It's jarring when we're reminded that there are people out there who live very different lives from most of us. I was reminded of this when u/LaunchesKayaks asked folks, "What's the most out of touch thing you've heard people say?"
So many responses were more than just a little upsetting. Here are the ones that stood out:
1. "A guy I was seeing told me, 'As long as you’re dating someone better looking than you, you’re going to have to get used to me being hit on, or having something on the side. You’re going to have to date an ugly guy for that loyalty shit.'''
2. "I recently got a new job that paid double what I used to make. When I put in my resignation, my former boss told me money isn't everything. I was only making minimum wage before."
3. "My high school guidance counselor said to me, 'I don’t know why you would go to a community college when you can go to a university,' during a lecture on college admissions essays and applications in my senior English class. I'd asked, naively, if there’s anything I had to do for community college. It turns out I had other classmates in the same boat who wanted to know the same thing but felt too embarrassed to ask."
4. "I was telling my boss how proud I was that my husband got a new job and that he's legally blind. She then proceeded to tell me that she wished she had a disability so she could just get handed a job. I had to walk away from that one."
5. "During a break room discussion on how one of my co-workers had to go to food stamps because the job didn't pay enough, the new CEO, who for the first and last time decided to have lunch in the break room, chimed in with, 'Yeah, I know what you mean. We had to let our second nanny go.'"
6. "I was working at a school for the children of the 1%, and we were discussing what a millionaire was. One example I gave was owning property or assets worth a million or over, and a kid said, 'Oh, so everyone is a millionaire then?'"
7. "I used to work with an extremely competent and really nice supervisor, and she didn't show up for work one day. Our boss, who was also the owner, wanted to terminate my supervisor immediately until it came out that her husband died in a really violent, freak accident. The boss backed off when I told him that I can cover for her for as long as she needs. After two weeks passed, and in spite of her checking in every so often and being in the bereavement guidelines, our boss started interrogating people, asking when she'd be returning. He complained that her coming in to collect a paycheck (which she had to do because he refused to pay us through direct deposit) was really unprofessional given how long she'd been gone. He even started quietly asking people how it would look if he went ahead and replaced her."
8. "'If you can't afford gas, buy an electric vehicle.' Like yeah, I can't afford the $100 of gas, so I'm better off buying a $60,000+ electric vehicle."
9. "'I wish we could make work-from-home possible for our business, but unfortunately we cannot,' was said in a meeting over Zoom, while the person was poolside...working from home."
10. "My dad just died about a month ago. My company gave me four days off, unpaid. I was really close to my father, and it was hard for me to deal with. My paycheck was enough to pay bills, but I had to buy my groceries on credit card to get by. My boss's brother-in-law died the following week. All he talks about is how hard this is on his wife — between the stress of her brother dying and the renovation on their million dollar cabin, he's taking his whole family to Hawaii for 10 days this month to try to deal with their grief. Meanwhile, I'm price-comparing urns out on Amazon to save money, trying to sell my dad's tools to help my mom, working full-time, and taking care of a toddler."
"The staff I work with here pulled together to got me a sympathy card and a $175 gas card so I would have money to go see my mom. I've been here for 14 years, and my boss didn't even get me a card. My dad was a customer here. He bought his truck and did all his service work here." —u/candy_15
11. "I work at a grocery store in an area that is mostly students, but adjacent to a couple super affluent neighborhoods. We get a lot of students using EBT/food stamps, but also a lot of wealthy middle-aged people. One time, I'd scanned and bagged a woman's groceries, but when she swiped her EBT card, she was about $5 short. I turned the transaction screen around, and we chose a few items to void so that she could pay and also have a little left on her card, then I removed the items from her bag. She paid, got her receipt, and was gathering her items. By this time, the man behind her had been waiting for about five minutes. I rang him up for his cart, which included a $50 bottle of scotch, and he started saying how rude it was that she didn't just 'pay with her other card.'"
12. "'Aren’t you a bit too old to have a grandma?' said my neighbor when I told her my grandma just passed away."
13. "I remember my granddad telling me about getting a job when I was 15 years old. He said, 'You gotta be persistent. Keep going in every day and ask for a chance; they'll admire your persistence and dedication, and you'll get it eventually.' It felt backwards, but I tried it. To this day, I'm still barred from that pub for harassing the manager."
14. "I had a friend in dental school who grew up in the rich suburbs north of Detroit. We were talking about traveling because she was going to Thailand for spring break, and she said, 'I’d be surprised if most people hadn’t travelled to at least 20 countries.' I told her I’d be surprised if most people had ever left the States at all."
15. "I was on a forum online, and this one guy was upset his wife was making him 'babysit' their infant too much, so he and his mom told her there’d be no more going out for her. He said him going out all the time was different than her going out — when asked for clarification, he said, 'Because she’s better at changing diapers and getting the baby to sleep.' It truly blows my mind that there are morons out there who think taking care of their own children is babysitting."
16. "The most unusual thing I heard from my friend is that he seriously thinks that menstruation doesn't exist."
17. "When I used to help a charity, we'd get people donating literal rags, torn T-shirts, and ruined trousers for the people who were homeless, saying, 'It's good for somebody.' No, no it's not. The items were often worse than the clothes the people we helped were currently wearing."
"Why do some folks think people who are homeless want junk? They deserve something nice." —u/potato_owl
18. "Gal Gadot and friends singing 'Imagine' during the first few days of lockdown in 2020 is up there."
19. "A few months ago, I was watching the news, and there was a segment in which they tried to break down the average American's spending with a pie chart. They had some of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen listed on that chart. For example, they seem to believe that the average lower middle class American donates between $300 and $600 a month to charity. Yeah...okay. Tell me that wasn't pieced together by a bunch of rich people who are completely out of touch with what it's like to be middle or lower middle class."
20. "I was at an open house looking for a new property, and two women were discussing their favorite restaurants. One asked the other, 'Who is your chocolatier?' and I remembered that some people just live such different lives."
21. "'Why don't you live on disability?' was a response to people with disabilities complaining about local government cutting back programs that were designed for making gainful employment accessible to these people."
22. "I used to work for a minor aristocrat. Then, another time he said, in absolute sincerity, 'The thing about a Bentley is that you have to have a crap car, too. I mean, there are times when a Bentley just isn't appropriate, and what you need is a crap car.' His idea of a 'crap car' later turned out to be an expensive Alfa Romeo."
23. "The day after it was revealed my dad had been abusing my brothers, my mom said to me, 'You have no right to be upset. He didn’t touch you.'"
24. "Someone once said to my face, 'If you are depressed, just go to Tulum and take a break. Vibe high!' I was so put off. That is not how depression works, and it's not like I could just leave all my responsibilities and randomly decide to go on vacation. When I told her that, she said, 'You are just too pessimistic. Every time I feel depressed, I do that.' So I asked her how she knew she was depressed. She answered, 'Well the last time I had depression was because I cried because my dad didn't want to take me to Paris for a year.'"
25. "I had a millionaire tell me it was so great that even though we could be making much more elsewhere than we were at the nonprofit we worked at, that we stayed 'for the kids' because, 'Who needs money when your job is rewarding?'"
26. "My mom was widowed at 27 years old, with three kids under 5 years old to care for. She would chat with other moms who happened to be divorced (it was the early '80s, so it was uncommon but starting to happen), and people would say to her, 'At least your husband died, so you don’t have to deal with an ex and kids going back and forth.' Seriously? She still loved her husband when he died..."
27. "Back in college, the entire class had a 10-minute argument with one student who didn't understand that not every country has citizenship by birth laws like the US does. The professor held off jumping in for about five minutes to watch us explain it to her, but couldn't take it anymore. She figured the student would finally believe it when she said it. Nope, she started arguing with the professor, too. The total out-of-touch part came when she finally conceded with, 'Well that's stupid. They should just do things the way we do them here.'"
28. "My boss told me that the leasing of our company car was ending, and I could buy it for really cheap if I wanted it. 'Really cheap' meant 20,000 Euros for him — he pays me 750 Euros a month. I live on my own and already have a car, but I'd have to work about two years for this car without spending a cent on anything else to afford that 'really cheap' car."
29. "I was in a college finance course, and another student said, 'We should never raise taxes on the rich. I'm not used to sacrificing things, so if you make me take only one vacation a year, it would be worse than if you made a poor person have less. They're already used to not having things.'"
30. "A woman told me that having to show her Costco membership card upon entering the building was, 'The worst thing that's ever happened to me.' And she was dead serious. I was on my sixth day of a migraine and would have loved if the worst event of my life was being asked to show a membership card."
31. "'Why are you still living at home at 23? Just buy a house…' This came from someone whose parents bought her a house."
32. "I suggested someone take the bus to save on gas prices. They responded, 'Ew, do you know what kind of people take the bus?' Yeah, working class people...and also me."
33. "I was 16 years old when my dad died. Our family is very, very close, and I wasn't expecting it, so I was hit pretty hard. A month after his death, I was picking up a book at a friend's house. My friend wasn't home, so her mother was the one to give me the book. She asked how my family was doing, and I said we were trying to get back on our feet. Her exact words were, 'Oh don't worry, honey. Give it a year or two, and you'll forget your father even ever existed.' I was so shocked. She continued saying, 'First we forget their voices, and then their faces.' I left their house feeling numb, sad, and scared that I would forget my father."
34. "Four of my fellow-millennial friends and I rented a house from a boomer some years ago. After signing the lease, the boomer turned to us and asked why we weren't buying homes and flipping them like he does. This was before the mega boom in housing prices, and we explained that we wouldn’t be renting if we had house-buying money."
35. "An elder student at my community college was sharing how her mother used to make supper from only saltine crackers and milk during The Great Depression. A young woman asked in the class, 'Why didn't your parents just get a job?'"
36. "My co-worker told me, 'Taking out student loans is stupid. Just get a part-time job and stop buying lattes so you can pay your way like I did.' He graduated college in the '70s."
37. "A male friend and I were walking around the city when I noticed this guy watching me intensely and following us. We were about to get into an elevator, and the guy quickly jumped in before us and made prolonged eye contact with me, so I held us back from getting in the elevator. Then, the guy got out and walked away. l told my friend about it, and he responded by telling me how hurt he felt that I robbed him of his ability, as a man, 'to protect me.' The fact that he thought I should ignore my own sense of self-preservation, just to soothe his own ego, was one of the most out of touch things I had heard in a while."
38. "My parents said to me, 'Why do you keep taking these low paying jobs?' Apparently, they think I work horrible, crappy jobs for fun."
39. "I attended a typical 'rich kid' high school as one of the non-rich kids — my family was solidly middle class. When my ex- friend turned 16 years old, her parents gave her one of their BMWs, which was maybe five years old. She would not stop complaining that her parents had the audacity to give her a used car instead of buying her the new Audi she wanted. One day, she was on another diatribe about how much her parents sucked for giving her a hand-me-down car, and I snapped. I told her that she should be grateful her parents had the means to give her her own car in the first place, let alone a luxury vehicle. Her response was, 'Well it isn’t my problem that your parents don’t work hard enough.'"
40. "I was talking to this college student, and he said, 'I'm thinking about taking a gap year between my junior and senior year. If I do take a gap year, I am gonna take that time and travel. I don't understand why people take a year off to work."
41. "A year ago, we were putting offers on houses. Our budget was low compared to what was available, and the realtor asked, 'Well, can’t your parents help pitch in?' It makes me think a lot of people are lucky enough for their parents to help with the home-buying process, but yeah, not us."
What's the most out of touch thing you've heard someone say? Or was there a time when you were the one being out of touch? Let me know in the comments.
Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and/or length.