16 people share the dumbest solution to a problem that actually worked.

Sometimes the most obvious, ridiculous, truly unhinged, or argulably idiotic solution to a problem is the actual key...

So, when a Reddit user asked, 'What is the dumbest solution to a problem that actually worked?' people were ready to share to silly methods that surprisingly fixed everything.

1.

My folks were in town, and my wife and I wanted to take them to dinner. We head to a nearby mediocre steakhouse at the request of my parents, and it's around 6:00pm.

The hostesses tell us there's a minimum 45 minute wait. I get suspicious, as their parking lot had barely any cars, so I peek around into their dining area.

There are several open tables that would fit a party of 4. Mildly annoyed, I ask the hostesses why we can't be seated at any of these tables. They reply that they're being held for future reservations.

I get on my smartphone, open the OpenTable app, make a reservation for 6:15pm for a party of 4, and we're seated immediately. - Atsur

2.

Dudes pissing absolutely everywhere in the bathroom where I once worked. So the janitor put a little red sticker in each toilet and suddenly the problem stopped. Apparently men will aim at a target 100% of the time, if a target is presented.- thudly

3.

An airport was having complaints that luggage was taking too long to get to baggage claim. The airports solution was to move baggage claim even farther away from the gates. The complaints stopped because a lot of the time spent waiting was now spent just walking there. The actual time it took to get your luggage wasn't any faster - PhilUpTheCup

4.

My psych professor told us about this patient. She was a woman in her late 40's, suffering from OCD and paranoia. Everyday while she drove to work, she would panic that she left her curling iron on, and it was going to burn her house down. So she would turn around, drive home, make sure it was unplugged, and then leave again.

But as time went on she started making multiple trips home, sometimes in the middle of the day, and she was about to lose her job over this. No therapy was working, her medications weren't working, coping techniques weren't working. Nothing could calm this woman.

Then she saw my professor. And my professor told her to bring her curling iron in the car with her. So if she got nervous that it was still plugged in, she could look over and see that it was next to her. - pastelroyalty

5.

My car got pummeled in a terrible hail storm. Little dents over every surface of the car. My insurance would only write it off as a total loss, and I didn't want to give the car up.

A friend pointed out that since I live in the desert, the heat will likely fix a lot of those dents over time. That's exactly what happened. A year later, you had to look carefully to find dents where there used to be a hundred of them. Ignoring the problem fixed it.- Scrappy_Larue

6.

My sister was hospitalized at 4 years old for a buildup of fluid in her head. She refused to drink any of the milk being offered by the hospital because it didn't have the 'cow in sunglasses' on the side of the box that the other hospital's milk had.

Her being a sick child in for literal brain surgery, the hospital went above and beyond sending someone to the local grocery store to try and find this milk brand with the cow wearing sunglasses.

When they never found it, I googled the image, asked if they had a printer, and taped the cow to the side of their milk carton. I still think it's adorable that worked.- Hunting_Bears

7.

A tick crawled into the headphone jack of my phone.

The next two searches on my phone were:

What eats ticks?

Guinea hen mating noises

After about fifteen seconds of female guinea hen sounds, the tick crawled out of my phone.- moak0

8.

Back in the day, hitting a TV or other appliance to make it work. Hell, even today it still works sometimes. - ColdxCrush

9.

Drove to a neighboring town 80 miles away with one burned out headlight, remaining headlight went out while in said town. I had no money, and shops were closed regardless. These were dual beam, so although I had lost both headlights, the high beams worked.

I didn't make it out of town with getting honked at and flashed repeatedly by angry passing motorists, and understandably so. What was I to do? I continued down the highway and made it about 15 miles before I'm pulled over by the first officer to see me. I explain the situation, officer has no suggestions (this was before cell phones), tells me I can go but that I won't make it home without getting stopped again.

I pull over at the next exit, get a free water, dump it in the dirt, make a thin mud, and smeared it over my lights. Worked like a charm, no more honks or flashes, passed multiple officers. - SSmtb

10.

Restarting a computer does SO MUCH - ransom0374

11.

Had to send in a letter once, the envelopes had no sticky adhesive and couldn't find the tape at home. My dad who's pretty much as old as Confucius just grabs a grain of rice out of my bowl and used it as the adhesive. It worked so well. - Digitalqueef

12.

Nurses here will recognize this one. Once I was dealing with an extremely agitated and fearful Alzheimer's patient who had been 'sundowning' since 3pm (sundowning is an occurrence in some Alzheimer's patients where their mental function gets worse and worse as the day goes on/once it starts to get dark).

Anywho, this sweet old lady was having an absolute fit. All through my shift (night shift yay) I was running in and out of her room. The bed alarm kept going off, she was so confused, afraid... I desperately wanted her to go to sleep.

Mind you I had 7 other patients! I finally walk her out to the nurses station and plop her down in a seat next to me while I do my charting. She is yelling at me and throwing things. I've had it at this point and I'm running out of ideas. I finally look at her and say, 'how will I ever finish with the wash? My husband will be so mad when he gets home! Would you help me finish??'...

She looks me right in the eye, clear as day, and says 'dammit sister don't you ever learn? Give me that laundry!'... haha so I grab a stack of folded towels and mess them up real quick and plop them in front of her. She folded all of them. I would say oh look at that! She turned around and I would mess the towels up again.

This went on a few times until this sweet lady just passed out, exhausted from being so worked up earlier (and maybe from all the towel folding). I slowly push her in the desk chair down the hall and gently get her back into bed.

She started to wake up and I leaned down and whispered, 'all the wash is done. You have nothing else to worry about!' She slept throughout the night. We were both happy. I am the grandma whisperer. - [deleted]

13.

Back when I was in 6th form at school, we had new sofas in the common room (a room where our year could hang out and relax/work/listen to music on our time off). They had been there only a couple of days before one of the legs snapped off one of the sofas.

Now we could have attempted to fix it, or just left it missing a leg but there were often checks and cleaners moving furniture would have noticed it was broken and we would have got in trouble for 'not respecting school property.'

So we did the only sensible thing, which was break all the legs off the sofa, and then all the sofas in the room so they were all at the same height. We stashed the legs in the ceiling, and nobody knew a thing.- ajnixonm

14.

Our family cat hated our family dog. Rubbed the dog all over with fresh catnip. New best friends. - MissNickels

15.

I called about a pothole at the entrance of my store. They said since it was in my entrance, I'd have to pay for it. I called back as a concerned citizen and it'll be fixed in 72 hrs.- SmokeyMcDabs

16.

I went to cancel a doctor's appointment and they said it was a $200 charge without a week's notice. I asked how much it was to reschedule, they said it was free.

'Okay, so I need to reschedule for two weeks out.'

'Is three weeks okay?'

'Yep.'

'Alright, you're all set for three weeks from now. Anything else I can do for you?'

'Yes, I need to cancel my appointment.'

'We need a week's notice.'

'My appointment is three weeks away.'

'Oh. Okay. Sure.'

'Thank you.'

Couldn't believe it worked. - Stellapotamus