Not Always Right / YMMV

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Accidental Innuendo: This story. A very young girl getting food at a canteen restaurant turns out to have misunderstood a statment from her father according to which only boys can have balls when she turns down the opportunity to get meatballs, which she likes. Once her mother clears up the misunderstanding, the little girl asks, of all things, if she can also have a sausage.
Archive Binge: Combined with a mild case of Bile Fascination, this site can occupy you for days. But if you want to pick up where you left off in the archive, read it by month. The /page URLs aren't stable because the site presents newest posts first. And then there's the spin-off sites...^{To be specific...}
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A fair few stories are essentially someone's Real Life BLAM experience.
- For example, a customer at a dog grooming salon enters with one blind cat, one shaved, and one dressed like a clown, believing that the salon is a military school where they can leave the cats for one year, refusing to take them to the kennel since it supposedly contains penguins and bacteria. The manager responds by offering some sea ice from the e. coli farm, which for some bizarre reason absolutely infuriates the customer. At least it turns out this one was an April Fools story...
- This customer orders ice cream, then asks the worker if they believe in unicorns, then puts the ice cream cone on his head and leaves.
- A case of suddenly bursting into dance, and then just getting back to what you were doing before.
- This guy rides into a donut shop wearing an Easter Bunny costume and riding a unicycle. He makes his order, slams his head on the counter, dropping an egg, and rides out, donuts in hand, without another word. The egg contained exact change and a big tip!
- This customer took the Michigan J. Frog approach to telemarketers.
- This person called a wireless support center just to sing about snowmen.
- This bizarre story; where a woman at a grocery store for unexplained reasons refuses to pay for her groceries with anything or let the cashier suspend her transaction, and proceeds to stand by the register for what's implied to be minutes on end until a breathless man suddenly dashes into the store and offers to pay for the groceries. The woman reacts as though she was just given the moon, springs onto the man's back, and rides piggyback on his back as he pushes her cart out, leaving customers and store employees alike standing there speechless in confusion. Even the NAR editors were baffled by the incident if the story's title is anything to go by.
- This customer whips out a miniature flamethrower in their wallet and then acts like nothing happened. After he leaves, the submitter isn't sure it really happened.
- Another example where even the NAR editors were left confused.
Broken Aesop: Stories starring rich customers who received worse service when their clothes didn't show their wealth, ending with a lesson at not judging a book by its cover. This is fine in stories where they simply dress casually; but when they show up in the store dirty and smelly, especially if they could damage the merchandise by getting their dirt onto it, it proves the customers are just as inconsiderate as the employees, if not more.
- However, one would think that if a risk of damaging merchandise was the issue, the employee would say so rather than just being rude and/or ignoring them.
Broken Base:
- Some people aren't fond of the more obviously fake stories, claiming they ruin the site's integrity or are just poorly written (said stories usually follow the same generic framework of "narrator or their manager calls out an asshole, they get applause/tips from everyone else"). Others enjoy them out of pure Bile Fascination.
- Any issues are, however, mitigated a bit by the fact that the most obviously fake stories are kept in the 'Unfiltered' section and don't end up on the main site.
- The addition of the comments section is a hugely divisive. Some visitors are happy that they get to share their thoughts on the stories, while others hate how much of a Troll magnet the system can be (for some reason, the site gets hit with it particularly bad in comparison with news sites and even YouTube).
- When it was announced that the editors would stop cross-posting stories (taking a story posted on one site and reposting it on another in lieu of a new story), the response was generally positive. When a story from NAH got cross-posted to NAW some time later, the comments were split between those calling out the editors for not sticking to their word, and those thinking the former group needs to take a chill pill.
Crazy Is Cool:
- Combined with a big old shot of Hot-Blooded here.
- This married couple uses loud bird calls to find each other in case they get separated in large stores.
- The unicycling Easter bunny mentioned under Big Lipped Alligator Moment. He enters the store wearing an Easter Bunny costume and riding a unicycle. He makes his order, slams his head on the counter, dropping an egg, and rides out, donuts in hand, without another word.
- The young man in this story.
- See a bunch of unruly-looking men harassing a scared girl? Start a flash-mob.
Crosses the Line Twice: "Do you have stripper costumes? ... They won't fit my daughter, she's six." The current top comment on that post just says, "What the everlasting f*ck?!"
Epileptic Trees: In this story, a woman returns two skirts inside "a vacuum bag — like the kind that goes on a vacuum", and they happened to be good enough to allow the return to be completed without issue. Since it doesn't make much sense (clothes actually sucked by a vacuum cleaner would damaged and/or dirty, while those skirts apparently weren't), some comments speculated the story was heavily redacted by an editor who didn't understand the original submission, and it originally was about another kind of "vacuum bag" (i.e. a sealed bag filled with vacuum — in the physics meaning of the word), and/or was submitted by someone who didn't personally witness the event and misunderstood what they were told.
Esoteric Happy Ending: What was intended to be portrayed as an awesome moment for a store manager by the submitter did not come off as such to most of the commenters. Despite the manager giving the obnoxious and smug customer a well-deserved verbal smackdown, the story still ends with the customer having successfully cheated the store's return system, as well as cheated the store itself out of $30. She also got the manager and OP to cave to her demands before telling her off, leaving her likely to have learned nothing at all and continue her spoiled and entitled behavior somewhere else. This comment on the post sums up why this story did not actually have a happy ending:
Rob Tonka: There is nothing amazing about this story except for how far OP and her manager bent over backwards to accommodate this woman. You should not have allowed the return and your manager should not have given her the extra $30. She got exactly what she wanted and did not deserve and you think telling her off after that is amazing?
Harsher in Hindsight: There are a couple of older stories, like this one, about customers being paranoid about being spied on via their webcams, back when such cameras were relatively new technology. Fast forward several years, the nightmare is now very possible. Note that most of the comments in the former story, the oldest of which are from 2017 (due to the comment switch from Facebook to Disqus) while the story is from 2010, are agreeing with the "paranoid" customer.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- When this story was posted, the latest version of Firefox was 3.6, and major releases were very rare — at the rate they came out back then, being at version 12 as the customer claimed would have meant they were calling the present from around the mid-2030s at the earliest. Since then, they have started being released much faster. Firefox 12 was released on April 24, 2012, a little over one year and five months later. Version 13 came out less than two weeks after. By October 2015, Firefox was at version 41, and sadly we still do not have hover cars.
- In one story, a woman asks if there's "any Mario games with fighting or shooting."
Inferred Holocaust:
- This story will make you worry about the man involved.
- Arguably, any story where a customer tries to get their kids involved. Delinquency of a minor is a major offense, and if the offender already had a criminal record, the reports could have DCS take them away from their family (though if things were that bad, it would be for the better).
- How easily some parents leave their children alone with a stranger, not only in this church daycare, but also mistaking lifeguards and cashiers for babysitters.
- A drunk pair goes through a restaurant drive-thru after getting lost in Canada, with their constant disbelief that they are in the country amusing the restaurant staff. What was likely intended to have read as a silly Alcohol-Induced Idiocy story instead elicited a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the comments section, as the restaurant staff apparently do not think to call the police to come stop the inebriated buddies (since driving under the influence is not only dangerous but illegal). In other words, they just let a pair of drunk drivers back out onto the road, where getting even more lost is far from the worst thing that could end up happening to them — or to somebody else!
Informed Wrongness:
- This customer is shamed for complaining because the photo lab advertises service with a device, which doesn't function reliably, with a guarantee which is void whenever it would come into force.
- This customer is shamed for handing their phone to a clerk so that they can scan an online barcode. However, as many have pointed out, while it is wise to be wary of who you hand your phone to, an employee in a business is likely to be safe, since not only is it very unlikely the clerk would've been able to get anything important off the phone, it's also very easy to pursue action such as calling corporate to file a complaint if such a thing did occur. Such a practice is fairly common and has even been the source of other entries' complaints, such as this one (because the coupon wouldn't load).
- This woman is treated as Too Dumb to Live for using a cell phone at a gas station. Problem is, the idea that cell phones are capable of creating sparks that could cause fires at gas stations has been repeatedly dismissed as pseudoscience, spread not because employees believed it but to prevent distraction-related fuel spills and accidental pump-and-runs. The customer is being a jerk by disregarding the multiple signs and the attendant's warning, and even more so for being apparently indifferent to the idea that her actions could have repercussions (getting in trouble with their boss) for the employee, but she's not actually putting her own or anyone else's life at risk.
- While this customer is no doubt being a jerk about it, he's actually right in claiming that 1080p isn't high definition; it's full high definition (actual "high definition" is defined to be 720p), yet according to the submitter, reality says otherwise.
- The submitter of this story thinks the customer is an idiot for expecting an auto parts store to sell a replacement part for a car that is six years old (well within the normal lifespan of a car) and that they're being perfectly reasonable in telling him he needs to buy a new car. For a broken windshield wiper!
Less Disturbing in Context: This story, involving a submitter who managed to inhale a fly. This took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, so many of the comments were asking why they weren't wearing a mask. As it turns out, the OP had submitted it a year ago, back when the Australian Governmental Department of Health advised not wearing a surgical mask unless they were symptomatic, and the editors had published the story more than a year later.
Memetic Mutation:
- BLUE AND BLUE ON DE TING! It even became a shirt when the site store launched, and just about any story involving colors (especially blue) will no doubt see "de ting" referenced (sometimes even by the editors).
- Commenting "And everybody clapped" (in response to an outlandish story to express disbelief in its truthfulness) has expanded outside of the site and onto social media.
- It's also common to the point of meme status for the commenters to mock certain phrases which are overused in stories, such as "the kicker" or "needless to say."
- In any story where a person goes out of their way to be a good person, commenters will suggest that they should be part of the "NAR Avengers initiative". This one, too, has now received acknowledgment from the editors, in the title of this story, the saga of "Olive Man", and, later its own dedicated tag.
- A commenter example: Stephen is a commenter who is famous on the site for making puns. His comments tend to be the top rated comment in the section, and the replies often spiral into a Hurricane of Puns.
Misaimed Fandom: Ever since comments were added to the websites, you will often find people who side with the customer, or at least point out flaws in the submitter's logic. Of course, some people will complain about the OP's actions without reason or point out 'flaws in logic' that aren't actually there.
Nausea Fuel:
- In general, anything with the "Revolting" tag is a ripe source of this. Specific examples:
  - One story on the site mentions a pair that were once thrown out for vandalism in a library, because they refused to pay late fees. How were they vandalizing it? They were pissing and shitting all over books, and had been at it long enough for each of them to destroy an entire section while the police were on their way.
  - Another story has a customer who cheeses a "cheap beer until you go to the bathroom" deal by wearing an adult diaper. When questioned how they're on pitcher #2 without going to the toilet, they lower their pants, revealing an adult diaper that is soggy and yellow like popcorn butter.
  - This story has a customer trying to get a refund for a jug of spoiled milk without the receipt. To "convince" the cashier that it's bad, she dumps the rancid milk all over the counter.
  - In this story set during the COVID-19 pandemic, both local city's ordinance and corporate rule of the coffee shop's the story is set, require people to wear masks to be allowed inside stores. A rude regular customer of the coffee shop (the submitter is an employee of said coffee shop) makes a scandal because he wants to enter without a mask. He ends up picking up a used disposable mask which was lying in the coffee shop's trash can and wears it to enter the building. Since then, he goes back to the coffee shop almost each day, still wearing the same filthy mask.
  - This story involves a woman absolutely destroying a restaurant's toilet with feces and vomit. It's so bad that it's preceded with "CONTENT WARNING: GROSS", so you know it's beyond the site's usual levels of disgusting.
Paranoia Fuel: It's bad enough when a robber enters your store and threatens you with a gun. Now we gotta deal with people who like to pretend they're robbers!
Strawman Has a Point:
- In this story, a customer in a Maryland dollar store gets wound up over being presented with a Canadian nickel instead of an American one for her change. Although the customer screaming at the cashier didn't help their case, the cashier's claims that foreign currency "is still worth five cents" and that "any store will accept it" aren't true.
- While it did create extra work and he should've been more thoughtful when he was making the purchase, many commenters pointed out that the customer in this story had a right to be annoyed at the OP. Having made the purchase and having the receipt in his hands, he was well within his rights to return the items so that he could buy them again with a coupon he forgot to use. The OP does say it's against "company policy", but how so is omitted; and if it truly was, there should've at least been more explanation as to why he couldn't refund the items. If, say, the customer just wanted to return the items, there likely wouldn't be any issue.
- This elderly man tries to order a beer with his breakfast, but cannot because there is not a server there who is old enough to legally serve alcohol (and the server wonders why someone would want beer with their breakfast), and the annoyed man indirectly points out that they should really have someone in for orders like this. The comments side with the man, pointing out that a restaurant should be prepared for situations involving serving alcoholic beverages outside of peak drinking hours, and why the man wants beer with his breakfast is none of the OP's business.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- This is the reaction many commenters have to some of the changes made to the sites over the years, such as allowing prose stories (instead of the previous insistence that stories be presented in script format) and the posting of videos, some of which don't seem to have much to do with the site's premise at all. As of 2018, the prose stories are still permitted (and less reviled), but the site management seems to have finally listened to the commenters insisting that they do not want the videos.
- The complete overhaul of the site to put every subsection under the same domain rendered the old Facebook comments unreadable in favor of Disqus.
- In addition to this, the switch to Disqus came with particularly draconian censorship; even comments with "He'll" were flagged. The censoring has since been improved greatly, however, and even posts that do get flagged are generally approved fairly quickly if there's not actually anything against policy in them.
- The switch also resulted in the breaking of not only links within the site to other stories (such as a part X story containing links to previous parts), but also image posts (consequently rendered blank) — neither of which have been fully remedied as of April 2019, nearly two years after the change. Fortunately, the more popular ones have been saved in here, although the links to many of them are broken. Site management seems to be making no effort to either correct the issue or remove the affected posts.
- For a few years, the sister sites' main URLs (e.g. notalwaysrelated.com) did not work, and some had been purchased by other websites, leading to some confusion for those who were used to visiting or had bookmarked the old domains. This has since been remedied, however, and most aforementioned URLs redirect you to the current NAR site.
- In autumn 2018, the site started using absurdly long, spoiler-laden titles for some of the posts, many of which are essentially summations of the stories they contain. This did not go over well with many of the commenters. This time, the editors listened, and even made a self-deprecating post about the titles.
- Sometimes the submitters will make remarks in the comments on their own stories which indicate that certain details or turns of phrase were changed or omitted by the editors before the stories were posted. This is a relatively new development which has received some criticism, as previously the submitters' own wordings were left untouched other than occasional spelling corrections.
- At some point in the last couple of years, the sites were purchased by new owners, whose standards for publishing stories seem to be different from those of the previous owners. This has caused a lot of commenters to find fault with submissions they deem to be less entertaining than the ones of years past.
- Not Always Hopeless was retired in October 2019, and future stories that would've gone there have instead been merged back into the other sites, under the "Inspirational" tag (which still has its own link in the header). Some readers have criticized this because they preferred the more Glurge-y stories having their own space instead of being thrown into the same bin as the "funny" ones the other sites are known for posting.
  - Others have agreed with this criticism, but for a different reason — many readers have preferred orders in which they read the sister sites, and some of these liked to save NAHopeless for last as a reminder that humanity isn't always terrible.
- In June 2021, the site was given a small overhaul, and the menu bar with the categories (which had previously run across the top of every page) was replaced with a drop-down menu. Interestingly, the site admins almost immediately established a poll asking for opinions about the new look, apparently hoping to avert this trope if it turned out that people did in fact think the change sucked. The menu bar was restored a few days later, suggesting that the survey indicated that the change was unwelcome.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
- A lot of people are turned off by the websites because of the sheer amount of stories about ignorance and cruelty. This could be why the 2016 addition to the collective is "Not Always Hopeless", which focuses on more cheerful, heartwarming stories. And even that isn't completely immune to this because a lot of stories, even if they all have heartwarming endings, have depressing beginnings involving jerks that wouldn't be out of place on the other sister sites.
- The launch of "Not Always Healthy" in particular has gotten a lot of this. In most stories on the other sites you have a Jerkass or an idiot, sure… but seeing these same type of people in medical situations verges disturbingly close to Lethally Stupid, with a lot of posters who were treated wrong by their medical staff having afflictions that could cripple or even kill them coldly dismissed as something minor or overreacted to.
Unintentionally Sympathetic:
- The woman in this story is apparently a Jerkass for wanting to wait for Easter lilies to go on sale the day after Easter before buying any. Given that there's no indication that the woman had any sort of attitude before or afterwards, the story just reads as rather mean-spirited, something not helped by the submitter taking delight in the poor woman's misfortune when she comes back the day after Easter to find that there are no lilies left (because the manager told the employees to just take them if they wanted one after Easter Sunday and there ended up being none left).
- This father on vacation in Tuscany asks the original poster, a hotel clerk, where he can find some KFC for his autistic daughter, and OP answers that none exist in Tuscany. While the hotel clerk isn't considered exactly in the wrong by the comment section, many do point out that it wasn't all that unreasonable for a tourist to assume that a fast food chain spread worldwide had locations in Tuscany, with a couple commenters also presenting proof that at least one exists in Florence; it's also worth noting that the father did come back to apologize to OP later that night.
- While the customer in this story was still being annoyingly impatient, many commenters admitted to worrying about her when she ate smoldering wood chips served as a garnish with her restaurant smores. Many questioned why something blatantly inedible (and potentially harmful to a person's mouth and esophagus!) like that would be served with the smores in the first place since there will always be that one person who assumes the garnish is as edible as the other food on their plate and will attempt to eat it. Many commenters share stories of friends and family doing just that (as well as referencing things like the infamous fish bait elimination on Cutthroat Kitchen).
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Grand Theft Auto inspired a whole recurring series of these, "Grand Theft Innocence."
Woolseyism: A self-admitted case here, where the Swedish "bibliotekarien/bibliote-Karin" is rendered in English as "librarian/library-Anne" to convey the pun.
- The same technique — using different names/terms to convey the same information — is also often used to tell the story without revealing any identifying information, such as using 'Kinderly' to represent a name that's one letter off from a common one, or referring to a man whose name has a silent first letter as 'Django'.

YMMV / Not Always Right

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