There are certain things everyone does, but somehow nobody wants to be caught doing. They’re not exactly scandalous, and most of them aren’t even that embarrassing. Yet the moment someone walks into the room, we suddenly act as if nothing happened.
These tiny habits are strangely universal, from checking the fridge for food that definitely wasn’t there five minutes ago to rehearsing imaginary arguments we’ll probably never have. Here are 18 things you’ve almost certainly done, even if you’d rather keep a few of them off the record.
1. Opening the Fridge Again Even Though You Just Checked It
You open the fridge, stare at the same leftovers, condiments, and half-empty containers, decide there´s nothing you want, and close the door. Five minutes later, you´re back, apparently hoping a pizza has quietly materialized behind the milk or yesterday´s leftovers have somehow become more appealing. Nothing has changed, of course, but that rarely stops us from checking one more time, treating the fridge less like an appliance and more like a slot machine that might eventually pay out.
2. Pretending You Didn’t See Someone to Avoid Saying Hello
You spot someone you know across the street, at the grocery store, or coming directly toward you, and suddenly your phone becomes the most fascinating object ever created. Maybe you pretend to read a message, inspect something on a shelf, or become deeply interested in whatever is happening twenty feet to your left. Do you dislike this person? Probably not. Do you have the energy for the inevitable “Hey! How have you been?” conversation? Also probably not. The real challenge begins when they’ve clearly seen you too, because now both of you may be participating in the same completely unspoken agreement to pretend neither one exists.
3. Rehearsing an Argument You’ll Probably Never Have
Somewhere inside your head, you are absolutely destroying someone in an argument that hasn’t happened and probably never will. You anticipate everything they might say, prepare devastating responses, and somehow deliver every comeback with perfect timing and suspiciously impressive vocabulary. Sometimes the imaginary argument is based on a real disagreement; other times, your brain simply decides Tuesday night is the perfect time to prepare for a confrontation that has a 0.2% chance of occurring. Naturally, if the actual argument ever happens, all those brilliant lines will disappear, and you’ll remember the perfect response approximately three hours later.
4. Checking Around After Tripping When Nobody Is There
The moment you trip over a curb, crack in the sidewalk, or absolutely nothing at all, the first instinct usually isn’t checking whether you’re hurt. It’s checking whether anyone saw it. There’s the quick glance behind you, another to the side, and perhaps a suspicious look at the ground as if you’re gathering evidence against whatever attacked your foot. And if someone did see it? Suddenly that stumble becomes a completely intentional little jog. Apparently falling down isn’t embarrassing enough; we also need to convince strangers that gravity simply misunderstood what we were trying to do.
5. Sniffing Clothes to Decide Whether They Need Washing
There’s clean, there’s dirty, and then there’s the mysterious third category known as “probably good for one more day.” That’s when the smell test becomes the final authority. You pick up the shirt, give it a cautious sniff, reconsider, sniff another section for a second opinion, and eventually deliver a verdict that would never survive professional laboratory standards. Does it actually smell clean, or have you simply decided you don’t want to do laundry today? Either way, if it passes the test, back into circulation it goes.
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6. Reading a Message From the Notification Without Opening It
A message arrives, and you absolutely want to know what it says, but opening it would create a dangerous new problem: now they might know you’ve read it. So you carefully examine the notification preview instead, extracting as much information as possible without technically entering the conversation. If the message is too long, things get serious. Maybe you expand the notification, rotate the phone, or attempt some other ridiculous maneuver just to avoid producing that tiny read receipt. At some point, avoiding the message starts requiring significantly more effort than simply answering it.
7. Looking Up a Word You Pretended to Understand
Someone casually drops a word into the conversation that you have absolutely no idea what it means, but instead of asking, you nod along with the confidence of a person who has been using it since childhood. Maybe you even throw in a thoughtful “exactly” just to really sell the performance. Then, the second you’re alone, your phone comes out, and Google gets a very specific vocabulary question. The best part is discovering the word meant something completely different from what you assumed, forcing you to mentally replay the conversation and determine just how ridiculous your enthusiastic agreement sounded.
8. Checking Your Own Profile to See What Other People See
Sometimes you open your own social media profile without posting, editing, or checking anything in particular. You’re simply there to look at yourself from the perspective of a hypothetical stranger. You scroll through your photos, reread your bio, inspect old posts, and briefly become a detective investigating your own online existence. What would someone think if they discovered this profile right now? Which photo would they notice first? And why are you suddenly judging a post from three years ago as if you didn’t personally choose to upload it?
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9. Pretending to Read the Card Before Looking at the Money
You open a birthday card and immediately notice the cash, check, or gift card tucked inside, but society has rules. You can’t just grab the good stuff first, so you carefully unfold the card and begin reading the message with the concentration of someone examining an important legal document. Meanwhile, your peripheral vision has already identified exactly what denomination is sitting two inches away. You might even smile at the handwritten message before finally reaching for the money, because apparently accepting a gift requires a brief theatrical performance proving you definitely cared about the card first.
10. Clicking Kitchen Tongs Together Before Using Them
Pick up a pair of kitchen tongs, and there´s a very good chance you´ll immediately click them together at least twice. Nobody told you to do this. The recipe certainly doesn´t require it. Yet somehow the tongs must undergo a mandatory click-click inspection before they´re trusted anywhere near the food. Are we testing the mechanism, establishing dominance, or simply making sure they still possess their tong powers? Whatever the reason, using them without that little opening ceremony just feels strangely incomplete.
11. Lowering Your Headphones Because Someone Nearby Is Gossiping
You’re perfectly happy listening to music until a nearby conversation produces one irresistible sentence: “And then she found out what he did.” Suddenly, your favorite song can wait. The volume quietly drops, one headphone may even come slightly off your ear, and you continue staring straight ahead while absorbing every available detail about people you have never met. You weren’t trying to eavesdrop, obviously. The information simply entered your ears completely against your will. And now that you’ve heard half the story, what are you supposed to do, walk away without finding out what he did?
12. Checking Whether You Smell Without Making It Obvious
At some point during the day, a terrifying possibility enters your mind: what if that smell is coming from you? You can’t exactly start sniffing your armpits in the middle of a meeting, so suddenly you’re stretching your arms, adjusting your shirt, scratching your shoulder, or inventing some other perfectly natural movement that just happens to bring your nose suspiciously close to the area under investigation. Then comes the worst possible result: you’re still not sure. Was that deodorant? Sweat? The room? Now you need a second test, except performing the same fake stretch twice is starting to look considerably less fake.
13. Imagining Yourself Performing the Song You’re Listening To
Put on the right song, and suddenly you’re no longer walking to work, washing dishes, or staring out the bus window. You’re performing in front of thousands of screaming fans, delivering every lyric with impossible confidence while an imaginary camera captures your best angles. Maybe there’s dramatic lighting. Maybe you’ve invented choreography. Maybe the artist who actually recorded the song is backstage wondering how they’re supposed to follow your performance. From the outside, of course, you’re just sitting there wearing headphones and staring intensely into the distance while absolutely nothing is happening.
14. Pretending You Understand Instructions You Absolutely Don’t
Someone finishes explaining how to do something and asks, “Make sense?” This is your opportunity to admit that you stopped understanding approximately four steps ago, but instead you confidently say, “Yep, got it.” Then they leave, and the panic begins. You stare at whatever they just explained as if the missing information might magically return, click a few things experimentally, and eventually search for a tutorial that starts considerably closer to the beginning. Why ask one mildly embarrassing question when you can spend the next 40 minutes privately reconstructing the entire process from scratch?
15. Walking Out of a Store Empty-Handed and Feeling Suspicious
You walk into a store, browse for a few minutes, find nothing you want, and leave without buying anything, which is a completely normal thing to do until you approach the exit and suddenly feel like the most suspicious person in the building. Your walking becomes strangely deliberate, your hands need somewhere innocent to be, and you may even resist looking at the security guard because not looking at the security guard somehow feels less criminal. Nobody has accused you of anything, nothing is hidden in your pockets, and yet your brain has decided this ordinary departure should be performed with the nervous energy of someone carrying three stolen televisions under their jacket.
16. Practicing Your Order Before the Waiter Gets to You
You’ve studied the menu, made your decision, and mentally rehearsed the exact sentence you’re going to say when the waiter arrives. Everything is ready. Then they reach the table, ask what you’d like, and for some inexplicable reason you immediately look back at the menu as if you’ve never seen it before. Suddenly the dish you confidently selected five minutes ago needs another full inspection, and even saying the name of your drink feels strangely complicated. Bonus points if everyone else orders first and you spend their entire turn silently practicing your sentence again, only to begin with, “Umm… I think I’ll have…”
17. Pretending You Weren’t Waiting for Someone to Reply
You’ve checked your phone six times in ten minutes, reopened the conversation just in case the notification somehow failed, and maybe even verified that your internet connection is working perfectly. Then the message finally arrives, and suddenly you become the busiest person alive. You can’t answer immediately. That would reveal that you were waiting, so the phone goes back down while you manufacture a respectable delay. Five minutes? Ten? What’s the scientifically correct amount of time required to look casually unavailable? Eventually you reply as if you just happened to notice the message, conveniently ignoring the fact that you practically watched it arrive.
18. Googling Something Ridiculously Basic in Incognito Mode
Incognito mode isn’t always hiding some enormous secret. Sometimes you just need to ask the internet a question so embarrassingly basic that you don’t want your regular search history associated with it. Maybe you’ve forgotten how many days are in a particular month, need to check the spelling of a word you’ve written a thousand times, or suddenly can’t remember something you definitely learned in elementary school. Is anyone actually inspecting your search history and judging you? Almost certainly not, but opening a private window somehow feels like quietly destroying the evidence before anyone discovers that, for thirty seconds, you forgot how the world works.
The funny thing about these habits is that they feel embarrassing right up until you realize almost everyone else does them too. From secretly listening to strangers’ gossip to giving kitchen tongs their mandatory test clicks, the things everyone does are often the tiny, ridiculous behaviors that make us more alike than we’d care to admit. So the next time you open the fridge for the third time in ten minutes, remember that somewhere out there, someone else is staring at the exact same leftovers wondering if anything new has appeared.
Keep Exploring The Scroller
We all have a few habits we’d rather keep off the record, and these are only the beginning. Keep exploring The Scroller for more strange, funny, and surprisingly relatable things hiding in everyday life:
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