The Dead Giveaways That Someone Is An Only Child
Reddit user imlovegina asked: 'What is a dead giveaway that someone is an only child?'
A lot has been written about birth order among siblings and how it affects personality.
Not that everyone agrees on the effects.
Some say the oldest is the family rebel, while others say they're the ultimate conformist and rule follower.
Others assign those roles to the middle child.
But pretty much everyone agrees the youngest child is spoiled.
So does that mean an only child takes all those dynamics to form their personality?
The folks of Reddit sure has some thoughts on the matter.
Reddit user imlovegina asked:
"What is a dead giveaway that someone is an only child?"
Trust
"I told my boyfriend to close his eyes and open his mouth (I was surprising him with candy) and he just did it with no suspicion at all."
"People with siblings can’t trust like that."
- cowsofoblivion
Limited Pop Culture
"I’m an only child. One huge difference I see time and time again with those who have siblings—they had much more exposure to a longer timespan of media/music/games growing up. My idea of nostalgia consists of my specific timeline of media growing up, but those with siblings were able to watch tv shows their older brother watched, or knows about that game their little sister played."
- DopeYeti
"Yeah, the media you get is what your parents get for you. So PS2 was my only console since I requested one for my birthday and that's really it. Bigger families might have older siblings have older consoles, media, movies etc."
- Top_Lengthy
No "I'm Going to the Bathroom"
"I heard once only children are less likely to announce where they are going when they leave a room. Right away I realised I do that, but my partner who grew up with 2 sisters tells me where he’s about to go when he moves, even if it’s to the bathroom."
- NucularOrchid
"Now that im in my 30s I’ve trained myself to say where I’m going when I leave a room but it STILL feels so awkward when I do it."
"I also distinctly remember being confused in my first few relationships when people told me they were going to the restroom (okay?) and irritated when I would get up to go and they’d ask me where I’m going (like, we’re in a 1 b/r apartment and I’m not walking out the door, there are only so many options.)"
Anger is Fleeting
"My bf is an only child and it was his confusion at how I can be mad at my sister (who is also my roommate) one minute and turn around and get ice cream or go see a movie together."
He grew up with a bunch of cousins around his age, but it was the quick turnaround of 'I’m so mad at you' to 'I wanna hang out, let’s do something.'"
- sister-christian69
"Hypothesis: I think we don’t have practice of dealing with conflict. I had an argument with someone a few years back and I fully expected it to be awkward between us when we saw each other the next day, but she (not an only child) started chatting with me like everything was fine. I was taken aback and thought this would have lasted for much longer."
- RaspberryTurtle987
My Food is Mine
"My husband HATES sharing food! He is also very good at keeping himself entertained and busy- this was very evident during Covid when I was soooo bored and lost because all my previous hobbies and pastimes were outside the home and/or social activities, however, he just kept going and picked up so many new little hobbies that were independent"
- badjmsbe
"I have a brother and I hate sharing food as well. Some people say that having siblings can teach you to share things but, if anything, having a brother made me extra selfish."
- reforged-demon-blade
"I don’t hate sharing food…but I order food for me + me later fully expecting what I ordered to be there and my gf usually takes some. Drives me insane lol, and she knows if f**ks with my ADHD bc I will stare at the fridge thinking wait, when did I eat that?! Her after wondering what Im looking for: Sorry babe, I ate it."
- huhteeee
Siblings ≠ Friends
"Thinking friendship is like having siblings. It's not. I would never smash a toy on my friend's head and expect them to speak to me after."
- Useful_Jello2910
"I wouldn’t have teamed up with my best friends against their parents or refused to listen to their parents… but me and my sister? Like a two-man army in us vs. our parents battle"
- aw-f*ck
"Yep. Whenever my siblings and I would unionize, we were unstoppable."
- KitchenSwillForPigs
Not Expecting Snack Theft
"From personal experience, food habits. Like buying snacks to store at home and fully expecting them to not have been touched when you’re gone, or eating slower at the dinner table because you’re not fighting over the good food."
"As a teen, on the rare occasion my dad would steal a snack I got for myself I’d freak out, whereas my friends with siblings just resigned themselves to the fate of snacks inevitably disappearing. My mom eats super fast at meals, and she attributes it largely to growing up with siblings."
- HornedTwiddle
"I think this is why I get so peeved when my 14 year old eats all of something I specifically bought because I wanted it. I’ll share with him, but he’s a garbage disposal and will pound an entire bag/box/pack of something in no time, and I get so annoyed. My husband thinks I’m ridiculous but I never had to share or worry about someone else eating my things growing up haha"
- pizzainertia
Doesn't Automatically Shield Face
"No tales of sibling violence"
- ButterEmails54
"Doesn't flinch when someone makes a fist quickly"
- islandsimian
"Yesssss my boyfriend doesn't understand (not that he makes fist at me!!! Just that I flinch a lot.). Also don't throw things at me expecting me to catch it - my instinct is to shield my face."
- Bacon_Bitz
"Oh my god yes. Youngest child here, I also have twelve older cousins, and the amount of things I got thrown at me when I was too little to catch them."
- Dependent_Shower_584
Good At Self Entertaining
"Pretty good at keeping ourselves entertained or doing things alone/being independent."
- stefeezy
"And I find that most of us need alone time. I can be pretty sociable but it can get overwhelming quick. I need alone time every day or my stress levels rise to a point where I can't handle it. Even in a relationship, if we spend all day home, I must be able to do my thing while he does his thing. This has caused me issues in the past, as if I didn't care to be around my partner."
- thinksotoo
"Yup, this is one of the main ones. We are not lonely either, we enjoy our solitude (at least I do)"
- AlwaysSunnyDragRace
Better With Adults
"I can't tell for adults, but when it's one of my kids' friends, the kid who ends up trying to hang out with the adults and gets overwhelmed by being in a group of kids has been an only child 100% of the time in my experience."
- ifnotmewh0
"Yes! I teach middle school, and I can usually spot the only kids by seeing which students gravitate towards chatting with me rather than their peers during downtime. They seem more comfortable and confident just hanging out with the older person in the room."
- catsandcabsav
"I was one of these kids. I knew the adults didn't want me around. I had to choose between two uncomfortable situations, and I could handle being in the way more than the chaos with the other kids."
- needhelpweverything
Less Lonely
"From my own experience, not being as prone to loneliness. The only time I really feel lonely is when I'm around people I'd rather not be with."
- DeathSpiral321
"You can very quickly detect when you don’t fit in or are a third wheel too. Kind of sucks but it means you don’t waste your time with people either."
- Grimvold
"Exactly. My GF and I are only children. We both need a few nights a week on our own which is why we don’t live together. Even when we’re together we can sit quietly doing our own thing for considerable periods of time until we have something important to discuss."
- bjb13
Make Their Own Decisions
"I am an only child… I’ve noticed I tend to make a lot of life choices on my own and don’t seek out a lot of advice or ask for help when I could definitely use it. In fact, I’ve been pretty deep in tough situations when I finally have the realization that there are people and resources I can utilize. It’s not so much I’m worried about asking for help, more like it doesn’t even register in my brain that there is help outside of myself."
- Jaded_Syrup2454
"The inherent guilt of troubling people and asking for help."
- Lycan_Trophy
"I feel called out lol. Only child and this is such a common complaint I receive from my friends and partners, them saying I should ask for help for often. My logic is, well I have to learn it alone anyway. Their logic is, you don't have to right now."
"It's not something I can just turn off ... but I'm working on it. Some times. When I feel safe being vulnerable lol"
- MoodyBootyBoots
Choose Relationships Carefully
"They are very deliberate in their chosen relationships, e.g. friendships, partners, and are usually extremely independent, at least in my experience."
- ffffffffck
"As an only child I have to agree with the deliberation in my relationships."
"I've never used the term "friend" lightly like many people seem to. I see people all the time call others friends when they don't know much about the person and are just friendLY with them. I don't consider someone a friend until we've grown closer and I feel I can genuinely trust them and we can go to each other for help"
- Skeletor118
Quiet Roommates
"They’re very quiet roommates in my experience. Sometimes don’t even know when they’re home. I hypothesize that they’re just used to quiet spaces and might feel uncomfortable when their surroundings get loud or chaotic. People with siblings are used to other people clanging around and making noise."
- IcyConsideration4714
"Yeah I'm an only child of a single mom and spend enormous amounts of time home alone as a child. Can confirm, I'm extremely quiet."
- Yak-F*cker-5000
Unique Parent Relationships
"Really unique relationships with parents. They usually have a very rigid idea and perception their parents. For example, I have to call my mom every day or else she’ll worry, or my dad is always right about _____. I guess when you have siblings there’s more diversity in how you perceive your parents and their actions. But with only children they seem to lack that holistic perspective."
- ninaw11
"My ex was was exactly like the first example! She'd call her mom every morning and would talk a lot every day. It was pretty wholesome to me."
- RaimiKu
"This specifically. I live in a different continent than my parents and we talk every single day. They still ask for my opinion on every decision we take as a family and that has been my family dynamics as long as I can remember."
What trends have you noticed among the only-children you know?
Tell-Tale Signs Someone Is Trying To Bullsh*t You
Reddit user YoungTex asked: 'What’s a tell tale sign someone is bullshitting you?'
It's been said we're in a post truth era.
Deep fakes, AI and social media easily allow people to distort reality.
And while it's long been a criticism that politicians lie, never has it seemed so blatant and obvious.
So having a good internal lie detector is a valuable trait.
Reddit user YoungTex asked:
"What’s a tell tale sign someone is bullshitting you?"
The Devil is in the Details
"They're somehow full of—and lacking—specific information at the same time."
- CallMeAmyA
"I had a mythomaniac ex-boyfriend 18 years ago. I learned to recognize a lie when he spontaneously gave unnecessary details that each time related to an element of our life or something that I had spoken to him about shortly before.
"'Yes I collected the mail, I opened the mailbox around 3 p.m. but it was only ads so I threw them away, there was the catalog of such and such supermarket and the program of the town festival'."
"He hadn't picked up the mail. I had just told him a few days before that I was waiting for the program of the village festival."
"I was disappointed that he threw it away, but, amazing! We got it in the mailbox a few days later! They must have sent it twice?"
"'I don't know why the electricity is off! Yet I paid, I sent the check last Tuesday, I even went to drop it off at the post office so that it would arrive faster, did you know the teller at the post office is pregnant?'"
"We had our electricity cut off because he had not paid, and I was pregnant."
"'No, I was at work, I talked to my colleague Benjamin, he told me about his daughter who is 8 months old and has eczema, Benjamin even wrote me down the name of a cream that he advises'."
"We had a baby who had eczema, and my unemployed ex claimed to have started a new job while spending his days smoking pot in the woods."
"He was pretending everyday to go to work and had taken the business card of a random salesman named Benjamin, on which he had himself written the name of some eczema cream he saw on TV."
- Celeste_Praline
Trust Me Bro
"[they say] You can trust me"
- Total-Fly-9131
"'Ain't going to lie to you...'. You're about to be lied to."
- regular6drunk7
There's a Whole Lot of Falling Going On
"They enter the ER with something up their arse."
- llimed
"Generally I make allowances for people to bullsh*t me if they are just trying to save their dignity and it isn't hurting anyone. And who knows, maybe they really did fall on it. That has to be true of at least one person in the history of time, right?"
- aridcool
"Imagine being the guy who actually has a genuine accident in the shower. Your butt, elbow, and head hurt, you’re soaking wet, the shampoo has disappeared, and you’re lying on the cold tiles as the realization dawns that nobody is ever going to believe you…"
- AlpineSnail
No Questions!
"They get really b*tchy when you question what they're telling you"
- detective_kiara
"Not always. I get really annoyed when someone doesn’t believe me when I’m telling the truth."
- fokureddit69
"I've dealt with both sides of this from the same person. She'd blow any criticism, scrutiny, or disagreement out of proportion and inevitably have some reason up her sleeve for why her behavior was my fault. She would also accuse me of ridiculous things and would constantly twist my words in hurtful ways while acting like she didn't understand what I meant. To top it all off, she claimed that her therapist told her my annoyance and frustration always meant I was lying. It's like I was supposed to accept my words being twisted and my character being attacked. I got frustrated because I had to explain my words over and over and defend myself for things I didn't say or do. Total mindf**k and of course we would never resolve any issues."
- chiknfingaz
Rather Unhinged
"It is super easy to tell when my mom lies. She gets super defensive and her voice turns high pitched. Sometime she just starts yelling if you are completely straight faced"
- Waifu_Slayer1
"My ex was the same - flew off the handle in defence. Kinda interesting when I picked up on it as it meant I knew what was a lie and what wasn’t!"
- Resident__feeble
You Asked Me a Question?
"The ask the question you just asked back to you. 'Are you really a doctor?'
"''Am I really a doctor?' Definitely not a doctor."
- DevinBelow
- Mysterious-Dance-139
"I've heard this one several times. For some reason, they don't want to fully commit to the lie and say a blatant falsehood, so they strongly insinuate it without actually saying it.
"'WHAAAAAT? You think -I- did it?'"
- Black-Thirteen
Insults! Get Your Insults!
"They insult you when you are trying to clarify something with them. They try to avoid the question and suddenly start confronting YOU instead, and thats when you know they don't like you and have been bullsh*tting you from the start"
- dooboodd_
"Yeah they always try to turn it back to you and make you feel like the bad guy"
- LizeFaith
Too Good
"When it sounds to good to be true, it's most probably not true."
- I_wood_rather_be
Who Really Knows?
"I honestly have a hard time telling when people are lying unless I really know the person."
- Elle12881
"So does everyone. The only people who claim to know someone is lying are....lying to themselves."
"Some people don't like eye contact because it makes them uncomfortable."
"Some people overshare or give tons of useless details."
"Some people are fidgety when doing literally anything."
"Some people cover their mouth for a variety of reasons from shyness to being self conscious or having bad teeth/breath."
"If you don't know how a person behaves all the time then you're working solely off personal bias in claiming someone is lying. The best part, is there are people who do this for a living! They work solely for the prosecution teams in the courts because you can literally always point to someone's normal human behaviors and go, 'they are lying because they played with their hair when talking about what they had for dinner.' And people eat that sh*t up."
"The only way to know someone is lying is to know them when they aren't, and most of us are lying a lot."
- ThatsBushLeague
Remember: Not Everyone Communicates The Same
"i have adhd, i overexplain a tonne and it always sounds like i’m lying"
- Nethii120700
"same… reading this thread has me worried that everyone thinks i'm a liar because i exhibit a lot of these expressions, & i actually have experienced/known people who’ve experienced crazy unbelievable stuff happen to them, verifiably… but now that i think of it, probably no one may believe some of my stories lmao!"
- elfcountess
"'Some people don't like eye contact because it makes them uncomfortable.' I have that problem, and it sometimes make people think I'm dishonest with them."
- deleted user
There's No Sure-Fire Way
"Christ, I hate sh*t like this. Some doof will say 'when they look to the left before, while, or after making a statement' and then a million subdoofs spend the next few years fronting like they are Sam Jackson in Negotiator and accusing non-liars of lying."
- Decabet
"I tick a lot of the 'how to pick a liar' boxes… and unfortunately it‘d made me hyper aware of my body language, which I think makes me look even more guilty."
"I’ve got PTSD and a really spotty long term memory - I forget details of places, peoples names, events. I get mixed up in my mind where and when things happened. I’m not actively lying… but I forget."
"I’ll be able to tell you a detailed story about the time monkeys stole my brother’s skateboard, but I can’t remember whether it happened in Malaysia or Singapore, or which brother it happened to."
"I stumble over my words a lot unless I practice what I’m going to say beforehand… I’ll also forget what I’m talking about halfway through a conversation. Sometimes I’ll forget I’m even talking to someone."
"I struggle to make eye contact with people when I’m talking to them, and I use a lot of hand gestures and placeholder words (um, like, so etc.)"
- FormalMango
There's really no 100% accurate way to tell if someone is lying to you unless they tell you. People's communication styles are too different to be able to tell every time. But some of these examples are definitely a good place to start if you think someone might be fibbing.
Obsolete Household Gadgets Younger Generations May Not Recognize
Technology has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few decades.
A lot of formerly everyday gadgets are now completely obsolete.
For example, unless you grew up when 8-track cartridges were a common music distribution medium, the very sight of a cartridge might be confusing.
Reddit user motivetodayy asked:
"People born before 1980, What are some obsolete household items or gadgets from your childhood that younger generations may not even recognize?"
TV Tech
"Those GIANT projection TVs the size of a closet that only looked good if you were sat in the EXACT right spot. That one kid whose parents let him hook up his Nintendo to it was king."
"The same family probably had one of those satellite dishes in their back yard that were absolutely massive and made your house look like you were trying to spy on the Russians."
- nailbunny2000
How To Keep In Contact
- fidelkastro
"Wow, you just brought back some memories of me playing with one of these as a kid!"
- ajlm
"I worked for a large, billion dollar company in 2007 and the CEO/founder, 70+, who I had to meet with occasionally, insisted on having that exact phone book. He had a computer on his desk, and an executive assistant, and still HAD to have that mechanical phone book to access his phone numbers. Much to the dismay of the office manager when his old one wore out. By god, she found one. Edit for detail."
- -mopjocky-
"We still use this where I work...."
"And we are the ones supplying the natural gas to your homes and businesses. Till next time"
- braize6
Party Lines
"Phone lines that you share with a few neighbors. It was called a party line. Don't confuse this with the party line of the 90s where people could in a talk with several strangers at one time."
- Cultural_Standard_58
"I remember these! Knowing what series of rings was your phone number, and picking up quietly when the old ladies up the road were gossiping lol"
- cinkiss
GiphyPause So You Don't Get The Commercials
"The VCR recording clicker to pause the recording during commercials."
"Single button with a long cord to the VCR"
- queuedUp
Be Kind, Rewind — With Your Model Car
"VHS rewinder. Ours was shaped like a race car. Be kind, rewind."
- EddieRando21
"Ours was a red sports car!"
- fire_fairy_
"Whoever started the rumor that rewinding videos ruined your VCR made a lot of money in the late 80s."
- Peemster99
"My memory was that it took 10 minutes in the VCR player. Not in the Race Car Rewinder though."
- postmaster15
Home Intercoms
"The house I grew up in had an intercom system."
- Geek_off_the_streets
"Yep, wired intercom systems that could also play AM and FM music to all the rooms were a big fad in 1970s new home construction"
- Xyzzydude
The Origin of CC
"An actual carbon sheet that was placed between two sheets of paper to carbon copy the bottom paper from the top paper."
- tranquilseafinally
"Fun fact, this is where 'cc:' on emails comes from. ('bcc' is blind carbon copy, since the recipient can’t see other recipients.)"
- vandezuma
"And that's how I learned to copy my mother's signature on to bad school stuff."
- MickCollins
Smoking Was Everywhere
"‘Floor model’ ashtrays. Short stands that sat on the floor, and the top was an ashtray. Back in the day when people would just walk into your house and fire up a dart without asking, and nobody thought twice about it."
"The only place you didn’t smoke was in church."
- Joseph_Bloggins
"My Grandparents had ashtrays with places to hold cigarettes, when I asked, my mom said it was normal to provide cigarettes at parties, along with alcohol and food. 1950s and 1960s"
- Jbruce63
"No one in our family smoked, but we had a stash of ashtrays Mom would have us set out for company."
- mustbethedragon
"Remember the ones where you push a button and the floor of it hinges open to dump all the ash and butts into a compartment below?"
- GozerDGozerian
GiphyErgonomics Are Important
"A neck phone holder."
- modshavenopenis
"Those things always drove me nuts, it seemed like they were always made for giant people."
- Rokhnal
"We have these at my work for employees who have to spend a lot of time on the phone - though now that I think of it, maybe everyone's transitioned to headphones. Hmm."
- froglover215
"Grandma had one of these all throughout my childhood. I never "got" it until I hit 40...."
- Glum_Time3479
Milk Doors
"A milk chute built into our house. The milk man would leave the milk in the chute in the morning from the outside and we would pick it up from the inside."
"I am beginning to believe that this is a good idea again, albeit with a good sturdy lock on the inside door, so packages and food deliveries can be left out of sight but available to the homeowner from the inside. If I were building a house now, I would add that in to the plans."
- aeraen
"I would love to just have the whole fresh milk delivery thing again."
- dblshot99
"Growing up, our house had a milk chute. Never had milk deliveries, but we had cats."
"The milk chute became the cat door, which they learned and taught each other to open. Came in handy for when I'd lock myself out of the house."
- residentialnemesis
"I could contort my upper body through ours since I’d forget my keys a lot and could open the back door. Ah the latchkey days I remember them so fondly."
- raylab810
GiphySo Many Antennae
"My six year old daughter and I were walking through the parking lot of Auto Zone and she started laughing pointing at this like early 90s truck that had an old, aerial antenna sticking three feet out of the car hood and started laughing:"
'"Daddy that car has a whisker! It has a kitty whisker!'"
"She'd never seen an old antenna like that before."
- SeaTie
"My dad had a Mercedes back in the day and when you started the car, the antenna would extend up."
- lzwzli
"Now there’s no where for an antenna ball. Makes me sad."
- jburton24
Video Games Were Very Different
"Computer games that were loaded on cassette tapes"
- PrincessTusi
"Even before the cassette tape, they’d publish the games’ code in a magazine and you’d have to type it all in without any mistakes. No editor. No debugger."
- sapientia-maxima
"R…U.…N Enter. And pray to god you didn’t miss a colon somewhere"
- LadyGreyNoJoy
Mr. Yuck
"Mr. Yuck"
- Bmc00
"Child safety: Should we lock up these absolutely lethal chemicals? Nah, let's just put this green sticker on them!"
"This is also why the number for poison control was always on the first page of a telephone book, and often written as one of the emergency numbers on your telephone."
- MrHyde_Is_Awake
"As of a few years ago, you could still contact your local poison control office and request a sheet of these."
- ThatsABunchOfCraft
Analog Doorbell
"A doorbell that uses pipes to make sound. Most contemporary doorbells are just a box on your wall, a buzzer, or an app. That's if you even have a doorbell."
- Sigseg
"We would switch the pipes around at my friend’s house. It would drive his mum mad when the doorbell would ring and the time was all wrong."
- badpuffthaikitty
What now-obsolete technology did you grow up with that you think the young people around you would be confused by?
When it comes to insults, clever is better.
Anyone can go the obvious route of simply calling out a person's physical appearance or intellectual capacity.
But if you really want to be remembered, you've got to be creative.
The playwright William Shakespeare was fond of clever insults.
And Ballroom culture made reading and shade into artforms.
Reddit user No_Throat_1574 asked:
"What is the most creative insult you’ve ever heard?"
Baked
"An employee of mine told me that I was the raisin in his day's chocolate chip cookie."
- SellingMakesNoSense
Not so artistic
"Your face looks like something I’d draw with my left hand."
- weshric
Talking out your butt
"'They ruined a perfectly good bum when they put teeth in your mouth.' - Billy Connolly."
- That80sguyspimp
"Growing up, my best friends mother used to say 'it’s a shame God put so many teeth in your mouth…ruined a perfectly good a**hole'…"
"Same energy. Shout out Tia 🖤"
- ends_and_odds
We all deserve a break
"You have your entire life to be an idiot. Why not take today off?"
- rip1980
Green with envy
"I envy people who don’t know you."
- StalinsPerfectHair
Right in the childhood
"'You're not being the person Mr. Rogers knew you could be.' Emotional damage"
- couch_hammer
Emotional Damage GIF by Jennifer AccomandoGiphySlow down a bit
"Knowledge has been chasing you, but you have always been faster."
- Bright-Baker8267
Common loot energy
"You look like you drop common loot when defeated."
- GeorgeCauldron7
A bit bland
"I’ve always enjoyed 'If she were a spice, she’d be flour.'"
- Toren8002
No excuses
"I bumped into a homeless guy. I said excuse me."
"He said 'There is no excuse for you!!!'"
"With his leathered vigor, he's probably right."
- LOGOisEGO
Pain in the foot
"One time a third grader who was very annoyed with me told me 'you’re a rock in my shoe' and I’ve never forgotten that"
- madagascarprincess
Reap what you sow
"I hope your day is as lovely as your personality."
- montanagrizfan
"This works as both an insult and a compliment"
- Yezzzzzzzzzzzz
"'If my dog had a face like yours, I’d shave it’s @ss and teach it to walk backwards'"
- WteMxy
boxer dog gifofdogs GIF by Rover.comGiphyI would consult my own
"'If I wanted to hear an a**hole’s opinion, I would have just farted.' Learned this one a month ago and don’t know how I survived 40.5 years without it!!"
- ITSBRITNEYsBrITCHES
I'm not that flexible
"I'm trying to see things from your point of view but my head won't fit up my arse."
- Horrorbmoviepunk
It's generally better to try to play nice with others when you can but, if you're going to be mean, at least get creative.
Some companies seem to appreciate their customers and attempt to make their lives better, but others seem to absolutely loathe their customers and actively try to make them miserable.
It might seem odd that many of these companies stay in business, but many of them have monopolies or near-monopolies in their industry or area of the world.
Redditor NerfGronk asked:
"What company clearly hates its own customers?"
Ticketmaster
"Ticketmaster. They clearly hate music fans, bands and music itself."
- hoodlumonprowl
"Ticketmaster’s business model is being the bad guy, and business is good."
- RandomUser1914
"I recently had to sell tickets. I was charged a fee to buy them, another fee to sell them, and they added fees for whoever bought them from me. Then, they held my payout of over $500 for several months (still waiting, actually)."
- Amazing_Finance1269
Hewlett-Packard
"HP, f*ck those printers. They put so much R&D $ in to making sure they never work."
- gratusin
"I literally bought a new printer that came with ink because it was cheaper than buying ink for my current printer. The stupid setup process required me to create an account and download not one, but TWO different apps in order before I was finally able to print. They're turning into data mining companies that masquerade as printer companies."
- J4ck4lope9
"Of all the things I've ever bought, I regret my HP printers the most. This last one was the last thing I will ever buy from them. I'd be shocked if they don't have a 'VP of Customer Screwing' on their payroll."
"If I was literally dying and they sold the only cure for what was killing me for 25 cents, I'd spit in their face and die."
- scottimusprimus
NBA
"The NBA. Oh, want to pay to watch games? OK, but you better not want to watch a team close to you because we black out those games since cable companies pay us to do so! Oh, you're using a VPN? F*ck you! We're trying to stop that, yes, we will literally attempt to stop you from seeing content you literally pay us for."
"Yo ho, b*tches."
- DravenPrime
"I was so mad when the finals came around this year. I had gotten league pass to watch the playoffs, because these are the only games that are remotely watchable from a competitive point of view. Being from Germany, I had to stay up until 3am, but given that this was a finals pairing I had been rooting for all postseason, I thought it'd be worth it. And then I find out the finals are only on ESPN+ and some f***in TV channel and not on the NBA's own streaming service. What kind of backwards, dumb crap is that? But since I was on vacation during that time, I thought to myself 'Meh, I'm gonna treat myself.' So I tried to get a monthly subscription for whatever channel the games were on. Turns out it is impossible to even register if you're not a US citizen. VPN doesn't help, because you need a US credit card to even sign up. Seriously, what the f?"
- debiler
Comcast
"Comcast is the obvious first thing that comes to mind."
"Been free of them a few years and they just tried to sell to me again today. When I was a customer and had issues (related to internet and xfinity mobile) the issue never got fixed and actually drew out the process of switching providers."
- panopt1con
"Not sure if anyone remembers 'The Consumerist' blog/zine/whatever, but Comcast was the only 3-time winner of the annual Golden Poo. In 2007, they beat out Blackwater after the Nisour Square massacre was made public."
- IvanNemoy
Purdue Pharma
"Purdue PHARMA. Pieces of horsesh*t."
- Acceptable-Damage
"Don’t disrespect horse sh*t like that"
- Additional-Share4492
"As a pharmacist (US), 100% agree. Drug reps/ads/marketing/putting a financial incentive on any prescribing or dispensing AT ALL should be illegal."
- humpbackwhale88
Intuit
"I'm like 8 hours deep into trying to fix a Quickbooks issue for someone with their phone support, so I'm going to go with Intuit."
- teeth_03
"Used to have to call Intuit pretty much regularly to help with QuickBooks stuff at my old job and I can confirm this. I was always holding for over 40 minutes and then the person I got could never help me resolve anything. There was a time I had a case that didn't get resolved for like a month, and I called to see if they had a resolution and they'd closed out my case number without notifying me."
- OhSoNotS01mportant
"Intuit owns TurboTax which lobbies the government to make taxes more confusing to force people to use their ~$200 service."
- DigitalUnderstanding
"Every April my motto is 'F*ck TurboTax'"
- Inevitable_Bag_6232
Niantic
"Niantic"
- Leeser
"Hello fellow Pokémon Go player."
- Moon_Dark_Wolf
"I came here to say this. Most games add more and more quality of life fixes as the game goes on, whereas Niantic constantly takes things away and makes the experience worse."
- bound52
"The players are the product, not the consumer (Niantic sells the user data in bulk)."
"The fact Niantic was so hell bent on revoking the QOL improvements from the pandemic that made it a much better GAME shows how little they care about making a good game."
- SlapHappyDude
US Airlines
"Literally every US airline. Midwest Express was a brief exception until Frontier murdered them and mutilated the corpse."
- pinniped1
"🎶 because we’re Delta airlines, and life is a f*cking nightmare🎶"
- FlabbyFishFlaps
"Now go take this meal voucher that doesn’t work. Go! Fetch!!"
- insultant_
"I never got how they could book more passengers than seats. They're literally selling what they don't have. Yeah they may have no shows so what they've paid."
- ADelightfulC*nt
Pacific Gas & Electric
"PG&E here in California. They literally killed all those elderly people in the Camp Fire, got a slap on the wrist for it, and have upped all our bills to cover the fines they had to pay."
- melissamarieeee
"There was also this one time when a segment of gas pipe they didn't get to fixing leveled a neighborhood."
- J_B_La_Mighty
"Dont forget about them blowing up part of San Bruno... And the north bay fires.. and"
- ImMacksDaddy
Nursing Homes
"Nursing Homes. They keep you alive just to make money off of you. My mother is in a living hell."
- Limp_Distribution
"Paramedic here, can confirm. Sorry about your Mom."
- RXakis
"My wife just retired from one as a nurse and would agree with you. We are more humane to our pets than our elderly."
- marklar_the_malign
Insurance Companies
"Literally any insurance companies. Home, auto, life, health. Doesn’t matter they all hate their customers"
- Awkward_Dad2023
"When your whole business model revolves around NOT giving your customers money..."
- NotAnotherBookworm
"Former auto. We’re trained weekly on techniques for how to get you off the phone sooner over actually doing the work to fix their problem. Steering customers back to your scripts they made up for every situation because the customer holds no power in the situation. Also here’s some “best practices” for faking empathy!!"
"The thing about insurance is they 100% can help with many things that they simply won’t help with."
- Petrcechmate
AirBNB
"I'm shocked that AirBnB isn't on this list yet. They absolutely don't care about their customers and have significantly made real estate worse. Their fees are almost as bad as Ticketmaster."
- tcrudisi
"Yeah f*ck Airbnb. For lots of reasons, but their contribution to the housing crisis is top of my list."
- gakka-san
"I was just thinking this too. Not to mention how much gentrification it’s causing."
- loidalien
"Yes, omg. Some of these properties are awful. Stayed in one in which furniture was all covered in dog hair, and yet they gave me no vacuum. Found someone's old Pizza Hut in the oven as well. Air bnb claimed it had been 'professionally cleaned.'"
- DistrictHot1695
Spectrum
"Spectrum aka Speculum"
- hairy_ass_truman
"One of the two companies I wanted to add to this list was Time Warner Cable. They are freaking awful."
"They also changed their name to Spectrum. Probably because they were so hated they needed to ditch the name. I refuse to use their new name and still refer to them as TWC."
- tcrudisi
"Pretty much any Internet provider. They have colluded for 20 years now to ensure that no competitive region exists. In my state, there is 0 overlap of services for network speeds above 100MBps. you can get ATT DSL everywhere, but 25 MBps down and 1-2 up is insufficient for a huge swath of the population. I support a wide range of users who work remote. If their base speeds aren't 50mbps down and 10 up, we won't even process a trouble ticket."
- dapopeah
"How my blood boils even reading the name. Spectrum is the worst company I've ever had the misfortune of giving money to. They have a monopoly on internet on my street, so I have no choice but to deal with them."
- ZombieOfun
Netflix
"Netflix. Good show. Naw, let’s cancel it and renew cheap crap and raise the monthly cost."
- DukeRyder
"Not true, CEO said they never cancelled a popular show /s"
- Ph455ki1
"I lament the joke that in the future there would be a thousand channels, yet nothing to watch, came true."
- Deleted User
How do companies that so clearly hate their customers stay in business?