When I went through high school, we didn’t have Home Economics as a required class. Apparently, kitchen etiquette, doing your taxes, and keeping the house under control weren’t things that the public school system still valued, so lo-and-behold, an entire generation went without baking cakes for a final grade. However, the Gen X woman in our next story clearly never aced her Home Ec classes because she’s found herself in a bit of hot water (soup?) over a no-brainer decision that was definitely a question on the kitchen etiquette final.

Gen X folks are normally quite sharp from living a life a turnkey kid and enjoying the freedoms of ‘learning by doing’, but the 67-year-old renter in our next tale has been skimming by in the common sense department for decades. After noticing a can of chicken soup had gone bad, she decided to flush the remaining food down the toilet, destroying the apartment building with a clogged, flooded toilet and explosive plumbing. 

Scroll for the entire story–and the life lesson–that unfolded when a woman flushed food down the toilet and was met with a $45,000 fine.