What Dumb Idea Did You Have That Actually Worked? r/AskReddit Reddit Stories | Top Posts

what is the dumbest idea you have ever had that actually worked in college my buddy and i took an investing class and for one of the projects we had a month to invest fake dollars into the stock market and see which team would have the most money after a month it was spring semester so we put all of our fake money into heinz thinking there would be a spike in ketchup and mustard sales as the weather got warmer the next day berkshire hathaway purchased the entire heinz company and the professor accused us of insider trading we had no idea what we were doing edit hey you man dogged with famous edit too to clarify we didn't actually get in trouble for insider trading but the professor came over to us before the next class and was like what happened here we explained it and she thought it was funny but said we would definitely be investigated for insider trading if this was real money in university i was late on an assignment that was supposed to be in my tas dropbox by noon that day i didn't manage to get there until almost three so i was sure he had already emptied it now the drop boxes were literal boxes and cubbies with a slot on the front and a lock on them that prevented them from being pulled out the rack holding them was just a basic metal frame with about five rows of boxes ita's box was somewhere in the middle of the shelf so i figured i'm late anyways why not take a chance and slipped my assignment into the box below my tas box i got my assignment handed back a few weeks later than everyone else and it had a note from another ta scribbled on it that's it looks like this fell into my box by mistake i got full marks on the assignment [Music] in college i was taking a class that required me to purchase an online textbook and workbook that was registered under your name basically ensuring that each student would have to buy a new online copy each semester instead of buying used textbooks i had a friend who took this class a semester before me so we came up with the idea to message customer service and explain that i had recently gotten married so my last name had changed and i legally changed my first name from my friend's first name to my first name and i would need them to change it in their system it totally worked and the rep even congratulated my on my marriage real estate told me i had to have the carpets professionally cleaned wasn't in the contract or i'd lose my 800 bond i did some research and found out i could become an accredited carpets cleaner as there are no official licensing boards in my state so i did what any sane person would do i paid the 85 did the online course and got my certificate registered a business name abn etc etc all free handed the property management a copy of my accreditation and an invoice for services i became a professional carpets cleaner and launched a vacate cleaning business that is still going six months later edit to add i did clean the carpets they claimed i didn't and required a professional cleaners invoices proof so i gave them the proof i did not charge the real estate agency it was a copy of the invoice they claimed to require i do professional housekeeping and cleaning for vacating a property at the end of least when you get maximum bond back i help people who are being unfairly treated by their property management and advise them on what steps to take in regards to cleaning repairs etc with the return of the bond and some smart shopping i was able to purchase my own equipment to continue the job i then claimed those costs back on tax i wrote this and fell asleep so waking up to a bunch of silvers and a gold is pretty damn cool capital c thank you riddit and your love for spite i once faked being sick when i was in middle school and told my mom i had a sore throat and felt a cold coming on she took me to the doctor and it turned out that i did in fact have strep throat lol i stuck my neck out for an ex-con on house arrest at my job he interviewed well but his availability was horrible between the ankle bracelet and meeting with his po drug treatment program etc my gm said no and i said i'm doing it anyway the first night he worked there i found myself in a bind he was the only person scheduled in the kitchen from 8-10 p and i had no one who knew the kitchen besides myself because our store had a wicked virus traveling around they told him look dude we are pretty ducked back here and i'm going to try to keep my cool but i can't promise and because i'm the only manager on duty i might have to run to the front drive through well this guy mastered production in about an hour he was faster than my gm on the grills and friars and his attitude was so good i waited on nothing and he even tried to help me make sandwiches and send them out he also managed to clean up the entire kitchen he eventually moved to maintenance and fixed all the crap the previous guy ignored in a day then he moved to service for more hours when the hour restrictions came off and was great with the currents my gm got over the ankle bracelet record and tattoos and actually hired him for his house flipping business all because i said we need ducking employees and you can't be picky when he's the only guy i've interviewed in a month thanks for the awards but in the future consider spending on rehabilitation programs in your area some people wondered why i consider this a dumb decision our background check wasn't exhaustive and detailed detailedness it said red yellow green and we usually tossed all the red ones in favor of green or yellow i had no clue going into the interview or the higher what his offenses were he chose to disclose to me why his availability sucked i did not ask i don't know the legality of asking but he didn't disclose his record to me and i had to go with my gut in fast food you get a lot of teenagers as customers and employees you get a lot of skeezy people record or not you have to consider the safety of the children as well as the quality of the worker you are introducing to the workplace an ex-con is a wild card when you don't know exactly what they were in for and again i'm not sure the legality of me asking after i got to know him on a personal level he shared his record drug abuse led to a bunch of felonies and he was released early on house arrest for good behavior but again i knew none of this as i hired he was a great hire he is a great man he was the kids defender when people chose to berate my teenager cashiers he was a great influence on the kids a real do as i say and not as i did kind of guy who was painfully honest about what he lost to drugs but he also could have been a real angry man who enjoyed fighting people and stealing [Music] bobcat tyre blew during a job had another tire but no jack positioned the bobcat behind a dump truck bobcat then tries to lift the ass end of the dump truck dump truck hella heavy bobcat lifted itself instead tyre changed and back to work put jesus in his wifi password in church it worked bet my husband i could fix the dent in the car with a plunger it worked edit it is clear i should have used a massive suction dildo instead till i used a soap bottle as a makeshift sink plunger i used to know a guy who every week would order his saturday night curry for delivery while sitting in the pub and then walk over the road to the curry house and get it and himself delivered home this went in for about 10-12 weeks one week we were sitting having a pint and the owner of the curry house walked in took his order and had him picked up from the pub he said it was easier for everyone concerned breaking into my own house through the kitchen window using a piece of wire and a wooden table after i was locked out far from the dumbest working idea in the thread but i once got an extra day to work on a video project in high school by coming to class with a video that was just a quarter second of blackness eagerly volunteering to go first then acting confused and scared when the file didn't work the teacher took pity on me and told me to just bring it the following day and i got to finish it that evening and still got full credit as if i did it on time not my idea but my mom's i dropped one of my earrings and couldn't find it so she threw my other ear in k n the floor and it happened to land next to the first one we had a noisy rotating rooster weathervane loud enough to keep people awake on windy nights despite having been lubed so i filled the hole the rooster rotates in with cresco even though people said it was a dumb idea and wouldn't work never had to lube it again because the cresco didn't break down like other lubes i am a poor student living in germany students are required by law to have health insurance the university will expel you if you don't have health insurance the lowest rate i could get was about a 189 208 dollars a month i usually don't even spend that much on food there was just no way that i could pay such a high rate i wrote my insurer countless letters and emails explaining how there was no way that i could pay off a 189 they refused to lower my rate explaining how they are just following the law they even informed my university that i had failed to pay health insurance the university then threatened me to ex-matriculate me in my desperation i wrote the german ministry of health i explained myself and asked them to talk to my insurer a week later i received a letter from my insurer informing me that they had cut my rate to ameri89 a month and that this reduction was applicable to all month prior my rate is about to go up again but this time i should be able to manage edit i got my high school degree by attending evening seminars when i was in my mid-20s i worked a number of years after i received my high school degree i started university when i turned 30 therefore i am not eligible for student rates or government loans bafik most students in germany pay a significantly lower rate it probably wouldn't work in this day and age but back when i was young i was tired of retail and wanted an office job i just lied my ass off and pulled a total george costanza what with friends coached to answer their phones as a business and such got hired as an admin assistant and been steadily moving up since i did an undergrad in some weird mashup of electrical computer engineering math physics and comp c had to do a project or thesis at the end i couldn't write for it so opted for the project except i couldn't actually do anything good for it so i invented the 9-bit byte took me all of 5 minutes to think up normal read all computers are based on binary bytes r8 binary bits and blah blah well i had the courage to ask why they couldn't be just b9 bits it's really more complicated than that but you'll see i didn't care for complication if you read on instead of learning it like zero zero zero zero one zero zero one binary equals nine decimal why not just say one hundred million the one is nine spaces over equals nine decimal then humans could read it this is perverting everything about binary and architectures based on it but whatever who cares if saying 28 decimal equals 11 100 in binary or zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero one zero zero zero zero zero zero zero in my scheme and was incredibly wasteful and i went on to build a cpu that could process them that was ridiculously stupid wrote my small paper about it prof commended me for thinking outside the box and gave me a great mark but told me to never tell anyone else about this stupid idea so of course now i'm telling everything here we were at a friend's house about to cook a roast it needed to be patted dry with paper towel but he was all out i semi jokingly suggested using a couple slices of bread we all chuckled at the idea it worked perfectly one time i sent a letter to a local address by putting the return address as the address i wanted it to go to not putting postage and dropping it off in a public mailbox went to them return to sender due to insufficient postage in my senior year of high school we had to spend our final quarter doing mandatory volunteer work to graduate i was placed at a head start in my city and while some of the kids i worked with were great there was one brandon who was an absolute nightmare 20 months old endless energy no empathy no speech beyond a few words and no ability to recognize pain in other children at nap time someone always had to be sitting next to his cot as he would otherwise just get up and run around sometimes hitting the other sleeping kids if he could get away with it he would be a spiteful little it and repeatedly stick his feet out from under his blanket after you pushed it back in like it was a game one day i got so frustrated trying to get this brat to sleep that i basically just laid him down flat arms and legs together and closely tucked his blanket in under him from top to bottom like a burrito to my overwhelming joy he made no attempt to escape and was asleep within two minutes i repeated this tactic over the next few days with the same results it worked brandon would sleep one of the actual teachers workers there saw me doing this to him one day and asked me what i was doing i explained the process but she was skeptical until i showed her just how quickly brandon would chill out i swear her face lit up like i had just given her the most life-changing advice ever oh my god you darkness you're right he actually falls asleep was really really desperate to leave past employer after 15 years had been applying and interviewing and striking out finally got an interview at a place where at the time i felt meh i am not really sure this is right for me but anything is better than where i am at instead of prepping for the interview rehearsing answers etc i pulled an office space i was cocky brash unconcerned made it seem like i was happy where i was at and didn't really care if i got the job or not they called me back the next week and i waited a week to return their call same deal with the second interview when they offered me the job ahead and horde said i needed to think about it really hard and that it was a big move for me etc etc i came back and demanded well over fifteen thousand dollars above what they were offering in salary they accepted back in the flipped phone days i had dropped mine and the screen stopped working i could make and receive calls but the screen was just completely blank i put up with it for a couple of weeks because i couldn't afford a new phone but one day i had the thought of well if dropping the phone made the connection loose baby the same thing can fix it and threw my phone at the ground i picked it back up and the screen was working edit thanks for making this my top comment of all time guys now everyone knows how much of an idiot i was am edit 2 specifically to piss off you throwdowntown69 thanks for the gold kind stranger i can't believe i got my very first gold it's such an honor xd hit the router slap thanks when i was brand new to the army we were training with another unit and we had to defend the urban combat area mount site from an incoming force we were allowed only allowed a few hours to prepare one guy suggested that we set up tripwires too at least slow them down the doors are all painted bright blue and all anyone had was my package of black 550 cord perisher cord that could easily be seen setting this up we thought there was no way they would miss it i was wrong instead of checking the door like they were supposed to the opposing force simply tried to rush through i almost couldn't return fire due to the fact i was laughing so hard i even put a piece just below knee level in the doorway to the room i was in i turned around when i heard people falling over each other i looked and almost the entire squad was crawling on top of each other trying to get up i put my weapon on burst and emptied the magazine then fumbled with my last one as i started to laugh even harder than before after i blindly fired down the hallway i just leaned against the wall and the entire group and myself just looked at the scene and started laughing then their platoon leader came running in and tripped over the same cord this point i was done put my weapon on safe put it against the wall and tried not to piss my pants over the whole situation i'm stuck on a cliff but if i jump at a really sharp angle at that gravel field i could just slide down there and be fine just like in tv every time i think about this i am amazed i'm not either flattened by a rock or impact against something childhood really is just the tutorial level sometimes this idea could have easily gotten me fired if it went wrong i was working as art director at an animation studio making videos for clients one client was especially pesky about the use of yellow in the background they wanted it to be that of their logo which was this horrible neon piss yellow we advised against it but after numerous calls we had to cave and gave a version with that color they hated it and asked for a change what followed were 12 versions with numerous calls in between tweaking the color over and over eventually i got tired of it and just sent the original version again i didn't even bother to rename the file the client said this looks exactly the way i wanted thank you how that ever went right i still have no idea using a sewing needle to remove a bit of dirt that was making one of my records skip bear in mind my hands are shaky as hell so it was certainly very tense and there was the danger of ducking up the whole thing edit thanks to everyone who gave advice on how to clean records less dangerously our power was out due to a storm i had a camp stove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour through but i couldn't use my electric grinder for the coffee beans i tried fashioning a mortal and pestle but it was taking too long so i put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags placed the bag right behind a car tire then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans worked like a charm edit to add lolli took reading through a few comments but now i see i wrote mortal and not mortar when i was younger i got called into hr because i drew a very detailed picture of a d it was really really good the hr meeting happened like a week after i drew it and my only defense was i don't recall doing that do you happen to have the picture it might jog my memory they didn't have it of course because i had it and because i didn't confess they couldn't do it investigation results inconclusive have a nice day wearing a motorcycle helmet while snow blowing i did it because i missed riding it kept my face warm and when snow would fly back at me the visor would protect me i forgot to bring a resume to a job interview but i had an index card in my bag i cut the index card in half and wrote my name my contact info and creative problem solver in my best handwriting and gave a copy of my business card to both the interviewers i got the job when i was young and broke i bought a sofa from a used furniture store i had no way to take the sofa home i went to a used car lot a couple of blocks away and took a truck for a test drive years ago i remember applying to a bunch of copywriting jobs and feeling frustrated because i wasn't hearing back from any of the places i was applying it was especially frustrating because i was putting in all this time on cover letters and i felt like nobody was even reading them so i said duck it i'm gonna write one that is ridiculous that is more me i absolutely thought it was a dumb idea and never imagined that it would work but somehow it did i applied with her this cover letter i and the subject line copywriter will work for beer to a job that i was under qualified for it managed to catch the eye of the headhunter for the ad agency and was enough to get me an interview shortly after that i was hired and ended up working there for a few years however this probably wouldn't work everywhere but it fit the culture of the agency plus the job listing said that i would be working for beer brands as clients and that free beer was a perk of the job a friend and i once snuck 15 people into a warped tour by giving them some bracelets from a party supply store and clipboards full of paper walked up to the side gate and said we were with rock the vote the security guard waved us right in edit thanks for the silver in my freshman year of college my grades were really not great and my parents were really strict about getting good grades when my dad asked to see my grades i panicked and did the inspect command on the computer where you can change type faces on the screen to read different words and letters i change all of my itty grades to good grades my dad was so happy that i did good my first year of school he asked me to print my results i did and turns out he had to send them to our car insurance company for a good student discount ultimately i committed insurance fraud by accident but i got the discount got a really long drill bit stuck in a piece of thick wood butcher's block i tried everything i could think of to yank it out my solution that ended up working for me was attaching the drill bit to a chain put the chain on my truck and have a piece of wood kind of stuck between two branches of a tree i drove off slowly and it popped right out edit to the many wandering on how i hooked up the bit to the chain the drill bit was a long spade drill bit the end sticking out of the block was long enough that i could bend into a little hook attached the chain to the hook bent the hook in a little further and tardar it was now another link in the chain years ago the foundation of my house would let water in right at the seam of the wall and hatch way i decided to dig down so i could seal it from the outside i got a few feet down before i couldn't reach with a shovel so what did this genius do i went in head first and kept digging but then my arms were getting tired and i decided i should quit i'm now doing a handstand in a narrow pit and have no way to back out of it i live far enough from neighbours that yelling would do nothing after a few minutes of coming to terms with the fact that this is how i die at 28 years old i decide i will try to walk up the foundation wall with my hands one last time and it worked could have ended quite badly in the end it worked i was able to seal the issue from the outside edit thanks for the silver kind redditer i hated my math teacher and she was making us do a project on patterns even though we were in seventh grade so my pattern was a series of increasingly longer sideways ds she didn't even notice and i got an a when i was like seven years old i was playing in my back garden with those incredibly bouncy little balls you got just bouncing them high off the house and letting them bounce randomly before trying to catch them as you did one time i went for this huge throw off the wall and it bounced crazily off various surfaces so fast i completely lost track of it so my seven-year-old logic was to stand back in the same place and throw another ball the same way i watched it bounce this way and that about 10 times before finally hitting a plant and coming to a rest in a flower bed i went over to pull back the foliage and sure enough there were both balls literally lying touching each other in the mud at the time i was like yep makes sense but over the years since then i've often thought about it and how the hell it worked i am very anti-social and don't get along with people don't go out and dread to talk to anyone school trauma i guess so i moved in a house with nine strangers as flatmates to force myself to interact with people so far i enjoyed it living there i am no longer afraid of talking to them met many nice other people that even like me one dude let me draw on his face after he came without costume to the halloween party and was so happy he even recognized me a week later shouted my name and hugged me others complimented my gunshot wound i made they really care about what i did and do they are nice and i like them tl dr i hate people moved in with a bunch of them don't think they are so scary anymore did it well this got a lot more attention than expected thank you for reading and your nice comments special thanks to you chopped destiny avenue and um 124 for putting the idea of an own sub in my head if i stop showing co-workers how to use excel i'll get to do all the easy excel stuff while simultaneously being patted on the back for doing the hard stuff on the team no one else good basically unless you want to be super upper management and give your life to your work play clueless don't let them know you could simplify a report that takes several days into literally minutes shhh someone else will take tech credit and then you'd have more to do using pokemon go to get home after getting on the wrong bus and ending up in a random town edit for those asking about gps it wasn't working and i don't know why i was in a bus so i didn't have any other form of gps i didn't ask for help because i'm scared of people my headphones kept cutting out so i took a toothpick and scraped the inside of the headphone jack on my phone several clumps of dust fell out and afterwards the headphones work just fine using a pocket knife to skyrim lock pick a door there was a swarm of hornets that had made a nest under the front of our porch with only one specific narrow entry in or out spray wouldn't work and it was right under our front door so had no way to keep exterminating them then i realized why not wearing blades of metal we did have an old 50s metal fan and i could maybe blow them away from the entrance so they had no way to get in the unanticipated effect was that it worked though after a few hours had created a civil war battlefield of dead or dying hornets piling up like a zombie tower in world war zed every few moments you'd hear funk as another hornet fell into the trap so satisfying [Music] you

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Keywords: reddit, r/AskReddit, ask reddit, askreddit, updoot, toadfilms, sir reddit, reddit jar, askreddit funny, askreddit dumb, reddit ama, reddit ask me anything, r/askreddit, reddit stories, reddit story, askreddit scary, askreddit stupid, scary stories, askreddit new, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, askreddit top posts, subreddit, funny reddit, best reddit posts, askreddit stories, best of reddit, reddit best, funny askreddit, storytime with reddit, memes, r/

Id: j2plPfz_fS4

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021