Not Always Right / They Just Dont Get It

Customer: “Does this vacuum need bags?”
Submitter: “Nope. It’s a bag-less cyclonic, meaning it collects what the vacuum sucks up into a reusable plastic bin.”
Customer: “Yes, but does it need bags?”

— "Terrified of Baggage

Not Always Right and its many sister sites are filled to the brim with people who are seemingly unable to comprehend anything that doesn't agree with their worldview.

Not Always Right

A perfect double example would be here: a woman enters a bakery and asks them to create a wedding cake and bill her for it, totally ignoring the submitter's insistence that they don't sell cakes or send bills out before she leaves; naturally, none of what she asks for is accomplished. She then begins sending attorneys to the bakery, apparently oblivious to the reason why they all immediately drop her case against the bakery, and ends up going through four of them, probably wasting thousands or even millions of dollars in the process, before she gives up (or, less charitably, before she gets enough of a bad rep amongst attorneys that they won't take her case).
This story currently provides the page quote.
Another perfect case, where a woman drops a pair of dogs off at an animal shelter^note, then comes back long after said dogs have been adopted by someone else looking for them, assuming the place was a boarding kennel and refusing to believe otherwise. She ends up dragging a police officer into the mess, who immediately arrests her for animal cruelty and neglect — and the story ends with the reveal that she also had contempt of court charges added to that, for still not understanding that the place was not a kennel and even spitting in a judge's face for siding with them in the case.
To this elderly customer, "born and raised here in this very town" is apparently meaningless gibberish.
Far, far too many stories involving people who think a business is open and won't hear otherwise.
- "I don't care if the Washington Monument is closed, I want to visit it now!"
- This nut doesn't seem to get that the restaurant he's trying to get into isn't open yet despite the workers – including the manager – telling him as much. Later on, he sees the off-work employees hanging around the power transformer for the building and on being told once again that the place is closed, rams it with his truck, causing the power to go out. The would-be customer would subsequently be arrested.
- This restaurant is closed due to a hurricane, but one would-be-customer tries to go through the drive-thru anyway, and on being told twice that the place is closed, tries to force his way in through the drive-thru window before speeding off and nearly causing a wreck. Oh, and he leaves a complaint with corporate that claims they served customers after him and were discriminating against him. The restaurant staff refers his license plate and the security camera footage to the police.
- This woman takes it to Determinator levels, passing multiple signs that say the restaurant is closed for a training exercise and trying to go through multiple doors before finding the one door that the staff had to leave unlocked by law, pushing aside even more signs, and almost crawling over a box in order to get to the service line. When she finally sees someone, her first question is, "are you open?" Oh, and this was the first of six separate incidents of that sort all day.
- This customer, on seeing the store closed, smashes his way in with a pole and demands that the submitter sell him some cigarettes. When the submitter refuses, he threatens violence on the submitter. All throughout the incident, he's "ridiculously calm and oblivious to his bad behavior," even as the police take him away.
"I don’t think you understand the whole "you’re not allowed in here" part."
This customer completely fails to comprehend the bartender telling her three times they don't have any Carlsberg. Especially odd in that she does understand the other half of what he's telling her, it's just "we don't have Carlsberg" she's completely tuning out.
This customer asks for a Green Card photo, and the photo tech in charge explains that the software won't allow it. Multiple times. As the customer in question speaks very good English and is accompanied by his wife (who speaks even better English), it's not a case of Language Barrier. When the customer finally gets what he's being told, he has the gall to ask:
"Well, why the h*** didn’t you just tell me that?!"
"I did, love. Five separate times. Have a great day, folks!"
This woman paid for some books with a check, but the check bounces and this comes out when she has already returned the books. Despite the bookstore manager explaining that she owes them money since she technically didn't pay for the books and got money from them for returning them, she still doesn't get it and thinks that she owes no money because she doesn't have the books anymore. Even when the police gets sent to her school (she's a math teacher), sues the bookstore, and ends up having to pay the fine and court costs, she still doesn't get it.
This person doesn't seem to understand the concept of a yard sale, and threatens to report them to the BBB for selling used items.
This customer refuses to listen to a pizzeria worker when calling in an order: no response when asked whether it's a delivery or carryout, to two requests to pause the order when the computer crashes, or to a request to be put on hold. After the worker gets the computer fixed, the caller hangs up, calls again, and asks why they were hung up on.
This customer seems to be interpreting "we know what you're asking for, but we don't have it" as "we don't know what you're asking for", because the customer restarts his description of the part every time he gets the former answer. Eventually, the manager passes the buck by telling the customer to try a big box retailer... which he knows doesn't have the part either.
The other party actually tries to invert it here. The caller, who refuses to identify himself, or what kind of insurance he's asking about, finally reveals, after being asked what kind of insurance he's calling about no less than four times that he's someone from the medical center and trying to find out if the submitter's medical insurance is up to date. When the submitter then reveals that he's still going to the doctor's appointment, and how the insurance has changed, the caller asks "Why didn't you just say that before?!" Guess that doctor's clinic has a lot of mind-reading patients.
This old woman just doesn't get it that the submitter is not a teenager skipping school but a 21-year-old college student. And she still doesn't get it four years later.
This woman just doesn't get that cooking oil is not a safe fuel for a riding mower, that a specific type of oil is used for a pretty important reason that is most decidedly not "companies just [wanting] more money out of us hard-working folks", that her mower caught fire because she used cooking oil as fuel, and that she voided the warranty the moment she placed it in the tank. She continues to scream something to the effect of "GIVE ME A NEW FUCKING MOWER YOU STUPID BITCH" even after the submitter explicitly tells her what she did wrong and why her mistake isn't covered by warranty. Then again, given her abusive attitude throughout the call, maybe she's too angry to get it.
There are quite a few that involve power and electricity bills:
- This woman refuses to pay her bill or have a prepayment meter fitted to her house, threatening to sue the company, even though the submitter repeatedly states that the company got a legal warrant to do exactly that. The woman continues to refuse, as paying for her power would leave her unable to afford her cruise to the Caribbean and kill her expensive tropical fish. She then states that she never received any bills, when it is noted that she got twelve of them, three of which were hand-delivered. The submitter is eventually able to get the warrant cancelled by having her pay half the bill and set up a payment plan for the rest… which is defaulted on a few months later even after the woman is contacted regarding the payments. She then writes back demanding almost £4,000 for her fish and “emotional trauma,” as well as stating that she was told that if she paid off half the debt, the other half would be written off.
- This woman literally goes to court because she does not want to pay the additional cost that she incurred from not paying her bills for two years, even after she is repeatedly told by the submitter, multiple other agents, and the manager that the doubling of her monthly fees is to clear her debt, and that the court will rule against her and make her pay the court costs as well. The woman goes to court and is quickly ordered to pay the court costs as well as the additional charges. The submitter ends by stating that the woman was most recently writing the ombudsman, claiming that the company was operating illegally.
- This guy claims to be top of his class in law school, and immediately declares that it is illegal for him to be paying utilities because he is paying rent… directly after reading in his tenancy agreement that rent does not include utilities and that he is responsible for paying the utility bills. He insists that it is illegal to charge him for utilities because he never personally agreed that he would do so, and threatens the submitter before the call is dropped. The guy later called back in an attempt to get the submitter fired by stating that the submitter called him an idiot and swore at and threatened him, which went nowhere.
- This man refuses to pay his energy bill out of protest for a recent price surge… except he hasn’t paid for a year and a half (far before the price surge), he was on a fixed plan, meaning that he wasn’t affected by the surge, and his bill is far less than what he would have owed and below the average. He still refuses to pay, with the energy company bluntly telling him that his defense will not hold up in court (since the man has not been affected by the price surge, and the bill was outstanding far before the surge happened), and the man will be responsible for any court costs, and a prepayment meter will likely be fitted onto the property. ^note
This person apparently doesn't think that a worker's explanation of "the shelf collapsed and destroyed all of our red wine" makes any sense, and repeatedly accuses said worker of "babbling" and "not making any sense". Said customer ends up leaving in a fit of Angrish.
This woman seemingly either cannot wrap her mind around or refuses to understand why a thrift store will not take her broken-down washing machine as a donation (for one thing, it would cost more money for said thrift store to come get it than it ultimately would be to sell it), opting to simply parrot the same response of "But I really wanted to give it to you guys" over and over again every time the hapless submitter says anything that isn't: "Alright, we'll take your washing machine.".
This story manages to have a double subversion of this. An Italian-English freelance translator accepts a job with a 72-hour deadline. The document gets delayed for 48 hours, at which point the translator actually has to explain to the customer why they can't meet the original deadline. The customer understands, settles for a later deadline, and ends up sending the document five days after it should have originally been sent. It turns out that it's in Japanese, and the customer assumed the translator could do the job because their site advertized being able to translate all kinds of documents.
This couple repeatedly passes caution tape into a hard-hat area after being told that it's unsafe, apparently convinced that just because if one side of the building is unsafe then that means all of the other sides of the building are completely safe. It takes the submitter finally losing their temper and blowing up at them after a piece of scaffolding nearly falls on the two for them to finally get it.
This old lady doesn't seem to understand that the store doesn't have a back kitchen to cook potato pancakes yet keeps asking the submitter to "cook more potato pancakes in their back kitchen". Thankfully, her husband was able to understand what the submitter said once and scolded his wife for not listening to them.
This man is old-fashioned and has been using email because his fax machine broke. He eventually buys a new fax machine. Although faxes are still sent, they're now usually part of a printer as opposed to a separate machine.
This person is completely computer inept and doesn't know how to close a window even with the basic ALT+F4 command. The person says they'll just get their son to fly all the way from Arizona to Boston to help him.
This would-be bus passenger doesn't seem to understand how roads work, and can't seem to comprehend that buses on one side of the road will only be going in one direction.
This scammer sent an e-mail to at least one freelance worker and at least one store owner claiming that their superior promised them something and apparently refuses to believe those independent workers don't have a superior.
Yes, obviously this customer understands that the chicken wings are chicken, but what kind of chicken — thigh or breast? No matter how many times the poster tries to explain that they are wings, the customer doesn't seem to understand that a chicken has more than two parts.
This man has no idea what coal is and is apparently unable to accept that a steam locomotive runs on anything other than liquid fuel.
This customer, at least for the duration of the story, believes that if a coffee shop exists, Starbucks owns it, and they all carry Starbucks drinks and answer to Starbucks management. It is only after a ten minute phone call with Starbucks customer service that he's brought to see the truth.
He finally hung up, looked at me with the eyes of a man who just realized as an adult that other coffee shops exist other than Starbucks, and walks out with defeat.
This woman goes to a sporting goods store demanding the 'perfume' that her friend bought there previously. The clerk works out that the 'perfume' is actually deer musk for hunting, but their attempts to explain this go right over the woman's head and she buys three packs of it anyway.
Carts from a retail chain start showing up at a grocery store a few minutes away. After a year of the grocery store employees being the good neighbor and returning the carts in a van, corporate complains about lost time and gas and stops them from doing it, prompting the manager to call the retail store to ask them to come and pick their own carts up. Despite their best intentions, however, the manager of the retail store refuses to believe that the carts have ended up there any way other than the grocery store intentionally stealing them and threatens legal action instead. New instructions are given: the carts are to be taken to the dump instead.^{The cause}
This man is unable to comprehend that the person who he is sending money to is a scammer, and not Rita Ora. By the time the story is taking place, he has sent over £250,000 ($300,000 USD) that the bank knows of to "Rita." The bank is forced to close the account when they are unable to convince him that he is being scammed - the final straw being when he blows off the head of the fraud department physically coming over and showing him the evidence.
This woman seems unable to comprehend that the gelatin in the mirror-glaze cakes she's been making is neither vegetarian nor vegan.
This regular customer of a transport company is incapable of understanding why the company cannot warp the laws of math and physics to accommodate them. Having frequently complained about them "refusing" to deliver cargo which is still crossing the ocean at the time, they fly into a rage when told that a shipment consisting of sixty loads will take six days to deliver under the customer's own rule that no more than ten loads may be delivered in one day. Both the poster and the president of the company try to explain how basic arithmetic works, but the customer still refuses either to bend the rule or accept that the company isn't "incompetent" for being unable to make 60÷10 less than six. The following day they do call back and offer to let 12 loads be delivered a day instead of 10, but still don't seem to understand why that would make a difference, which makes the OP headdesk.
There was an entire Still-Not-Getting-It roundup of the 10 best examples of this.
This person is unable to comprehend that "this big and this wide" are not helpful measurements when you're talking on the phone and the other person cannot physically see your hands.
This guy seems unable to understand that the store doesn't carry film cameras anymore, and continues to ask for them, not listening to the submitter. The submitter winds up giving up and telling the customer that film is stored in SD cards.
This customer complains that the company's sandals are insufficiently protected for hiking — notwithstanding the fact that sandals are generally considered unsuitable for hiking…
This nut just cannot seem to understand that he's been given the wrong store's number, and keeps hanging up and dialling it again and again and getting increasingly frustrated to the point where he threatens to kill the submitter, prompting the submitter to call the police on him. It then turns out that he had been out on bail for a similar charge, implying that this isn't the first time he's done this sort of thing.
This guy regularly comes into a guitar store to play the most expensive guitar there but never buys it. After making too much noise with it, it turns out he thinks that the music store is "one of those places where you can go and play guitar as much as you want for free," and that they only make money selling "strings and pedals and crap." When he finds that the guitar costs $14,950, he refuses to believe it, or that the scratch that's been made in it was made by him (throwing in a bit of sexism at the female manager for good measure), and shoves the manager to the ground before trying to make off with the guitar, but is caught by an off-duty cop. It then turns out this nut has done this whole song-and-dance before with multiple guitar shops, seemingly unable to comprehend that they were actually selling the guitars.
Customer: “But the guitars are supposed to be free here!”
This idiot complains that the refrigerator he receives isn't cold – before he's even plugged it in yet. He then demands that the store send him a fridge that comes cold, and doesn't seem to understand that that's an impossibility.
Submitter: “We deliver BBQs, as well. Do you expect those to be on fire?”
Customer: “Yes! If I spend a thousand bucks on one!”
This brain-dead couple get the bright idea of trying to buy a calf from a farm – and by "buy", we mean stuff it into the trunk of their car and then ask a farmhand (and leave the pasture gate open to boot). They don't accept it when the farmhand tells them the cattle on the farm aren't for sale, and when the farmhand releases the calf, they get angry and report him to his boss, who at first thinks it's a joke until the farmhand corrects him, prompting the now angered boss to shout them off the farm.
This cat owner waiting at a vet receptionist just doesn't understand that the submitter's dog isn't comfortable around her cat. She even holds the cat up to the dog's carrier, even as the submitter and the vet's receptionist advise her against it. Bizarrely enough, the woman only relents when the submitter says they're allergic.
This nut calls a self-storage facility asking for a particular size of unit when they only have one (larger) size. On being told they don't have any, they call a few more times, each time introducing themselves by just screaming "STORAGE UNITS!" and each time getting the same response.
This hotel guest receives a call from the front desk about noise complaints and seems to be convinced that the hotel is throwing him and the rest of his party out without a warning when in fact, the call they're getting is the warning.
This pet store customer simply cannot understand that the dogs seen in the store are not for sale.
Submitter: “Actually, that’s our grooming salon, where customers can bring their pets for a haircut or bath.”
Customer: “It’s nice that you’re making the dogs pretty for me. Now, when can I see them?”
Submitter: “Those dogs belong to other people, sir. It’s a grooming salon.”
Customer: *sighs* “Fine, I get it. They’re all sold.”
(The customer sees a woman walking by with a Labrador on a leash.)
Customer: “I’ll take that one, then. I can get a discount since it’s a floor model, right?”
On the subject of pets, this customer can't seem to understand that "no pets allowed" means "no friggin' pets allowed!"
This would-be customer thinks that the submitter is based out of San Francisco, and doesn't seem to comprehend when they tell her that they're based in London (the one in the UK). Even when the submitter tries to tell her, her misunderstanding only deepens.
I wonder if there is a confused-looking woman now wandering the streets of San Francisco looking for a drag queen with a used toaster oven.
This customer is all about the "gross inconvenience" of the situation where the worker refuses to give out the manager's contact information while refusing to acknowledge the fact that the manager has been dead for a month!
This caller tries to order a pizza from a hardware store. When the submitter informs them of this, they just repeat "I'm hungry!" as if they expect that to convince them to just make a pizza anyway.
This caller can't seem to understand that this sports team has neither a president or a coach.
This client complains that they didn't attach the file he wanted, and doesn't seem to listen when the submitter tells them that the file was too large to be emailed, so the email they sent contains a link to the file.
This caller tries asking for galvanized piping from a fencing club, and the submitter's attempts to correct them go in one ear and out the other. In the end, the submitter gives up and tells them to call a soccer centre, to which the caller thanks the submitter then hangs up.
This woman's son pulls the fire alarm out of boredom. She doesn't seem to understand why the workers are making a big deal out of the alarm being pulled and seems more concerned with the fact that they aren't ringing her items up. She remains oblivious until the fire department mentions that pulling a fire alarm without reason is a fineable offense and tries to flee the building.
This woman repeatedly calls a group residence's office thinking it's a hospital that has one digit different in its phone number and simply will not understand that they're calling a wrong number, and becomes increasingly belligerent.

Not Always Working

Stories under the "Ignoring/Inattentive" (formerly "Not Listening") tag tend to be cases of this.
Taken to the extreme here. The caller tries to get her problem reassigned to another IT Manager, because the current one is on vacation. The help desk person repeatedly says that the away manager is already assigned to the case, and not once seems to understand what the caller is actually saying.
And here too. Apparently for these workers (and these workers as well), "I don't want to buy the wine" means "I don't want to show you my ID, give me the wine".
- This worker goes even further, construing the laws for "You can't sell alcohol to minors" and "You can't sell alcohol to an adult buying on behalf of minors" to mean "You can't sell alcohol to an adult who happens to be accompanied by minors, even if the alcohol is clearly for the adult".
- Justified in the last two lines of this story: the cashier passing out and the manager's line about shifts implies he's so sleep-deprived from overwork he can't comprehend the customer wasn't buying alcohol, only that they didn't want to show ID.
In response to a customer who has a malfunctioning debit card (on a Sunday, while on vacation), the bank employee not a few times says "just don't spend money", not seeming to get that this isn't an option, especially for that customer at that time.
This boss really doesn't seem to understand that when an employee quits, that's it; they don't work there anymore.
- This company has a similar problem.
From this story:
"…as I have explained, I am unable to pay any more at present."
"I understand, but why are you not paying a greater amount?"
Here is a tobacco example similar to the liquor examples above.
Part 2: an idiot/Jerkass cashier who needs to have their manager called in for basic math skills.
This employee really wants to work (read: get paid for) Mondays even though the store in question is not open on Monday.
This company had to deal with a bill collector that continued asking for someone who never had anything to do with them despite filing multiple complaints with the FCC. Even after the boss gave them permission to mess with the caller, they still had to prank the collector no less than six times before they finally gave up.
Apparently "I don't have a bag" is too complicated a concept for this girl to understand.
This teller keeps telling a customer they have to remove their sunglasses, not understanding when the customer repeatedly tells them that they're not actually sunglasses.
This clerk insists on giving a customer five dollars back for a one-dollar DVD return and taking one dollar for a five-dollar DVD purchase. The customer just accepts it (and gives the extra change to charity) after the clerk fails to understand the problem after it is pointed out to her two times.
This security guard decides that a family helping their young daughter put on a jacket means that they stole it. It doesn't matter that it's stained, has no tags, and is a brand the store does not sell. When the guard finally gets that it was not stolen, several hours later, he asks a coworker "why didn't you tell me?", when said coworker did, numerous times.
This demonstrator seems to believe that a family claiming they don't have carpeting on their floor means they don't have a floor at all.
"I suppose if they misheard 'ice water' as 'affogato,' mishearing "I'm allergic" as "I'd like extra" isn’t too far of a stretch, but still..."
The conversation in this story was apparently a daily occurrence for the submitter.
This clerk at a jewelry counter can't seem to understand how a wind-up watch works without a battery. Despite having it explained to them by multiple people.
This receptionist just doesn't get that the customer in question has not been getting bills for eight months because a.) they moved from Connecticut to California, and b.) their old address was wrong in the system, so the bills were not forwarded, and keeps saying "you should just pay your bills when you get them, because we've been sending you bills for eight months".
This other receptionist put a note in a patient's file that they needed to make an appointment to see the doctor before they could get some medication. Normally that would be fine, except that she's also under the delusion that because the note is in the patient's file, the patient should be magically aware of it immediately (never mind the fact that the file isn't in a public system). Then, when the receptionist denies the patient immediate access to the doctor, and the patient points out that they're on a special list on the wall immediately behind the desk guaranteeing them a meeting with the doctor without an appointment, the receptionist doesn't believe them and shouts at them instead. Fortunately this attracts the doctor, who when the receptionist refuses to back down has security remove her, while continuing to scream that she put a note in the file.
For these employees, customers apparently have to specifically ask for lettuce and tomato to be added to their BLT sandwiches. That lettuce and tomato are in its name, right after the bacon that they did add, means nothing.
Likewise for this restaurant, where a BBQ bacon burger apparently does not come with bacon - and, to add insult to injury, the waitress the submitter asked about it charged extra for the "add-on" after getting them the bacon they were supposed to get in the first place.
This Indian Telemarketer doesn't seem to understand that the family he's repeatedly calling is not interested in what he's selling despite the numerous times they insult him and threaten to call the police. The telemarketer finally stopped after the police contacted his superiors.
Despite the US Navy telling their cooks to put meat signs on their food so their Arabic guests won't accidentally eat food that is against their religious beliefs, one cook doesn't understand why he has to put a sign on his Calico corn despite the fact the dish contains pork.
This waitress apparently cannot comprehend that, while one member of a family cannot eat gluten (because he has celiac disease), the rest of them can eat it just fine.
Waitress: I’ve never heard of a half-gluten family.
These two tech support don't seem understand because the submitter new computer is a Mac that runs OSX, they cannot install Internet Explorer which is only available on Windows.
This employee refuses to believe that the 24-year-old submitter has an unconventional middle name, screaming that she's been "lied to" even after the submitter explicitly states multiple times that the name in question is her middle name, not the first part of a hyphenated last name. The supervisor who scolds the employee and takes over notes that the employee always did this and was likely going to be let go because of that incident.
This submitter was suffering from excessive fatigue and oversleeping. The doctor, for whatever reason, decided his patient was clearly suffering from insomnia ^note and needed to take over-the-counter sleep aids.
(He's my ex-doctor now.)
This credit card scammer calls a 12-year-old boy's cell phone, and simply cannot get through her head, even after being repeatedly told by the boy's mother that the boy cannot possibly have a credit card at his age.
This debt collector does not get the idea that "Steve" doesn't live in the household he is calling, and never has. Even after being told that "Steve" had died the previous spring, the collector continues berating and harassing the submitter at least three times a week, prompting her to file a complaint with the Attorney General.
This female co-worker does not seem to understand her male co-worker is a bisexual and not gay. Even worse, for all of her concerns that her male co-worker maybe being forced to "date" his girlfriend by his parents and not because he actually likes her, she immediately judges his girlfriend must be transgender as the reason why he's dating her and thinks he's into gay stereotypes like drag queens and good fashion sense.
This clerk at a post office refuses to let the submitter apply for a passport because they seemingly cannot wrap their mind around why the woman has a different surname from the one on her mother's birth certificate (which she had to present in order to apply for the passport). Surely it couldn't be because the name on the birth certificate is her mother's maiden name or something...
This bank manager is told repeatedly by the submitter that the "fraudulent" purchases that prompted his branch to freeze their account were theirs, yet still insists the purchases were fraudulent even after agreeing that the submitter spending their own money isn't fraud. And then he's surprised that the submitter wants to close their account due to not only this but the bank's failure to make sure the purchases were actually fraudulent before freezing the account, the fact the account was frozen without disputing the "fraudulent" purchases, and the fact a check cleared despite the freeze.
In this story, the customer orders bacon and cheese fries, but only gets cheese. The cashier and the manager keep thinking that he's referring to the cheese and point out that it's on there already despite the customer outright asking where the bacon is. The manager just tells the cashier to get him a new order while saying that he doesn't "feel like dealing with this right now", implying that he still doesn't get it.
This employee at a sandwich shop doesn't seem to understand that the customer wants a regular BLT sandwich without mayonnaise yet still gave her sandwich mayonnaise, and when she wants a replacement for her ruined sandwich, he added cheese on her replacement despite never once asking for it. Apparently he is unable to understand you can have a BLT sandwich without anything extra.
This Bank Representative doesn't seem to understand the submitter and her family are vacationing at a nearby city and the recent purchases on her credit card at the city are legit and not fraudulent yet the bank keeps flagging her card despite the submitter repeatedly explaining to them.
This waiter keeps bothering the submitter to give her ID card if she wants to drink wine despite the submitter and her father repeatedly telling him she doesn't want to drink wine. Even when his manager points this out, he still doesn't get it. Apparently to him, anyone who is of legal drinking age must automatically want to drink wine.
Subverted here, where an office worker whose unauthorized personal space heater has damaged her computer refuses to remove or even relocate the heater despite several lectures by IT personnel. Whenever they do the relocation for her, she moves the computer right back next to the heater, and even turns the heater to maximum power. Finally, after she's ruined two replacement desktop computers and a laptop computer, management and HR have turned a blind eye to the IT worker's incident reports, and the heater's in a position to set the building itself on fire, it turns out she's been deliberately sabotaging the computers with her heater as an excuse to skip work. HR and management finally take notice not of the several destroyed computers and building fire risk, but of the project that's over a month behind and the unauthorized early departures.
This insane realtor appears to believe that just because she offered to buy the OP's house, they are somehow obligated to sell it to her, and seems unable or unwilling to comprehend that they have no desire to move (which they had clearly stated right from the beginning). After being rejected three times over the phone, she takes it up a notch by bringing her prospective buyers over, and attempting to force entry. This not only gets her fired from her job, but also facing charges for trespassing, harassment, attempted breaking and entering, and fraud.
This Pointy-Haired Boss doesn't understand that the submitter using Facebook on the job is not them goofing off but them doing their job as a social media manager, or that they're not looking to work for competitors when researching their Facebook marketing strategies (the only way him yelling at them for violating a fictitious non-compete clause is anything other than Insane Troll Logic). He lasts just two days because on the second, the social media team finds that he's had all social media websites blocked, preventing them from doing their jobs and causing an ongoing social media campaign to stall.
The rec center maintenance manager from this story is insistent that the center does not have a flea problem, despite the submitter complaining multiple times of fleas. Not helping is that said maintenance manager has been Cutting Corners with the janitorial budget. The manager just blames the submitter for carrying them in despite them only having one pet – a chinchilla who has never been outside and has fur that is too thick for fleas. In an update to the story, after the submitter quits the rec center, they run into an old co-worker who tells them that the problem flared up again after they left, and that the manager still wouldn't admit there was a flea problem. Sure enough, after a bit of detective work, the workers traced the problem to a regular with fifteen cats – a few of which died to flea-related health problems. The manager finally had the place fumigated, but they still wouldn't believe the complaints.
This postal clerk's response to the submitter bringing their dog to the front of the building – but crucially not in the building – is to keep screaming at her “DOGS ARE NOT ALLOWED!” Even as the submitter explains that the dog isn't in the building, she keeps insisting. Even the clerk's manager is puzzled by her insistence. The submitter doesn't get to see if any consequences came of this, but judging by the fact that she now only sees the clerk working in the back, she assumes that she was reassigned away from customers.
This front office receptionist applies for a management position, and turns out to be a major Small Name, Big Ego Know-Nothing Know-It-All who has the perfect idea for a new marketing campaign when the position she's applying for has nothing to do with that. The submitter – the interviewer – tells her that they don't think she'll be a good fit for the position, but apparently this went in one ear and out the other, as when the management position is filled, she throws a fit about how the submitter "promised" her the position and doesn't stop until she gets herself fired.

Not Always Romantic

The OP's friend in this story almost married a guy who thought that her two children from a previous relationship would suddenly become biologically his after the wedding. No matter how many times she, her mother, and the guy's parents explained that the kids would only be his on paper and they couldn't just magically alter their DNA, he was adamant that they would "become his". The guy's mom told OP's friend to break it off since he was never going to get it.

Not Always Related

This elderly aunt, who is out of touch with the modern era, doesn't seem to understand that the reason the submitter doesn't have children is because of her husband becoming sterile due to an injury he received when he was deployed at Afghanistan. The aunt thinks the problem is the submitter's fault, and keeps insisting the submitter take a questionable tonic which has not been available for decades.
The submitter in this story constantly has to babysit his younger twin siblings because his parents continually make last-minute plans. After he graduates he gets engaged to his girlfriend and moves to Japan to be with her family. Soon after he moves, his parents call... because they want him to babysit that night since they've made reservations to go out, ignoring the fact that the parents and siblings are in Canada. The submitter yells at them for their lack of planning and refuses to help, given that he can't. The parents then demean him, treating the submitter's moving to Japan as mere "tourism."
This father insists that his older children will change their minds about having kids, not understanding his refusal to stop having them has led to a noisy, cramped house that was constantly falling apart and completely turned his children against the idea of ever having kids of their own, to the point where the submitter has scheduled a hysterectomy despite any accidental pregnancy that she'd be willing to keep being precluded by the fact she's gay and married to another woman.
This delusional father takes Doom It Yourself and "Make do and mend" to a disturbing extent, refusing to believe that things that are clearly beyond repair need replacement; in his mind, if it's even barely usable, it isn't broken. He even goes so far as to destroy brand-new items and replace them with the broken items they were meant to replace. The biggest problem with this mentality is that plumbing often doesn't become unusable when it breaks, which means there's leaky plumbing throughout the house that he refuses to allow anyone to fix. By the end of the story, his fed-up wife has divorced him and taken their child, the submitter, with her, his house has been condemned from all the water damage it's incurred, and he still doesn't see how he did anything wrong.
This mother-in-law doesn't understand that her new dog Apollo, due to his bad genes and her failure to train or socialize him, is incapable of "just playing" and is an active danger to even adults, never mind a newborn baby, and that her son will not allow his family to be around this obviously dangerous dog for this reason.
Submitter's husband: This dog is not socialized for anyone, much less knowing how to be gentle with a child. And I absolutely will not allow this dog around my newborn!
Mother-in-law: But he'll be a wonderful guard dog, sweetie! Why, just the other day, he got a hold of a nasty raccoon in my yard. Ripped it to pieces!
I just gaped at her in abject horror. A dog with a high prey drive ripping a smaller animal apart and then being allowed around my also small newborn?! A snowball would have a better chance in h***.
Submitter's husband: Mom, did you take all the drugs, or did you leave some for the rest of us?! I can't believe you're this... [pauses while he tries to think of a word] irresponsible!

Not Always Learning

Combined with Obstructive Bureaucrat. This college student is deaf, and specifically requested an e-mail communication regarding an appointment with the advising office. The receptionist insists on communicating by phone call, ignoring his preferences, and the fact that the submitter cannot use the phone to call repeatedly. When the submitter goes to the office, in person, the first thing the receptionist does is berate the submitter for ignoring the calls and that the semester is ending in a week, after the submitter told the receptionist no less than three times that he is deaf and can't answer the phone! After setting up the appointment, the receptionist asks, "would you like the reminder by phone or email?"
This teacher doesn't seem to understand that two half-sisters, who have different mothers and live in different homes, are still considered sisters even if they don't live together. The whole class facepalms — including the teacher's daughter, who also does a headdesk at how dumb her parent is.
This teacher refuses to allow her students to leave the classroom when the fire alarm goes off. Not when it goes off, not when the fire department gets there, or even when the school director outright states that there is a fire. When the class does leave, she continues to yell at her class, threatening to expel them for "purposely missing an exam," even though the director is the one leading them out! This whole incident causes the teacher to be fired and sued by the school.
A justified example here: A little girl on her first day of class refuses to answer to anything but her nickname... because nobody ever calls her by her real name, nor ever told her that the name they all call her is just a nickname.
The submitter's roommate's girlfriend turns off the submitter's alarm clock because it's going off too loud and too long for her... when she's not supposed to be staying in their unit in the first place, and the submitter needs the extra loud, extra long alarm because he has trouble waking up in time for his classes, which he's been missing because she's turning off his alarm clock without his knowledge.
This story starts with one such case. The poster, a gay student, gets his class project group, whose members he didn't know prior to the project, to talk about a (at the time) recent policy making it so only straight couples can foster children. The oldest member of the group is both already a father and homophobic enough to not trust gay people to take care of children. The poster's first attempt to show the father the problem with his views becomes a back-and-forth consisting of the poster saying that following the father's logic, he shouldn't be allowed to babysit the father's daughter and the father saying that he'd be fine with the poster babysitting his daughter, he just wouldn't want a gay person doing so, without catching onto what the poster is trying to tell him. Judging by the laughs stifled by the other students in the group, they catch on quite fast. Fortunately, the guy does get it in the end and this experience actually helps to change his perspective on the matter (potentially because his experience with the submitter helped him realize that LGBT people aren't so different after all).
This teacher, on day one, confuses one of her students (whose name is Aileen, pronounced "I-lean"), for an absent student named Ellie, and when the student tries to explain that that's not her name, the teacher laughs, thinking for some reason that it's just a joke. (It doesn't help that the teacher is unfamiliar with the pronunciation, and probably hasn't thought past the fact that there isn't an "Eileen" in her class.) The real Ellie never shows up, and no matter how many times Aileen tries to tell the teacher her actual name, she still remains convinced that she's joking. She finally gives up, only to learn at the end of the semester that she's failed the class — because the teacher thinks she never attended. Aileen ends up going to her student counselor, who arranges a meeting to sort it out, only for the teacher to ask, baffled, why "Ellie" is there. It still takes a while for the two of them to get it through the teacher's head that it really isn't a joke, and she's been awarding the marks to the wrong student all semester.
This substitute teacher is insistent that her students use Chrome for the assignment tracker - never mind that the student doesn't have admin privileges on their computer and that Firefox works just fine. She even threatens to write up the student for not complying, so the student has to change the icon for Firefox to the one for Chrome just to get her off their back.
This school staff member simply cannot fathom how a homeschooled student could learn as much as he did without tests.

Not Always Friendly

This player in an online game doesn't seem to understand that if you don't have the game's expansion packs, you cannot play in the areas in the expansion packs with other players who do.
This person is unable to understand that the submitter's mother isn't just "doing the gluten-free thing", she has celiac disease. Despite it being explained to them repeatedly.
A whole team of them here. Girls from a softball league take it upon themselves to canvass every street in their city advertising for people to join. This includes the subject of the story, who completely ignores 'no trespassing' and 'no soliciting' signs (under the assumption that because she's recruiting for a softball league, they don't apply to her). She then spends several minutes ignoring the submitter's warnings that the husband in the house has severe PTSD, and only leaves when a state trooper threatens to arrest her. They later learn about another girl in the same group, who was also almost arrested for trying to force her way into an elderly woman's home to get her granddaughter to join.
The OP's daughter's friend's dad in this story is apparently unable to comprehend that they didn't hire anyone to build their daughter's playhouse, they built it themselves. Convinced that they're simply refusing to reveal the name of their contractor for some reason, he ends up getting mad at them for "disappointing a little girl".
A classmate in this story is completely oblivious to the concept of tabletop roleplaying, confusing it with live-action roleplaying, roleplaying in the bedroom and the Furry Fandom, even after the topic's been discussed at length.
In this story, the submitter finds a lost dog with no collar or other means of identification, so they take care of the dog while putting up flyers and raising awareness to find the dog's owner. Sure enough, the owner comes to their house, but she's convinced that the submitter stole her dog, and won't hear anything to the contrary, even as the submitter willingly hands over the dog. She even tries to call the police on the submitter. Given that she insists the dog is a purebred when it's plainly not, it wouldn't be surprising if she was just plain delusional in general.

Not Always Healthy

This rheumatologist continually gives the submitter advice about how to lose weight... when the submitter repeatedly states and shows in writing that they have tried to lose weight without success, and the doctor continually fails to understand that the submitter either is doing more than what the doctor asks or has already attempted it.
In a particularly horrific example that unfortunately ended badly, these possibly senile old idiots fail to recognise that their dog is not merely tired but suffering from heatstroke, despite the submitter's attempts to help the poor dog and other concerned customers' attempts to alert them to his condition, until it's too late. Both the submitter and the commenters were horrified that someone could be that oblivious to their pet's condition.
The patient is a vegetarian with a milk allergy, so they cannot reduce consumption of red meat and dairy: they already don't eat either!
Patient: Could you please help me to understand how to reduce meat and dairy when I haven’t eaten any meat in over twenty years and I haven’t eaten dairy in over ten?
Medical Professional: I think you should arrange an appointment with your doctor... as you aren’t listening to my advice.
- Similarly, two separate dietitians (and one colleague) cannot grasp that their patient cannot drink less alcohol because they already don't drink any.
This patient tells the dietitian at least six times that they're severely allergic to nuts. The dietitian continues to insist that the patient needs to eat a minimum of 60 grams/2.1 ounces of nuts every day to stabilize their blood sugar levels, and refuses to suggest any other food item that might help with blood sugar without killing the patient.
The pediatrician in this story is so hung up on his belief that rural clients must be unwashed, uneducated, trash folk that he assumed a child's rash was ringworm (from visual evaluation only, without performing the required tests), and when it returned, that the parents were lying about how they'd cleaned everything, rather than that his diagnosis was wrong. After he's investigated and loses his license for several other bigotry-based misdiagnoses, his successor immediately diagnoses the child with chronic eczema, which was being repeatedly irritated by the parents' cleaning detergent.
The submitter of this story assumes this is the case with a woman who won't wear a face mask in the pharmacy. It takes a few tries to realize the prescription she's trying to get filled is for a specialty painkiller; her face is too badly inflamed to wear the mask, and they're the one not getting it!
The nurse in this story is apparently unable to comprehend that just because the patient possesses a uterus does not mean it must automatically be the cause of all her medical issues. She starts by asking if she's pregnant, while eyeing her (presumably male) partner; when the patient explains that she's on her period, the nurse suggests this might be the cause of her problem. No matter how many times the increasingly annoyed patient tries to explain that she's in with a broken finger, the nurse seems to be convinced that it's a pregnancy issue, until she finally storms off muttering about problem patients. After another 20 minutes the couple are visited by another nurse, who is surprised to see them as the first one had already issued a discharge for her — diagnosing her with period-related pregnancy problems which were making her irritable. The by-now furious patient yells that her finger is broken, and finally gets it treated — but she ends up receiving two discharge letters, one for her finger and one for the non-existent pregnancy issue.

Not Always Legal

The 911 operator in this story fails to understand that the submitter is asking for animal control to deal with a bear in the basement because she's blindly following the wrong emergency response card without actually listening to the submitter, leaving the responding officer shocked when the bear turns out to be an actual bear and not, as they apparently believed, "a big, hairy, gay guy".
A text-based emergency service for deaf people refuses to help a deaf person because they didn't call the police... because, you know, deaf.
The cousin in this story adamantly believes that a classmate is troubled and lashing out due to a lack of friends. She maintains this view as the classmate's offenses progressively worsen, going from deliberately contaminating food to get fired to selling prescription medicine, to two separate attempts at robbery (for which he got arrested and tried both times as an adult), with the clear implication that the classmate doesn't want to improve himself. This goes to the point where the two of them end up married (during the classmate's second stint in prison).
A woman on Facebook calls the police on the submitter because she bought a sewing machine at a pawn shop, and she's adamantly convinced that it was stolen. Even when the submitter points out that pawn shops have very strict laws and regulations in place to avoid such scenarios, and the legal accountability would fall on them if she did indeed buy a stolen product, the woman continues to insist that what the submitter did is illegal and that she's going to jail. The local sheriffs openly laugh at her report due to how ridiculous it is.
This "friend" is utterly baffled when the submitter gets mad at them for stealing and selling their car for weed and booze, and constantly whines about how much of a deal is being made out of it (but he gave back a cut of the money he made, that should make it alright!) right up until the cops force the notion through his head that it was a crime.
This client at a law firm is convinced that "bilingual" means (and only means) "can speak English and Spanish", rather than being able to speak two languages that aren't necessarily English and/or Spanish, even after multiple people explain it to him. In the story, this line of thinking has gotten the client in trouble after he hired and then immediately fired a multilingual employee who can speak six languages, but none of those is Spanish, all because he only ever asked the guy if he was "bilingual" rather than directly asking if he spoke Spanish. When the fired employee sues him, he's adamant that the employee misrepresented himself by claiming to be bilingual when he didn't speak Spanish, even after multiple people try to explain otherwise.

They Just Dont Get It / Not Always Right