User manuals exist for a reason. They tell you exactly what a product or item is for, how it is used, and what you must avoid doing for safety reasons. As long as everyone follows what's in the user manual, everything should be fine. It's when people's curiosity and creativity kicks in that problems start to arise. Developing makeshift solutions on questionable logic usually never ends well.
Confused people from around the world submitted the most extreme misuse of an everyday item they've ever witnessed. Some of these are actually inventive, while others will leave you scratching your heads thinking, "What the heck were they thinking?" Keep reading on for some good laughs... Just make sure you don't get any bright ideas!
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#1 When Bacon Is Life
We weren’t allowed hot plates or microwaves in the college dorms, so one of the girls on my floor cooked bacon with a hair straightener.
#2 A Pillow, Not Pizza
A friend of mine lived in an apartment above another student. One time during the winter, she came home from a night of heavy drinking, as students do, and it all went south. She had decided to warm up her pillow (because it was cold) in the oven. Of course, she was asleep within minutes and within the hour, smoke filled the entire apartment. Unlike a pizza, a pillow made from synthetic filler burns pretty enthusiastically and lights up at a reasonably low temperature. Five or six apartments, including the one my friend lived in, were totaled from the heat in that fire.
#3 Not A Good Alternative
I once had a friend casually say: “You know how when you run out of toilet paper, you just use a sock or whatever?” No, I do not, Sandra. Geez.
#4 Ovens Are Not For Storage
There are so many stories about ovens, especially ones that are never used. "Oh, I'll store things in it!" or "I'll put a MacBook on the stove burner!" Then a guest comes in and says, "Hm... Let's preheat the oven to cook something!" This happened to me when I first moved in with my roommates. I love baking and cooking, so I couldn't imagine ever storing things in a functioning oven. Of course, I preheated the oven without thinking to look in it only to find the kitchen slowly start getting a very strong chemical smell. I looked in the oven and discovered that was where they stored their Tupperware containers.
#5 Metal on metal
My sister used a metal spatula on the pan I bought the day before. I never even got the chance to use it before it happened. "I'm being careful," she said. Careful would have been not using metal utensils. This is like a brain surgeon "carefully" removing a tumor with a wrench.
#6 Hide Your Knives
Man, I threw a major fit when I saw a visiting relative get my $100 chef's knife to screw a screw. "What's the big deal?" he asked. Well... If you have to ask... Is "Dude, I paid $100 for the thing" not a valid reason to him?
#7 Inventive Grilled Cheese Method
My friend's kid decided to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron on the couch. He burned a nice iron-shaped hole in the couch. The kid was 15 at the time. On a related note, when I lived in the dorms in college, my roommate and I had an iron specifically for grilled cheese. No burnt couches though.
#8 Makeshift Barbie Accessories
I walked into my sister's room and she had maxi-pads laying everywhere with Barbies on top. She was like, look at all these Barbie sleeping bags I found. What's the age cutoff point where it goes from cute to kind of sketchy and creepy?
#9 It Made Sense In Theory
I didn't witness this, but I read it in a newspaper article a few years ago. It was this article about life-hacks and such. Basically, there was this "hack" going around about how you could put your toaster on its side, slide in two slices of bread with cheese on top and toast them, so you could get toast and grilled cheese all at once. Apparently, this lady tried it and the melting cheese set her toaster on fire. The whole thing went up and nearly burned her entire house down.
#10 That's Not A Spatula
My brother once used a brick chisel to cut brownies. My parents were re-doing the kitchen and left it out on top of a paint bucket or something. Guess he thought it was a spatula?
#11 Pasta Spoon Versatility
When I was a kid, my mother used a pasta spoon to clean the cat litter box. I thought this was normal because it was the only way I'd ever seen it used. Then, years after our cat passed away, I was eating dinner at a friend's house when the mom grabbed the same kind of utensil to serve spaghetti. I freaked the heck out and shouted, "Why are you serving food with a cat litter scoop?!" They were so confused and I couldn't eat my dinner because I was so disturbed.
#12 Iron-Prepared Meal
We had a housemate who used to get home very tipsy and try and cook himself elaborate meals, which always resulted in a lot of mess and noise. To combat this, I turned the oven and electrical sockets in the kitchen off when he went out one night. It was foolproof. The fool ended up cooking himself a steak in the living room with our clothes iron at 3 a.m.
#13 A Guide To Trash Bins
See a full trash bin? Here’s what to do. Take the bag out of the can, tie it up nice and tight. Replace with a clean trash bin liner. Take the full trash bag out to appropriate trash collection receptacles. Don’t wait for your housemate to do it. They’re just going to wait for you to do it. The trash will never be cared for. The saga will go on and no one will ever want to marry you.
#14 Vibration Settings: ON
Someone I know played a shooter game so that they could use their Xbox one controller for a neck massage.
#15 Dangerous Relief
I had an extreme itch in my ear and no Q-tip. The closest thing that would fit in my ear was a screwdriver, so I used it. I ended up cutting my eardrum and had to go to the doctor. I can’t say I regret it though, it was satisfying to finally get rid of the itch. I remember feeling uncomfortable because I couldn’t hear properly a few weeks after I did it. I used my pinky to feel around the inside of my ear and felt something hard—it turned out to be a blood clot and it came out in once piece. My hearing was fine afterward. Anyways, I use ear drops now. The itch usually comes from allergies so scratching it once won’t help.
#16 Don't Play With Lawnmowers
Many years ago, my cousin was a doctor at a teaching hospital in my city. He came back from work one day and told us that some guy had tried to use a lawnmower to trim his hedges. The blades of the mower got snagged around some of the branches on the hedge, and this idiot didn't turn the motor off before trying to reach into the mower to remove the jamming branches. As a result, when the branches were shifted, they dislodged, and the blades started spinning again at top speed, slicing his fingers off before he could remove them. Potential Darwin award material right there.
#17 School Smart, But Life Dumb
I know someone who used a microwave to "dry" a smartphone... after running said smartphone under tap water to clean it. This was like seven years ago, so I don't think the phone was waterproof. The person who did this was actually smart academically but had no common sense whatsoever. It baffled me how someone that school smart could be so life dumb.
#18 Something To Think About
Cop here. I've seen SEVERAL people using the portable air pumps that come with air mattresses to blow into their DWI ignition interlock to start their cars and keep them running. The odd part is, it works surprisingly well in some cases.
#19 The Asian Drying Rack
A friend of mine was a first-generation migrant to my country and her parents had a dishwasher in their house. However, since they never had one in their home country, they saw it as a wasteful appliance to use. So they stored clean pots and pans in it, just like another cabinet.
#20 That Poor, Poor Truck
I used to work at a golf course doing lawn maintenance. We had a guy on our crew who was older and well, not the brightest. He was kind of a loner so we just let him be most of the time. One day, I saw our guy mowing some large berms with one of our push mowers. To save time, I guess, he left the mower running; then picked it up to put in the back of the truck. He still had all his fingers but the truck tailgate took a good hit.
#21 The Wrong Way To Make Tea
I once wanted to make tea. I took a teapot and put it on the stove that I already turned on. After a few minutes later, I came to check if the water is boiling. That's when I realized I forgot to put anything in the pot... It was glowing red hot...
#22 Anything For Bigger Lips
Using hot peppers, cinnamon, or glue to make one's lips bigger. There’s a Tik Tok going about with a girl using lash glue to glue her upper lip to her skin to make it hotter, plumper and I think it’s not long until superglue is used for the same purpose. But I mean, it’s not like emergency rooms have anything better to do, so...
#23 Multipurpose Disk Tray
My high school Spanish teacher would use her computer’s disk tray as a shelf for her coffee mug. She was walking on a thin wire but I still thought it was a pretty inventive use for it.
#24 "Lemon" Chicken
I caught a friend of mine rubbing one of the antibacterial hand wipes from KFC all over his friends chicken. The little packet said 'a hint of lemon' on it, and he thought that meant he could flavor the chicken with it...
#25 Experimenting With Food
My roommate once poured hummus into a pot of marinara sauce. He's also mixed together a bunch of different types of barbeque sauce and left it out for days. Then, he ate it and tried to get the rest of us to eat it.
#26 The Best Tool? A Butter Knife
My wife routinely uses butter knives as flat screwdrivers. I also once caught her using an ice cream scoop as a hammer. We've talked about it, and I've since bought her tools. Now she keeps an old butter knife in the back of the drawer for fast easy battery changes and uses a hammer as a hammer.
#27 I'm A Big Kid Now
I use the little toilets in family restrooms because they work just like a Squatty Potty. I always pray that the lock doesn't malfunction because I am not sure how I will explain what's happening.
#28 Not Computer Savvy
In my junior year of high school, I spent nine months living with my dad. I've always had an interest in tech so when I moved there, I brought a computer. My dad and his family are the very opposite—none of them had ever touched a computer to any degree. My entire house was 100% computer illiterate.
When I first set it up, my dad wanted me to teach him how to use it, and I was baffled by the level of illiteracy he actually had. It was like I went back in time with a computer and gave it to a caveman. I had to teach him literally everything about a PC and how to use it, starting from the ground up. Early on, I introduced him to the mouse. I had to explain to him how the mouse worked, so I flipped it over and showed him the trackball. I moved it with my finger and explained that when you move the mouse, the ball rolls across the desk, causing the mouse cursor to move.
After a few moments of showing him mouse movement, I instructed him to move the mouse cursor over to an icon. He proceeded to pick the mouse up, flip it upside down, and started rolling the ball with his thumb trying to make the mouse move to an icon. After I corrected him, we moved on to clicking.
He literally was unable to do this. Every time he would click the mouse, for some reason he would also jerk his hand, causing the mouse to shift some direction and off the icon. He was completely incapable of clicking a specific spot on the screen and could NOT seem to learn it. After about 10 minutes of us going through clicking things he got frustrated and said that's enough and walked away. He never managed to click the icon.
#29 My Eraser Friends
Welp, baby me didn't have any small dolls to put inside a collectible toy Mini Cooper with openable doors, so the best thing I could do was use different types of erasers and give them personalities.
#30 Crazy Lady Antics
I used to live two doors down from the neighborhood's "crazy lady' and she would often vacuum her grass after it was mowed.
#31 No Spoon, No Problem
I saw a woman using an Oyster card (it’s a London bus pass the same size and material as a credit card) as a sort of spoon to eat a lasagna out of a Tupperware on the bus.
#32 Homemade Lemonade Fail
My boyfriend decided to make homemade lemonade. He was in the kitchen when I heard him struggling and cursing at this lemon squeezer. I came in and asked what was wrong. He started to rant about this dumb lemon squeezer and how shoddy and ineffective it was. He also mentioned that those "decorative holes" at the bottom weren't doing anything to let the juice flow out. I had never laughed so hard in my life.
He had the lemons in the lemon squeezer in backward so they weren't getting any pressure squeezed into the lemon. I took mercy and showed him how he was supposed to position the lemon in the squeezer. Of course, he got much more juice out of it then. I think he felt kind of dumb but to be fair, his family probably never made lemonade growing up.
#33 A Very Unnecessary Step
I was doing an internship in a small office and the engineer needed to take out the trash from the trash bin (it was lined with a plastic bag). He opened up a new plastic bag (I thought it was to replace the old full one) and asked me to hold it while he threw all the trash from the bin to the new plastic bag. I was so confused...
#34 A Spoon Handle With A Purpose
My mom used the handle end of a spoon today instead of a knife to spread some mayonnaise. The spoon was clean and not used for any spoon-like activities either. There were other knives to use.
#35 Toe Knife
This guy frank uses a knife to cut his toenails. He calls it his toe knife. When he frequently botches the job, he then uses socks, trash, or basically, whatever is around to stop the bleeding. When there is not a glove available, he calls them cut gloves. Really weird dude.
#36 It's Upside-Down
My mom's coworker (or maybe even her ex-boss) used the plastic page protectors for office binders in a wrong way. The page protectors have only one opening on top as everyone knows, but she would always turn them upside down and then use a billion paperclips on the bottom to prevent papers from falling out.
#37 She's Not Safe For Work
My wife once watched a girl at work stick a ball of aluminum into a microwave with her instant ramen during a break. She said, "The sparks are just because it's heating up faster," as if it were common knowledge.
#38 It's A Simple Sweep
Several years ago, I worked for a nail salon as a receptionist. One of my duties was to sweep the floors regularly so that clients didn't step on nail clippings on their way in and out.
There was a new hire, and my manager was never really around to train her. The other receptionists and I trained her. One day, I asked her to sweep the floors. I showed her where the broom and dustpan was. She was in her early 20s and living on her own, so I assumed I didn't have to teach her how to use a broom.
She took the broom and fanned the nail clippings into the dustpan. She didn't drag the broom across the floor to sweep it - the broom never touched the floor. I tried to show her how to sweep properly. She never took my advice, and I kind of gave up. She left after six months. She still couldn't sweep, but she could finally calculate tips at least.
#39 This Was Probably On Purpose
My dad's old boss asked a dishwasher at work to wash his car. One hour later, the boss went out to look at his brand new BMW and the guy had used a pot scourer, that metal thing used to clean pots and pans. Needless to say, my dad's boss screamed and that guy ran so far he was never seen again.
#40 The Wrong Pods
When I was a student, I was insanely busy between school and my university work. One time, I accidentally grabbed the laundry pods thinking they were dishwasher pods. I used them a few times and each time, there was foam leaking from the dishwasher.
My dumb, exhausted, overwhelmed self thought there was something wrong with the dishwasher. The maintenance guy came and said everything was fine. I felt like the biggest moron ever when I went to do the next load and read the package... I got some actual dishwasher pods after that and never had another issue with leaking foam!
#41 Super Facepalm
This was a story that a colleague told me happened on the day I was off. Back in the day, I used to work for a hotel. Apparently, some guests came to the reception to complain that the microwave wasn't working. We didn't have microwaves in the room, so when the staff came in to inspect the problem, she found out that they were trying to microwave a pizza... in the room's safe.
#42 How Not To Cook A Chicken
I had a new roommate who had arrived straight from mommy and daddy's house to mine. He didn't know how to do anything. One evening while I was out, he put a very large uncooked chicken into my small microwave. It was so big it took up all available space inside. I'm sure the turntable couldn't have been able to move. I came home to find the whole apartment covered in a fine film of chicken fat, a cloud of acrid blue smoke floating around the ceiling and the door to the microwave blown clean off.
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#43 Easy A/C
I saw someone who had taken a window A/C unit and installed it into the back of a full-size van. 10/10 for ingenuity.
#44 Dishwasher Logic
I used the dishwasher to wash the dust bin from my robot vac, then I used said robot vac to clean the kitchen counters... Even the stairs, which it can't even stay on. The walls too, yes.... the walls.
#45 Bad Driver
I’ve seen someone use a crescent wrench as a steering wheel. He didn’t have a steering wheel so he fastened the wrench on the shaft. Yes, it is a ridiculously dangerous thing to do. Thankfully, he was pulled over by the police and lost his license.
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