21 People Shared Their Witty Comebacks That Made Us Believe in Instant Karma

3 years ago

The typical sayings, “loose lips sink ships,” or “listen before you speak,” are perfectly adapted to those who are willing to talk about everything, even though they don’t know much about anything. And the fact is when people think they know it all, it can be really difficult to make them come down from the clouds and step on solid ground, especially when they’re wrong. Indignant at having gone through such moments, many users in a Reddit thread recounted their experiences with people who were willing to give them advice, correct them, or laugh at them with no basis in fact.

Bright Side wanted to bring you some stories where the universe did its job well, bringing these people back to reality.

A Dutch couple visited my workplace (a tourist visitor center) and insisted that the French translation on our map was wrong. The reasoning was that “Groenland” shouldn’t be there because it was the Dutch word for “Greenland,” not the French one. I told them that “Groenland” was also the French translation, to which they chided back, “And how would you know?”
“I’m bilingual. I speak French,” I informed them.
“Clearly, not very well!” they insisted, then proceeded to ask for the Wi-Fi so they could use a search engine.
Well, I gave them the Wi-Fi, and to Google Translate they went. Sure enough! “Groenland.”
They didn’t even apologize, they just said, “I guess the map is correct then,” and left. © Some_H**_Garbage / Reddit
Our school’s schedule got revamped, which meant that one of our classes that was 2 periods long was cut in half to accommodate for all the changes. When I brought this up to the teacher I was co-teaching with, she told everyone sitting in our table group that I wasn’t very good at math as everyone laughed. A few minutes later, the principal cleared up the new schedule, only for her to realize that she was wrong in the first place. Felt so good to see the look on her face. © jooby-the-nooby / Reddit
Some years ago, some guys were talking about cars and engines and I don’t even remember what else. One of them was really condescending to me (I’m a female) and said, but you probably don’t know anything about that, do you? My husband set him straight and said, “She knows more about cars than I do, so don’t be so sure.” Then, of course, he tried to prove he knew more. He did not.
I grew up around race cars and auto mechanics who also thought everyone should understand their own car.
I have to admit, I know less now since they’re all electronic and computerized. But this was back in the day. © Bee-Bopp / Reddit

I’m an application developer in the public sector. I have made many of the computer programs where I work, such as human resources, incident reporting, and some of the case management systems.
Several times I have had people try to tell me, wrongly, how to use an application that I made. I especially like it when they tell me I should “ask the people at the company.” Uh, what company would that be? I tell them that it’s very flattering that they think the software was made by an entire company instead of by me alone in my office. © imk / Reddit
A corporate trainer came to our offices to provide training. I popped into the room to say hello and see if she needed help. She was having trouble setting up the projector before the session. I started trying to help but I’m not really savvy with projectors. She was getting frustrated with me as she assumed I was the IT dude, and obviously not a very good one.
We eventually got it fixed, and I offered her a coffee. She was a bit rude to me at that stage. I got her one anyway.
Fast forward to the session itself, and I introduced her to the room of 40 people and thanked her for coming. She realized I was the head of the division and was the one paying for her to be there.
I felt very smug at that point. © thatshowitisisit / Reddit
Had a friend in college who was VERY full of himself. One morning, while eating breakfast in the cafeteria, someone said, “I wonder how bagels are made.” I said, “I’m pretty sure bagels are boiled.” The pompous friend then said, “Bagels aren’t boiled. That’s ridiculous.” Someone did a quick Google search to find that bagels are, in fact, boiled. People seemed genuinely intrigued by this information. © g**_and_cucumber / Reddit

I lived in Germany for a year after high school as part of an exchange program, and there were several times when I had to make phone calls. I had to call doctors, employers, program coordinators, etc., so I got fairly used to the whole telephone thing in German. I could speak pretty fluently on the phone, but since it’s not my native language, I would, of course, make small grammatical errors and stuff like that. This led to the unfortunate situation where people would assume I was German when on the phone because I spoke well enough, but since I kept making mistakes, I was also slow. People were quite rude to me over the phone. After revealing that I was actually a foreigner, they always sounded so surprised and complimentary of my German and were much more helpful and polite afterward. © chadwick7865 / Reddit
I was working as a teller at the bank years ago, and a Karen was complaining about how slow my computer was...if I had been using an IBM she’d have been out of there already. She works at IBM, and “they only make the best, fastest bank equipment.” I slowly turned my slow IBM computer for her to look at. Not another word. © stepatmoz / Reddit
When I was in eighth grade, we’d just learned about the seasons and Earth’s rotation and all that; to my surprise, my teacher taught us that Earth is actually closest to the sun during winter! But it’s cold because of the tilt on the axis, not because of its proximity to the sun. The tilt determines the seasons.
And then, soon after that, I went to math class and my math teacher said something about how it was freezing because we are so far from the sun. And, of course, I piped up to tell him he was wrong according to what Mr. Science Teacher had just taught us. My math teacher went off, ripping into me so hard in front of the class (It was lighthearted — he was known for being funny and making fun of kids all the time)! He and I were going back and forth for a while, and I specifically remember him saying, “Oh yeah, cuz when I’m cold I move away from the fire!! Yeah, that makes perfect sense!” And I kept arguing, “No, no it’s because of the earth’s tilt!” And so finally he Googled it and I was right! He at least gave me credit and admitted he was wrong after that, lol. © AnAliebn99 / Reddit

My wife and I were traveling with a couple we worked with in South Korea. We weren’t best friends with them but they were nice enough, so we rented a car and traveled around the island of Jeju. Now, this is a small island and you could drive around it in 4 or 5 hours, but we were taking our time seeing the sights. The guy was a bit of a know-it-all, but they had been in Korea 6 months longer than us, so I always value his advice. Anyways, I’m driving the car and we are trying to find the place that we want to eat, and I say something like, “We are going the right way,” but this guy responds with, “No we are going south, trust me, I majored in geography.” I look straight ahead into the setting sun and respond with, “Weird, we found the one place on earth where the sun sets in the south.” Well, that shut him up for a while. © shaft101 / Reddit
My sister-in-law used to make fun of my English all the time; whenever I’d mispronounce something, she’d start laughing and tell everyone, “She’s so cute, she can’t pronounce this or that.” I always considered her a mean girl who just wanted attention, but the English thing really bothered me.
One day, we were drinking and she started laughing at something I said, and I lost it. I told her I spoke 3 languages while she can barely speak English. We kept arguing until I said, “Fine, let’s prove it.” We took a mock-up English test online and I got a perfect score! She got 8/12.
That was the last day she laughed at me. © lux414 / Reddit
I was talking about binary star systems at a party, when suddenly, my ex says, “That’s not what binary is.” Then another friend looked up the word binary and read it out loud to him, his eyes bugged out.
I told him: “Stop pretending to be an expert on things you don’t understand. It makes you look bad.”
My ex was thinking of binary computer code. He didn’t consider that other things could be binary too. © Civil-Chef / Reddit
A guy tried to tell me he knew more about my job than I did because he “went to school to be an engineer,” and I just sell the machines.
Emailed him some info directly from the manufacturer on why he was wrong. He’s not my client anymore. I don’t care about him or anyone who uses education as a reason to be mean. © Smellmyhand / Reddit

I used to drive for Lyft while I was in grad school. Picked up an undergraduate college kid.
Me: What are you studying?
Him: Computer science.
Me: Oh, awesome! What kind of projects are you doing now?
Him: It’s pretty complicated, but I do some pretty amazing things. You wouldn’t get it.
Me: Like what? I’d love to hear about your projects.
Him: Super intense database stuff and web app stuff, like HTML. I just learned about the NodeJS framework. This is probably all over your head. What about you? Have you ever gone to college?
Me: I am currently a computer science graduate student, with a dual bachelor’s in computer science and computer systems engineering.
He was awkwardly silent after that, but I still asked him about his projects and he was more than happy to share his experiences, knowing that his conversation was definitely not over my head. © MebuMayhem / Reddit
My best friend at the time assumed herself as the smarter one. In math class one day, we both came up with different answers to a problem, so she starts to explain where I went wrong. Eventually, I said to her that we should check the answer in the back of the book, only to find out that my answer was correct. She was not happy and it sparked the beginning of the decline of our friendship. © dragonfly-1001 / Reddit
The day after graduating from high school, my brother — who had just learned to drive a stick (manual transmission) — took me to go look at cars. The very first one he drove, an old Ford Explorer, wouldn’t shift into fifth gear, at which point I said to him, “I don’t think you should buy this one, something’s seriously wrong with it.”
He told me to shut up, asked me what I knew about cars, and immediately bought it.
A week later, the transmission dropped.
Me, the day the transmission dropped: “What do I know about cars? Not much, but obviously, more than you!”
It’s been almost 20 years, and whenever he gets too full of himself, I remind him of that. Note: I still know almost nothing about cars, except they go “vroom” and get me places. I’ve never had a major repair, like a bad transmission, in a little over 15 years of driving and owning cars. © pretendmulling / Reddit