, despite the customer's reaction to the first employee's attempt.
In this story^Summary, the customer being drunk and a jerk is emphasized in the narration itself. Beside this aspect, some comment also add the interpretation he likely was just a poseur who wanted to show off instead of an actual whisky amateur, because an actual alcohol connoisseur would already know how expensive an old, high end whisky would be.
The consensus in the comments of this story is that the patron's blunder, of thinking the directions to a restaurant (which took him off of the hotel's property) were the directions to his room, was just the result of him being tired and hungry after a long trip.
This woman believes that there are helicopters in her veins that make electric things she touches stop working, which she demonstrates by picking up a flashlight off the counter, clicking it on and off an unspecified number of times before it abruptly stops working. Was there something genuinely creepy/paranormal at work, or did she just burn out some component of the flashlight (such as the battery or bulb) by turning it on and off so many times in quick succession?
This story at a movie theater involves a woman who bought a seat way up front trying to steal a better seat from someone else, claiming that she wants to sit close to "[her] babies", as she continuously refers to the four teenaged kids in the seats adjacent to the one she's trying to steal. After the woman is forcefully escorted out by the police (by which point the movie has been delayed by half an hour), the attendant asks the kids (who didn't make a fuss throughout the whole ordeal) if they want to accompany their mother or stay in the movie. It's then that the kids inform the attendant that the woman was not even any one of the kids' mom in the first place and thought that the "babies" whom the woman had been constantly referring to were someone else. Although the implication is fairly clear that the woman was lying about being the kids' mom to get a better seat than the one she had already, some commenters nevertheless couldn't help wondering if the woman was indeed the kids' mom and they were so embarrassed by her actions that they denied knowing her when asked.
In this story, a customer in a Canadian hardware store keeps asking for various discounts he doesn't qualify for, and one of his arguments is that the policy doesn't apply to him because he doesn't speak English. While it sounds like Blatant Lies (it happened in the English-speaking part of Canada according to the story tags), a few comments pointed out the entire conversation may have been in French (there's no context information about the language used in the story).
In this story, a teacher falls down the stairs and gets a bruise on her face, but when she explains to her students, some of them believe that she's lying and actually got the bruise from domestic abuse. Does this imply that they knew, or even were, victims of domestic abuse? Or is it just because people lying that an abuse-related injury is something mundane is common enough to be a trope (known as Cut Himself Shaving on this website)? Or, considering it was multiple students, did they have different reasons for thinking it was abuse?
When this girl asks for candy canes, the submitter says it's fine, as long as her mother okays it. The girl says that either she, the submitter, or her doll's soul will have to ask her mother. Is the girl just messing with the submitter, or does she actually have a delusion that her doll has a soul?
This woman calls a cinema and is told, "We don't have electricity", "No movies are showing today", and "We have no power", but she seems to think those are movie titles. Was she really that stupid, was she just joking, or because she was on the phone, was her connection bad and so she didn't hear the submitter properly and thought they said something else?
Was this man, who seemingly misunderstands "a large Dew" as calling him a Jew, gets offended despite actually being Jewish, and replies that he's never been to the mountains when the submitter clarifies they meant a Mountain Dew actually confused, or joking?
Is this mother specifically ordering lactose-containing ice cream, and eating it in front of her tantruming lactose-intolerant child, a form of cruelty, a petty act of spite, or a perfectly legitimate punishment?

Not Always Working

There's a surprising number of entries about someone trying to buy alcohol along with other items, realizing they don't have their ID, and trying unsuccessfully to inform the cashier (who keeps saying they need ID) to put the wine aside and just let them buy the other stuff. Are they really that clueless, or are they so lazy they're hoping the customer will go and put the wine back for them if they keep this up long enough? Or they may just be so used to people complaining that they assume these people are doing the same.
- A comment in a related story suggests that this is the result of a store policy (meant to prevent underage buyers from purchasing without an ID) taken too far: "If the customer doesn't show ID for alcohol, nothing the customer says should change your mind."
The bystanders in this story. Were they all really that uncaring, or did they just figure the submitter had things under control and they were better off not getting involved? Alternatively, it's possible none of them intervened because they didn't know what to do when somebody has a seizure and didn't want to risk hurting the person (although someone could have at least helped keep the guard out of the way).
In this story, a court assistant cheerfully tells a concerned juror about how even the few hoses and extinguishers they pass without "Out of Order" signs don't work. Is their safety really that bad, or was it just some kind of twisted prank?
This funeral home director seems to find it amusing that he didn't check whether his, ahem, customers are actually dead before sending the body to the incinerator. Was the person unprofessional and apathetic, or was it merely a dark joke? Note that very dark humor is common in jobs with high emotional charge (such as funeral related ones).
In this story, a woman is in labor and the fetal heart monitor flatlines twice; at the second time, the doctor asks the husband (the submitter of the story): "We could lose the baby and we could quite possibly lose your wife. What do you think we should do?" The submitter seems to have thought the doctor was incompetent (his reaction: "I think one of us went to medical school, and I sure as h*** hope it was you!"), but comments point out that the doctor's question may have been a poorly worded attempt at asking the husband whether they should focus on saving the wife or the baby.^note
This story has an employee notice suspicious transfers in an account and heads to their manager, since only managers can freeze accounts. Their manager keeps brushing them off, citing them to be too busy, so the submitter goes to a different manager and gets them to freeze the account. The original manager gets annoyed because they think the submitter was causing a stink over nothing, despite being shown that $7,000 had been transferred just a few minutes before the account was frozen. Several comments are discussing if this manager is on a power trip and didn't like that their subordinate did things on their own, or if they were actually aware or even part of these suspicious transactions and purposefully stalled their employee.
In this story, a customer goes to return a skirt and gives the cashier the receipt... only for the cashier to act like the customer did not give her a receipt despite the fact that the customer gave it to her mere seconds before and it's still lying on the cashier's computer, frustrating the customer until the manager is called down to settle the problem. The comments theorize that the cashier was not merely just trying to be hard to get along with for no apparent reason and was actually trying to steal the receipt so they could pocket the money made with a fraudulent return using another of the same skirt with it.
This story's OP is bewildered by the fact that the cashier says they don't like artichokes when seconds ago they didn't know what they were. Several comments point out the possibility that the cashier ate some artichokes in a different form, like in a soup or dip, and didn't like them then and simply didn't recognize them in the raw form that OP was buying.
In this story, a worker borrowed a coworker's loyalty card to replace his own, which he had lost. Comments debate whether the coworker willingly lent his card or if the first worker "borrowed" (read: stole) it.
Did this employee really see no difference between someone forgetting to put their mask back on and someone ranting about how the COVID-19 Pandemic is a hoax designed to cause an Islamo-commie-fascist Day of the Jackboot through Bill Gates microchipping people, or was the employee so fed up with anti-maskers refusing to cooperate and threatening her health that the one genuine mistake just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back?
In this story, every month or so several soldiers at a US military base are forced to clean absolutely everything, even the rocks outside, until one day the first sergeant becomes unhappy with the rocks still looking dingy and orders them "bleached" - which the sergeant left in command over the weekend takes literally, resulting in the first sergeant coming back to rocks that still look dingy in a bed of dead plants (the bleach killed them), but unable to find any specific soldier to punish for it because they followed his orders to the letter and ultimately ending his obsession with how clean the rocks look. While the poster seems to think the lower-ranking sergeant was an idiot who made a blunder (the narration introduces him by pointing out he "isn’t the brightest bulb in the box"), commenters speculate it was malicious compliance from his part to force his superior to stop issuing this absurd order.
The OP in this story raises eyebrows at their boss saying the scripted phone greeting before actually picking up the ringing phone. Some comments point to other stories of people flubbing phone greetings and theorize that the boss was practicing the script so he wouldn't do so when he actually answered.
The comments for this story are sharply divided between those who think the receptionist's rude, lying behavior was a one-time mistake and she deserved to be forgiven, and those who think it was proof of long-term dishonesty behind her boss's back and she did not.
While nobody is really on the candidate's side in this story, some people think he didn't realize he was a bully and thought it was all in good fun, or at the very least, his memories of OP are more positive than the actual events were. His comments seem to back up this interpretation, and indeed, it's not uncommon for bullies to not realize they were hurting their victims, and try to talk to them as if they were old friends years later.
This manager. Misgendering asshole who got what was coming to him or did he legitimately not understand that the coworker he was looking for was non-binary and used different pronouns?
At the end of this story, the manager is described as "red-faced", but it's never stated if it's from embarrassment (due to the police calling him out for making a massive issue over something that his staff's fault, rather than the submitter) or rage (due to him not getting his desired outcome).
The mother in this story is described as being the complete opposite of the introverted submitter and loudly announces to the waitress that it's the submitter's birthday; yet when the waitress instead asks the submitter if she wants to be sung to (and the submitter says no), is noted to have given her a big tip. Innocently Insensitive woman who didn't realize what her loud announcement could have triggered (or was simply just excited) or was she gunning for the waitstaff to sing to her daughter, only to have a Heel Realization after hearing the waitress's story and realizing how much the daughter didn't want people to sing to her?
The maintenance worker in this story enters unannounced in an apartment then goes to the bathroom to do some repairs, and unexpectedly encounters the submitter there, who was half naked and cleaning an incision on her chest (consequences of heavy surgery, which also left a huge scar). The maintenance worker then take offense from seeing such disgusting wounds, refusing to take account he barged unannounced in a bathroom without checking if it was occupied first. While the situation may just be a coincidence caused by the maintenance worker being unprofessional, the story happened in a college housing facility (the submitter is the wife of a student studying here), and the maintenance worker's anger was specifically directed to the fact the submitter was doing something he found gross, which implies the man may have rushed to the occupied bathroom with the explicit intent of ogling at a pretty naked young woman, and got angry because he found something completely unsexy instead.
The Holidays Are Creeping Up On You has three different interpretations, depending on how you read it: (1) the narrator is correct to trust her gut and her manager is a bad boss for not believing her. (2) The narrator is a nervous wreck who is severely overreacting to the situation or (3) the narrator is a troll who wrote this story to prove that women are delicate.
In this story, one worker brought peanut butter treats and stored them in the workplace fridge, while knowing current rules forbid him to eat food with allergens onsite but not store it in the fridge. The same day, a new employee suffering from peanut allergy leaves early after suffering an allergic reaction and the other worker notices someone ate some of his peanut butter treats. The story ends with the company firing the new employee (for either poor judgment or deliberately trying to get someone else in trouble), but some comments speculate the food thief was someone else and the new employee was a collateral victim thanks to cross-contamination^note.(The incident, incidentally, caused the company to entirely ban allergenic food.)
A handful of comments on this story theorize that the guards were actually asleep on the job; it would explain why there was zero reaction from any of them to the very visible fire on the cameras, while the banging of one person on the window woke them up, hence why they only reacted then. They also moved very slowly when they did wake up and chose a longer route to take the elevator to the basement (NEVER a good idea; the warnings against using the elevator during a fire are there for a reason), which could be attributed to them not being fully awake at that point.
This submitter, when calling out his horrible manager who got away with his behavior by claiming homophobia whenever anyone complains, claims to be a pansexual in a polyamorous relationship with three other people. Was he really or was he lying to make a point to the manager that his sexuality isn't an excuse for him to be a horrible person?
The woman who asks if she is in various fictional locations — does she actually believe those places are real, or is she messing with the submitter? And if it's the former, does she have heatstroke (since she was sunburned), is she mentally ill, is she drunk or high, or (since she had recently been asleep), was it a Waking Non Sequitur?
This customer who allegedly thinks a "soy" is an animal due to the existence of soymilk — the submitter thinks they were just sassing them, taking "there's no such thing as a stupid question" as a challenge, but it could have also been that they were genuinely confused due to not having English as a first language.

Not Always Romantic

This teenager touching girls on the school bus has a learning disability, according to his parents. Comments are divided on the parents either lying about it to keep their child from being punished — many citing that his grinning when he's about to touch a girl's legs indicates that he's fully aware of what he's doing and that it's wrong — or they willingly don't do anything to help him, letting him run loose and wild, hoping this (alleged) disability will absolve them of any responsibility.
The girlfriends in this story overhear their boyfriends talking about what sounds like appearance-preferences, and banish their boyfriends to the couches. The few comments think the girlfriends overreacted to something they overheard without knowing the actual topic or consider their reaction to be emotionally abusive. However, the "we just need to find some" comment doesn't really make the boyfriends look good either.
In this story, the behavior of a Bridezilla causes her mother to eventually decide that the wedding will no longer be paid by the mother but the would-to-be bride would have to pay for it herself^Summary, then the would-to-be groom entirely cancels the wedding the next day. Commenters debate whether the groom cancelled the wedding because he broke up with his girlfriend after the incident showed how awful his bride was, or if he only cancelled because the wedding was no longer funded by his mother-in-law (which could mean either greed, or just being unable to afford to pay entirely for it). In the latter option, it could mean he only courted this woman in the first place because she belongs to a rich family.
Many commenters believe that the man in this story may have suffered a stroke or some kind of injury. While what he said was definitely inappropriate and creepy, it's worth noting that his wife is unfazed by this, and her first reaction is to apologize to the OP, stating that "He's learning boundaries".
Commenters on this story have conjectured that the husband's irrational paranoia of his wife cheating was because he was cheating and projecting his mindset onto his wife. It could have also been because he was on-edge due to having previously been cheated on by a different partner.
In this story, the submitter works in a pub and witnesses a couple of married patrons having a "messy break-up", then being apparently so distraught they forgot to pay when leaving (they did after being reminded). A comment wonders if the heated argument was actually a scheme to have free drinks, planning on the staff being too embarrassed by the scene to ask for payment.
In this story, did the submitter's boyfriend, who is "on the spectrum", really not understand his friend was lying about catching the submitter cheating due to an unrequited crush... or did he find a way to calmly employ Conviction by Contradiction without directly accusing her of anything, thus not even giving her the satisfaction of upsetting him?
This story features a husband planning a full apology dinner for his wife, after she had a lousy day entirely due to mistakes he made. Some comments slam the guy hard for thinking he can just apologize without changing his behavior (it's indicated in the story that he's made some of those mistakes several times before), but multiple commenters with ADHD say his behavior sounds just like untreated ADHD and the guy needs to be tested.
While many are against the submitter in this story, without much information, some have wondered if they had this conversation multiple times, and this one moment just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back rather than him blowing up for no reason.

Not Always Learning

This professor: senile, or secretly testing his students to find out which ones don't do their own research?
This teacher deals with a 10th grade class that had been unruly all year by refusing to approve their requests to go on to AP or even just Honors, with the exception of the sole well-behaved student. The replies have been divided as to whether the teacher should have tried harder throughout the year to rein them in, or if she tried all she was allowed under the administration and her hands were ultimately tied up until that point. Doubly so since she's a first-year teacher, so she might lack the experience and know-how to deal with such students.
The teacher in these two stories is so unhelpful that by the second one, the commentators were beginning to suspect that he was either being unhelpful on purpose and likes seeing the students squirm through and through or, in regards to the second story, was being unhelpful (and, eventually, outright hostile) to the students as payback for getting him suspended from the school over the Problem Girl incident.
This teacher: well-intentioned, Innocently Insensitive idiot who doesn't understand anything about boundaries, introversion, or that trying to force a shy girl to come out of her shell before she feels comfortable with making friends at this particular school is going to make her a bully magnet? Or, as a few commenters pointed out, a possible groomer?
Did this vice-principal^summary sincerely underestimate their student body's mental age, or did they deliberately pass the message in such a goofy way to be sure the students would remember it? The submitter assumes the former, but a few comments assumed the latter.
In this story, the poster appears to think a professor's way of teaching his students to save their work regularly (namely, cutting power to the computer lab while the students are in the middle of coursework) was "tough love". The comments almost universally slam the professor, both for deliberately sabotaging his students' coursework and for the damage he was likely doing to the terminals by playing with the breaker switch.
While this principal brought everything on himself, some debates happened around his daughter; was she a Spoiled Brat who cut her father off because she didn't get what she wanted? Or was she disgusted by her father's stunt? Some have even speculated that this may have been the latest in a long line of broken promises and parental failures; in that case, this may have simply been the straw that broke the camel's back. If that last point is true, then this adds another layer to the principal's actions; he may have realized he was on his last chance with his daughter, and did that stunt out of desperation to save whatever relationship he still had with her, only for the results to make her cut him off for good after she finally had enough.
The OP in this story gets last-minute inspiration for a writing assignment in a dream, only for a friend to point out that it's basically the plot of a movie they saw last week. (Specifically, Heathers.) With no time to think of anything else, OP just tells themself that it's OK since it's not a word-for-word rehash and turns it in anyway. When they're called to the office, they think they're getting penalized for plagiarism, only for it to turn out that the staff were just concerned that OP was about to go on a killing spree due to the nature of the essay. OP successfully argues that it was ultimately an argument for pacifism and walks away thinking the staff had no idea about the movie. Some comments theorize that they could have recognized the general plot, but didn't consider it plagiarism because it was still the OP's own take on it.

Not Always Related

The mother in this story: Scatterbrained smother whose mind is too far up in the clouds to stop and listen to her grown-up child's wishes (and what they're allergic to), or Jerkass who knows full well she's using a detergent her kid is allergic to, but just doesn't care because she herself likes it? The fact that she put clothing that the submitter was planning to donate back in their drawers in spite of them saying what it was for implies the former.
The father-in-law becoming a born-again Christian and becoming much more abrasive and rude to his family and friends over time. Several commenters question whether the guy's change of attitude might be indicative of a health issue — like a brain tumor or illness — and not a case of Belief Makes You Stupid. Or was he just always an asshole, but his new religion gave him an outlet and "appropriate" targets? Or is he suffering from a self-righteousness addiction?
The comments in this story seem divided over whether the submitter's dad was awesome for navigating out of a state about to get hit by a massive snowstorm (and only just barely keeping ahead of said snowstorm), or if he was just crazy for risking crashing his car and injuring himself and his family in rapidly deteriorating weather conditions just to not end up stranded in a hotel in Wyoming for Christmas (it's mentioned that semis are already losing control and toppling over).
Is this cousin who frivolously buys things for himself and his family members merely very unwise with his money or are his bizarre spending habits the result of an untreated psychological disorder (especially since he buys his family members the same exact thing over and over again, such as constantly giving one person calendars)?
The aunt in this story, zealously insisting that anyone old enough should be dependent on the services of a senior center, and particularly adamant that they join the one to which she belongs. Is it indeed a cult run by the director she clearly reveres, or is she senile and misinterpreting the words of a well meaning director? Indeed, she may be misinterpreting advice given specifically to her.
- The sequel shows that the director does indeed say that every senior 'needs' to join a center, and is in fact pushing for a law that would mandate it (though given that the director explicitly mentions wanting the law to bring more money into her center, it seems likely that her motives are selfish).
In this story, the submitter repeatedly tries to contact their mother to debate about something the mother posted on Facebook, which resulted in the mother trying to burn all bridges with the submitter and their close family (the relation was amended a few times later); it turns out the mother felt harassed. At least one comment points out lack of context about the family's background and past interactions allows a potential interpretation which makes the mother's reaction much more understandable:
Comment from user Lord Circe: [...] Now, was cutting you out of her life an overreaction? Yes, provided that this is honestly the single inciting incident, and not simply the latest in a pattern of you harassing her when she is doing something you think is wrong. You may think that you were trying for a "reasonable discussion", but you ultimately were just hounding her for not engaging with you.
- Another point of contention among commentators is how the submitter mentioned that their mother was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. General consensus is that the submitter blames their mother's behaviour on her diagnosis.
While no one's defending the Step-Aunt in this story for dragging the (child at the time) OP around Epcot all day, a lot of people pondered if she was trying to do the "Drink Around The World" challenge, where you get an alcoholic beverage from each "country" showcased at Epcot. Building from this, some wonder if that was her original plan for the day and she was bitter that it was interrupted by the request to take OP to ride the Tower of Terror. (Though many of those same commenters point out that the Step-Aunt could have taken the OP to the ride, dropped her back at the hotel, and then gone drinking and everyone would have been happy.)
In this story, the submitter's step-father blows his stack and demands that the staff at a fast food restaurant be fired when they get the family's order wrong three times in a row, with the submitter finding out from a classmate who worked there that the manager did fire half the staff afterward. The story presents this as the step-father getting a bunch of innocent employees at a restaurant fired by a Bad Boss, but the comments point out that the staff messed up their order three times, leaving the step-father's complaints completely justified (assuming the orders were completely messed up all three times and the complaints weren't over extremely minor things) and suggesting that the restaurant may have been full of lazy slackers who didn't care about their jobs.
In this story, the submitter and their mother take in an abandoned hamster. At some point after this, a neighbor comes in and remarks to the mother that she "didn't know [they] kept rats" upon seeing the hamster. The mother, who has a phobia of rats, is immediately driven into a panic attack and isn't placated until the vet reassures her the hamster is still a hamster and did not spontaneously morph into a rat. Commenters questioned the intent behind the friend's rat remark, wondering whether or not it was an Innocently Insensitive remark or a comment meant to deliberately trigger the mom's phobia (it's worth mentioning that the friend in question was the same person who found and brought the abandoned hamster to them in the first place).
In this story, the submitter notices that their mother's computer has gone missing. When they ask their sister about it, she responds with "you need to ask Mom" in a serious tone while smiling, and their mother later admits to setting the computer on fire because of a Screamer Prank that claimed the NSA was spying on her through her computer. Some commenters theorised that the sister may have been behind the pop-up, based on her reaction.

Not Always Friendly

The beggar in this story claims to have not eaten for most of the day, but when the OP offers him a sandwich, he asks what kind it is. Unreasonable Picky Eater, or a victim of an allergy/intolerance/disease that leaves him with dietary restrictions that he still has to be wary about regardless of how hungry he is? Many commenters seem to think the latter, calling out the OP for being rude and snarky about what could have been a legitimate concern.
A theater patron being incredibly disruptive during a live play, laughing when he shouldn't and not when he should, talking back to the actors, and generally being disruptive, is dismissed as just being a brat by the submitter. The comments might have agreed if he was a child, but he's described as being in his 20s, leading a few to wonder if he has neurodivergent special needs that were neglected when he was growing up.
Invoked at the end of this story, where the submitter questions whether or not they or her elderly acquaintance was in the wrong in the described situation, wherein the submitter gets him a chain to attach his glasses to so he won't keep losing them, only for him to later give said chain away to another elderly friend of his right in front of the submitter, claiming that "once a gift is given, the receiver can do with it as he pleases".^note
Is the submitter's friend really The Ditz in this story, or did she just use Obfuscating Stupidity to make the boy stop trying to use bad pickup lines on her?
In this story, the submitter was watching a cartoon on their laptop during a long travel in bus; a stranger asks if he could watch too and the submitter doesn't mind, but then the stranger notices the laptop's webcam is covered in tape and starts a long, insult-filled rant where he accuses the submitter of believing conspiracy theories.^note Was he just a jerk who intended to show off by explaining how "tech-savvy" they are? Or was he a decent person who happened to have conspiracy theories as Berserk Button, for various reasons (for instance, having lost friends who became conspiracy theorists)? In either case, it still makes him a rude asshole.
This peer of the submitter's is unable to comprehend that the submitter built their daughter's playhouse themselves and repeatedly asks who their contractor was or where they got the playhouse from no matter how many times the submitter tells him that they built it by themselves. Did the other parent not think that anyone wealthy enough to send their child to an affluent private school would bother building something themselves, or was the submitter (whose gender is never mentioned) a woman and the other parent was refusing to believe that a woman could build a playhouse by herself?
Does the old lady in this story really have trouble walking or was she lying to try and steal the parking spot?

Not Always Healthy

Medical staff insisting on performing pregnancy tests on any female patient - including those who have had hysterectomies, are sterile due to medical reasons, or weren't even born female. While they might be trying to milk more money by performing unnecessary tests, it's possible that they've been subjected to the But I Can't Be Pregnant! line from patients so often that they simply choose to ignore any patient and perform the test anyways. (Of course, in many cases, a quick glance at the patient's medical history would be an easier solution.)
This transplant patient's wife gets told that her husband will be thrown off the transplant list for failing to show up for an appointment. After a week of back-and-forth, the submitter gets a letter and tells the coordinator that her insurance paid for the supposedly missed appointment, so the staff is either committing insurance fraud or lying about her husband not having appeared for his appointment. After that, the paperwork suddenly appears. Was there really attempted insurance fraud going on, or did the staff honestly misplace the paperwork?
This woman complains that she was put down as having an egg allergy when she's only allergic to the yolks. When the submitter pries further, she finds that the woman didn't have an allergy; she just doesn't like runny yolks. Honest mistake about what an allergy is, or was she served food with something she requested be left off so many times that she habitually claims allergy because that's the only way her request will be honored?
Pick any story where a person is DIY-ing a treatment for something that clearly needs professional medical attention. If the location is in the US (or not given, at which point people will generally assume the US unless implied otherwise), commenters will assume it's because the person can't afford medical help.
Several comments to this story speculate that the loony-acting folk healer was trying to convince his client to go to a real hospital for his affliction (all but stated to be COVID-19). If he was, it worked.
The crooked dentist from this story dies from Covid-19 before legal action against them could succeed, and the last sentence mentions the people who started said legal action now have a private joke where they refer the pandemic as a "kill stealer." Comments debate whether those people literally wished for the dentist's death, or if it merely highlighted the dentist died before being tried and condemned for their fraud.
The K-9 officer in this story. Commenters pointed out that (1) the paw contains many nerve endings - the reason paper cuts hurt so much for us humans - so the officer might be genuinely hurting more than the submitter assumed, (2) the dog might have been hurt in the paw before and having a fear/pain reaction to that, or (3) it might not even understand how major/minor the pain is, only that it was hurting. Given how often humans who can communicate to doctors about their physical pain and mental trauma are dismissed, this could be the case for the K-9.
This guy can't remember what strength of melatonin he needs to get for his girlfriend's son, and then gives up and insists on leaving even though the worker at the pharmacy he is at has no issue waiting for him to call her to clarify. Many of the comments believe (based on the man's flippant attitude and his comment that his girlfriend usually does this) that the guy was deliberately doing a terrible job at running this errand so he wouldn't be asked to do so again.

Not Always Legal

A woman gets a ticket for speeding, but the policeman immediately gives up after learning she works for a local law firm owned by the local head judge (and is on a First-Name Basis with her boss), which could be interpreted in several ways:
1. Said judge is known for being corrupt, so the policeman thought it wouldn't be worth the effort since the ticket would be cancelled anyway.
2. Since the woman is on First-Name Basis with the local head judge (or at least claims to be), the policeman assumes that she'll try to pull a Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!.
3. Said judge would have been the prosecutor for the speeding offence. Since he also is the woman's boss, that would create a conflict of interest, so the policeman destroyed the ticket to avoid some administrative headache.
4. The driver didn't deserve this ticket, and the policeman was a Dirty Cop who backed down once he learned the woman worked in a law firm (since she would have noticed this was fishy).
In this story, the submitter gets in a car accident when the driver in front of the submitter abruptly slams on their brakes, causing the car behind her to rear-end the submitter. When the police are on the scene, two random busybodies who witnessed the accident suddenly rush up and try to make it seem like the submitter was at fault for the accident (when it is very obvious that the driver in front was at fault). While the police and the rear-ender prove the ladies' accusations incorrect, the submitter is left baffled as to why the two randomly decided to throw her under the bus. The comments theorize that the accident was actually an attempted insurance scam that the first driver and women were in on: the first driver meant to brake-check the submitter and blame them for the resulting accident, and the women were supposed to back the driver up to make the submitter look guilty and pay the insurance money. However, the submitter not hitting the driver's car along with the third driver unexpectedly hitting the submitter caused the scam to go completely pear-shaped, which resulted in the driver fleeing and the women trying to salvage the scheme.
This teenage con artist has been repeatedly running away from home and getting caught by the police since she was ten, and her parents didn't even bother reporting it this time. Is she just a Consummate Liar, or are there problems at home, or is she mentally unwell and can't get help?
Most of the comments agree that this student's second email is a complete non-sequitur to the previous exchange, and is more likely meant for someone else and sent to the police address by mistake than the rude dismissal it was taken as.
Did this robber (who robbed a computer store after writing his name, phone number, and address on an invoice) give false information or not? Sure, telling the truth would be very dumb of him and he could just as easily write in nonsense, but petty crooks being unbelievably stupid is not exactly uncommon.
This lawyer story^noteThe defendant in an upcoming trial calls the plaintiff's lawyer to ask if they have to show up for the trial. The lawyer answers the defendant doesn't technically have to be here but in this case will lose the trial if they don't, as there won't be anyone else to represent them. The defendant conclude they won't show up.:
- Some comments and the site's editor (the story has the "Stupid" tag) believe that the defendant is really dumb; but some comments postulate the defendant was sure they would lose the trial anyway, didn't want to waste time and energy in the matter, and just wanted to check if attendance was legally required.
- The "you’re not represented by anybody else" bit means the defendant has no lawyer yet. Some comments have interpreted the dialog as the defendant checking whereas they should have their own lawyer for the case, and the part where the defendant decide to not come after being told it would make them lose the case could mean they would send a lawyer instead.
In this story, a customer who cancelled an installation threatens to kill the technician who previously serviced him if he returns to his house. The comments note that there's no context for this situation or how warranted the threat is (i.e. it could be anywhere from "I don't want a [racist slur] in my house" to "this guy tried to look up my daughter's skirt").
This story has an apathetic clerk who doesn't care about someone stealing from his uncles' store and is indicated to be generally doing a pretty poor job running it. Is he simply lazy because he thinks he can get away with it due to Nepotism or was he coerced into taking the job by his family (possibly for little to no pay) and is deliberately doing a poor job in retaliation?

Alternative Character Interpretation / Not Always Right