One person's "most unhinged thing they've ever seen" is another person's everyday occurrence. It's all about perspective.
If you live 24/7 in an insane environment, unhinged starts to seem completely normal.
Which might explain some of these stories.
And fair warning, some of these get quite gross.
Reddit user Such_Alternative1975 asked:
"What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve ever seen someone do in public like it was completely normal?"
Feral
"At one of the libraries I worked at, I caught a dude clipping his fingernails over the keyboard while he was sitting at a computer."
~ heynongwoman1
"Worked at a Barnes and Noble and had a guy clipping his toenails."
"I swear, something about being around books makes people feral."
~ yawaworhtdorniatruc
Lady Godiva Minus Horse
"I watched a woman walk completely naked down the street from my bus window."
"A moment later a cop car comes careening around the corner and the bus driver points and tells them the direction she went in."
"Apparently she wasn’t a first time offender."
~ Liapocalypse1
"That's legal in a lot more places than people realize. Especially cops."
~ Trowwaycount
Just Tim
"Once saw a guy hovering around a skip (dumpster) on a residential street with a blowtorch in his hand. He then tried to set the thing on fire, but couldn't get it to light."
"So he turned the blowtorch on himself and looked directly at it whilst still trying to light it. That didn't work either, so he just walked off with the torch in hand like nothing had even happened."
"I was working in a bar in the middle of the afternoon and saw it all unfolding out of the window."
"It wasn't even his house, and people walked past him and ignored him like it wasn't even in the slightest bit crazy. I even asked one of the regulars what he was doing and the response was, 'Oh, that's just Tim, it's what he does'."
"It happened nearly 20 years ago and I still think about it now."
~ Lost-Statement5130
Lickety Split
"Walking down the street in Barcelona and a guy takes his phone out and full on licks the screen to clean it."
"Whole tongue out using the entire surface, with force, for at least the 3 steps he walked by me."
~ No_Mulberry731
Breathing Fire
"A guy on the subway peeling and eating a whole raw onion like it was an apple—dead serious."
~ skyexoxoxx
"This has to be like 50 years ago at this point, but my grandparents retired and moved to Florida. Grandfather discovered Vidalia Onions for the first time."
"When he was showing and describing them to 6 or 7 year old me, he said, 'They are so sweet, you can eat them like an apple'."
"I told him, 'Well, let’s see you do that, grandad!'."
"And so he did. Granted, not a regular onion, but it did seem a bit unhinged to me at the time."
~ Reverend_Bad_Mood
Was He A Werewolf?
"Sitting in the deli/bakery seating of a grocery store having a coffee and donut when a man sits next to us with a grocery bag."
"He takes out a giant steak still in the packaging that he clearly just bought, and pulls out a small bottle of seasoning salt from his coat pocket."
"He proceeds to eat the whole raw steak with his hands making sure to salt every bite."
"It was absolutely foul."
~ rgk1012
"Carnivore diets be crazy."
~ BrittM554
Stir Crazy
"To make a very, very long story short, I worked at a ski resort with company housing. I had a super creepy housemate who, over the course of the winter, went progressively more insane."
"One of the final straws leading up to his firing took place at the childrens bunny hill while I was taking a group of kids to their ski lesson."
"I see him sitting outside the shack at the top of the lift, feet resting on the controls, wearing nothing but a Speedo, and shaving his head with a pair of clippers. It was the middle of February, well below freezing, and this man was sitting in a lawnchair in a Speedo, shaving his head on the bunny hill."
"I said, 'Jesus Christ, man! What are you doing‽‽' And he calmy replied, 'Well... there was an outlet up here'."
"He gestured towards the outlet the clippers were plugged into. The kids are looking at me like, 'Who the hell is that guy?'."
"That was one of the thousands of insane things I saw that man do in public."
~ TastefulAsF
Everything's Better With Butter
"I once saw a woman in a supermarket queue eating a whole stick of butter like it was an ice cream cone."
"I moved to the next queue."
~ Equivalent-Garlic-88
Just A Little Off The Top
"I worked at public libraries for many years and one of the most random things I’ve seen was turning a corner and seeing a woman hunched over cutting her hair onto the floor. Just…trimming her hair and letting it fall all over the library floor."
"Checking the ends to make sure they were good…then trimming some more."
"All my customer service training went out the window as I bellowed, 'What are you doing‽‽ NO! JUST…NO!'."
"She had the grace to look ashamed and try and scoop up all her little hair pieces."
~ librarylivin42
No Public Urinating
"I was working at a very hip retail store in a mall, and a woman, maybe mid-30s, came in with 3 kids under 10. She seemed frazzled, but insisted she came to shop."
"Grabbed a handful of things and asked to try them on, so we directed her to the dressing rooms. Naturally, her children went in with her, and us staff were grateful she didn’t make us 'watch' them (read: let them run amok in the store)."
"We were unusually slow that day and didn’t feel the need to monitor a good mom trying to treat herself, so we just folded clothes nearby."
"She left after 6-7 minutes, said she didn’t like how anything looked, thanked us, and quickly left the store. We saw she’d walked out without handing us anything to re-hang, so we chalked it up to yet another shoplifter."
"NOPE! She’d wadded the clothes up in the corner and let her kids piss on them."
"We thought 'kids' because there was entirely too much pee for just one child, soaking through a dozen tops and dresses. It appeared she’d grabbed extra clothes from the re-racking station to 'help absorb'."
"This was a mall with multiple free public bathrooms, but upon talking to other stores, she’d done this before because she 'didn’t have time' to find a bathroom. I guess dressing rooms with underpaid teens was easier!"
~ _crystallil_
"I worked in retail for four years (department store). What you described happened with alarming frequency."
"When we did 'catch' the customers, their excuse was their kid 'really had to go' and we only had bathrooms on 2 of the three floors of the store."
"Honestly, I worked there. There was NO location in the store where the bathroom was located more than a 30-45 second walk away."
~ Pascale73
Tobacco Free Zone
"Back in the 90's I was working in a video store in Ontario, Canada, and this cowboy comes in smoking the largest, smelliest, stogey of a cigar you've ever seen in your life. So I go up to him and tell him it's illegal to smoke in a retail store.
"And he goes, 'Since when?'—like I'm bullsh*tting him. Like I just made that rule up and pulled it out of my @ss just to be annoying."
"So I go through a list: 'It's illegal in every single retail outlet store for nearly the past 20 years, and now in every single place of business, every single workspace, theatre, and most restaurants and bars."
"And he's looking at me like I've got lobsters growing out of my ears. Like he's literally not once in his entire life ever heard of smoking being banned anywhere, ever."
"So he buggers off to whatever barn he came out of that he's never left for the past few decades or so."
~ CatboyInAMaidOutfit
Three Cs
"Had a lady light a cigarette in the bank the other day. This was after insisting that the gold $100 bill she tried to give me was real."
Then, she told my manager to f*ck off and that she wasn't the manager. She clearly wasn't well, but it was all wild."
~ KTKannibal
"She woke up and chose chaos, counterfeit, and carcinogens."
~ Felosele
This Isn't What Vomitorium Means
"I was flying into Vegas on a particularly turbulent flight that ended with an emergency swerve away from the runway that was occupied. We circled the whole valley and came back in for a second take at the landing."
"I suppose it was just too much motion for some passengers. There was quite a lot of motion sickness taking place in the cabin including the lady beside me."
"As soon as we landed she turned her head and wretched the contents of her stomach onto my lap. She stood up and briskly walked away."
"Never said a word. Didn't even look in my direction."
"I was fuming with red hot anger and my girlfriend attempted to calm me, but I just couldn't believe somebody could do that without adamantly apologizing for many minutes."
~ _hieronymus
Stop Hitting Yourself
"A very professional looking woman (think skirt suit and matching shoes) was walking in front of us in Spain."
"Suddenly, she slapped the absolute sh*t out of her own face."
"No stopping, no change in facial expression either. Smacked herself so hard I had secondhand sting."
~ HuuffingLavender
WTF‽‽
"I was working the front desk at a gym. An older guy swiped his card to check in at the same time as a decent-sized turd slid out of his shorts and fell to the carpeted floor."
"He was about to go into the locker room like nothing happened, but I said, 'Sir?' and pointed at it in shock."
"He turned around, looked at it, picked it up in his bare hand, and kept going into the locker room like he had just picked up his keys or something."
"I looked at the personal trainer next to me and we looked at each other, like, WTF‽‽"
~ BertholomewManning
What's your unhinged story?