Every now and then, Not Always Right gets an entry where the submitter clearly thinks the incident was funny, awesome, or worthy of sympathy and where they consider themselves to be right... only for the readers to disagree completely and make their opinions clear in the comments section.
Not Always Right
- This atheist couple
are clearly meant to be the "good" customers in contrast to the stingy religious customers, but considering that they only mention they're atheists to compare themselves to religious people and their idea of "everything worthwhile about religion" is "nothing", they come across as incredibly smug and self-righteous Hollywood atheists. Additionally, a commenter points out that the couple had no way of knowing the OP wasn't themself religious, in which case the "note" would've come across as incredibly insulting towards their beliefs. - The customer in this story is clearly trying to scam this ice cream store, bringing in $100 bills for $2 purchases early in the morning, going out to their car to hide small amounts of the change, and then coming back in to demand they get the $5-$10 they were short. Ordinarily, the scammer would get the brunt of the derision from the comments section, except that the manager (the poster of the story) falls for the scam twice before cottoning on, despite how many red flags there were (and even if it wasn't a scam, it's a bad practice to accept hundreds for small purchases because it depletes your entire supply of change for the day). Some people also pointed out that the $100 bills could have very easily been fake (which is common in scams like this), meaning the poster could have been tricked into giving out hundreds of dollars instead of just the $15 that the scammer got out of them.
- The submitter of this story, a computer repair worker, is upset that the customer didn't inform them of an app that tinted their screen yellow, causing them to wrongly diagnose the new motherboard as faulty. Fair enough, but the submitter A) states that the computer didn't "malfunction" until two seconds after Windows had loaded (which proved that the tinting was related to the software, not the hardware), B) admits to not asking about a tinting app before the installation, and C) still tries to spin it as solely the customer's fault. The comments rip them to pieces.
- In this story, one of the submitter's assigned tasks is "to stand and direct people to various venue events, concessions, or the restrooms". A customer asks them if they work there, if they have restrooms, and where the restrooms are (note that the OP is standing directly underneath the sign for the restrooms). The poster (internally) follows every single sentence from the customer with a snide comment and gives the customer a sarcastic wrong answer (which the poor customer believes) to the question of where the restrooms are. As the comments section points out, missing a sign in a crowded, noisy movie theater lobby isn't actually all that surprising, and directing customers to the restrooms is something that the OP stated was an explicit part of their job.
- The hotel desk clerk in this story (now archived) starts out by bragging that they're a "smarta** with no filter". Their boss is Korean, and they frequently have customers who mistake her for being Chinese. OP is unbearably chagrined that in 2021 anyone can't tell the difference between the East Asian races, seemingly stemming from a guilty conscience because they used to think all Hispanic people were Mexican. So when someone says that they spoke to the 'Chinese woman', OP says that nobody like that works there and refuses to help them, acting like they're fighting the good fight by dunking on bigots. Before the story was pulled, commenters almost unanimously thought they were just being an asshole.
- This submitter talks about having to deal with a teenage customer who admits to being a fan of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight, the latter of which the submitter and their co-worker had just been criticizing. While the submitter presents themselves as being beleaguered by an annoying fan, the commenters have instead sided with the teenager, pointing out that the submitter comes off as a snob who looks down on anyone who doesn't share their opinion. Not helping matters is that the submitter attributes the teen's use of Buffy Speak to Meyer's influence, despite the fact that Buffy is literally the Trope Namer due to being frequently credited as being the originator of that sort of speech.
- This restaurant's Chicken Caesar Salad is stated to be pretty different from the classic salad, though most customers enjoy it nonetheless. A customer orders it and then makes a big fuss once she gets her salad and notices that it doesn't contain the correct ingredients. While she could have been more attentive (especially because she stated that she didn't read the menu, which the author says lists all of the ingredients for the salad), many comments point out that the restaurant is partially at fault for this, as using the name of a famous recipe with specific ingredients to refer to a different dish is asking for trouble.Comment from user Bibliovore: Any restaurant can put whatever they want on their menu and call it whatever they wish [edit: beyond trademarks], but if you take a known thing and you change the thing substantially but don't change the name, you _will_ get complaints. That's kind of the price of doing that.
- In this story (cross-posted from Reddit), the poster and another customer laugh at a customer who doesn't know when Cinco de Mayo is. Several comments point out that Cinco de Mayo is not a major holiday in many areas note , and some of the hype in the US is because it's seen as a "drinking holiday" — if the first customer didn't drink, why would he keep track of the day?note
- One white-collar submitter writes a story about meeting someone from a blue-collar job whose line of duty left him covered in dirt, making him feel too embarrassed to shake the submitter's hand, only for the submitter to not only initiate a hand shake, but to pull him in for a hug, ending the story by encouraging the readers to treat blue-collar workers with respect. On the surface, this seems totally fine and even outright heartwarming. However, the problem with the story is that it reeks with self-righteousness, as many in the comments pointed out how the submitter was clearly only posting the story to see the congratulations they'd get from the site's userbase, with their dialogue reading like a pretentious Author Tract for the submitter to pat themselves on the back over. Because of this and the story's overall white knight tone, the entire story comes off as incredibly condescending towards blue-collar workers. Ironically, there wound up being nary a positive comment to be seen as a result.Comment from user Ian R.: Treating blue-collar workers with respect is great and you should do that. Using a blue-collar worker as an opportunity to show off how "humble" you are is the opposite of that.
- This former barista recounts a customer they call stupid for not knowing the two blends being used that day when just asking for a regular coffee, referencing him as the most recent of the many "clueless idiots" they have served. The comments are quick to call out the OP for acting like a snob.
- The OP of this story suggested a customer's six-year-old car was too old and it should be replaced… because it needs new windshield wipers. The comments pointed out that a) replacing a car over windshield wipers is incredibly wasteful and b) six years is not even close to old age for a car.
- The manager in this short story is asked a question by a customer, who prefaces it by admitting that it might be a bit stupid. The manager simply laughs it off and tells the customer that no question is stupid if they're trying to figure something out. So the customer asks them about soymilk and what animal a "soy" is, prompting the manager to respond that their statement wasn't a challenge to prove them wrong. The manager, assumingly the one meant to be sympathetic given the story's place in the "Right" category instead of "Working", was quickly eviscerated by the comments for their blatantly unhelpful response to a perfectly reasonable question, pointing out the difference between mere ignorance and genuine stupidity (the customer, for all we know, may not have even been a native English speaker), as well as the fact that the manager contradicted their own statement by trying to be wittier than they actually were.
Not Always Romantic
- The submitter of this story jumps down his girlfriend's throat over a relatively minor provocation and displays hypocrisy over not liking being interrupted while interrupting her. The comments note he probably needs to work on his communication skills.
- The OP of this story claims to have been in an "emotional affair" with a man who was cheating on his wife, only to find out that he was having an affair with a coworker at the same time, which led to both outing him to his wife and all three unceremoniously dumping him and moving on with their lives. While the cheating husband unsurprisingly got no sympathy from readers, many also berated the OP and her coworker for getting into an affair with a man they knew was married, and not feeling any shame about it until they figured out he was emotionally manipulating them both. The fact that they were both supposedly good friends with his wife while they were still in the middle of their affairs only resulted in further derision from commenters, who felt that said wife was the only truly sympathetic character in the whole story.
Not Always Related
- The dad in this story; to make a long story short, the dad concocts an elaborate scheme to avoid taking his daughter (the then-young submitter) on a vacation to Mexico, lying to multiple family members and stealing his daughter's spending money in order to support the ruse, because he was mad at her over her choosing to live with her mother instead of him when he and the submitter's mother divorced and didn't want to pay child support. The story ends with the implication that the dad was Easily Forgiven for the incident, when (as pointed out by the site's commentators, who reacted to the story's ending with almost unanimous disgust) the incident should have been taken as proof that the family needed to cut ties with the dad, who is demonstrated by the story to be willing to lie to multiple family members (including children!) to save money.
- Things did, however, get somewhat more complicated in the sequel. A few years after the incident, the dad and stepmom divorced, and the mother suspended visitation as she feared the dad's behavior would worsen as a result. Shortly afterward, the daughter did start visiting him after school and he actually acted like a dad for a while, but then he got a new girlfriend who didn't like her, and they end up breaking off contact. Years later, the daughter received a call revealing that he was dying in hospital, and began visiting him at his deathbed; she did end up forgiving him for his past actions — because, you know, dying — but couldn't help pointing out that his girlfriend, who had essentially ditched him at the hospital and left the matter in others' hands, had left him behind, just as he left her behind all those years earlier.
- Things did, however, get somewhat more complicated in the sequel
- The narrator of this story. It is understandable that they're frustrated by her friend's extremely bratty and unpleasant young niece, as well as said niece's mother forcing them and their friends to babysit her child at what was supposed to be an adults-only gathering. However, readers in the comments were put off by the vindictive language and variety of colorful names used to describe the child, including calling her an "asshole", "rotten little crotch goblin", and "spoiled, destructive brat". They also pointed out that the child's bad behavior is likely a result of being badly disciplined (it's noted that once the unpleasant sister lost custody of the child, her behavior got better), which would put her mother more at fault than her in the scenario. Story-wise, it also doesn't help that in the anecdote described, the child doesn't actually do anything particularly horrible, aside from maybe unpausing a horror movie she wasn't supposed to be watching and then starting to scream and cry, for which the OP calls her a brat.
- The narrator of this story. A family goes to a county fair for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, only for a Jerkass grandmother to bodily shove the submitter out of the way as he's trying to board a roller coaster with his four-year-old son and pitch her granddaughter (who is clearly too young for the ride and doesn't want to go on) into the seat beside the son. The end result is that the granddaughter screams and flails through the ride (catching the son on every swing) and afterward the son is so distraught that the family has to go straight home. While obviously nobody in the comments had much sympathy for the grandmother (especially since she gets away with all of her horrid behavior), few had sympathy for the submitter either and said he was just as responsible for the ruined day as she was since he made little effort to put his foot down in front of her and allowed the subsequent roller coaster ride from Hell to happen. Some point out that he could have also called security or taken his son off the cart so they could catch the next ride and be able to ride together as intended.
Not Always Learning
- This entry is a good example; apparently most other people don't think it's funny or cute when you deliberately snub and humiliate a schoolgirl on her actual birthday, while also putting the shyest girl in class in an awkward situation by singing "happy birthday" for her instead. General consensus? "Wow, all of you are complete assholes."
- The submitter of this story barges into their music teacher's office and screams at them over the B grade they got. While the reasoning for the grade is completely unjust (the other bassoonist was better than them, having played it for five years while the submitter was only playing it for five months, which apparently somehow invalidated what the submitter had actually accomplished in those five months) and the submitter's rage is understandable (the unjust grade drove them under the threshold for National Honor Society by .001, costing them a major scholarship, and the NHS refused to budge even when the grade was changed to an A), the commenters note that screaming at a teacher is not an appropriate way to handle the situation.
- The submitter of this story demands that their student attach a "front sheet" to their homework, but refuses to explain what it is or why it's not arbitrary. The comments blast the submitter for refusing to properly communicate with the student, blaming the issue on their accent.
Not Always Friendly
- This dog-owner failed to get much sympathy from the comments due to them being unnecessarily rude whenever people mistake their husky for another one that's running around loose in the neighborhood and causing trouble, and asking/harassing the OP about it. Granted, several of the other neighbors were rude as well, but the comments point out that there were far more polite ways for the OP to handle the situation instead of cussing said neighbors out and Flipping the Bird at them. It doesn't help that the OP doesn't appear to even try to investigate why multiple neighbors are accusing their dog of causing trouble, either, instead just waving it off as "it must be someone else's husky" every time.
Not Always Legal
- This story involves the OP evading a speeding ticket due to the system the officer is using crashing. Instead of laughing about her stroke of luck, the comments section chastises her for not paying attention when she knew there was a speed trap in the area, and being evasive when the officer tried to question her which just made him more suspicious, alongside being late for volunteer work not being a valid excuse for going 15 MPH over the speed limit.
- The families of the girls in this story. While it is understandable for them to be angry with the girls for skipping school to fool around with their older boyfriends, some commenters were uncomfortable with the way they started immediately yelling and berating the girls after finding them at the police station, with one of the mothers even throwing a book bag across the room. It has been pointed out that such a reaction, rather than scaring the girls away from ever doing such things again, might make them less likely to come to their parents for help the next time they were in trouble, which could potentially make things even worse. Not to mention that the boyfriends in question were in their 20s, which would make the girls victims of statutory rape (though the story does at least confirm that the boyfriends were arrested).
