That's when you pull out a blue pen and start striking clauses and making edits, then ask them to initial.

Reciprocate when they want to read the changes you made, if their heads don't explode first.

I will try this the next time I sign something.

they'll say no, and chances are you already prepaid, so they'll take your payment and you'll be stuck somewhere for hours until everyone else is done

Most people neither fundamentally understand (1) what a contract is or (2) what their options are regarding it.

Which is sad, because it's not rocket science.

PS: You should have yelled back "We have an illiterate guide here!" Anyone berating reasonable behavior deserves to be called out as an asshole.

Most people have the (incorrect) understanding that anything and everything in a contract is binding, to the point you could demand their first born child as a deposit for a lease and they'd shrug and say "it's in the contract, so I guess I have to".

Do these contracts actually stand up in court if people sign without reading them and being given due consideration? Can’t find the link but I recall years ago some EULA provisions were found to be unreasonable and void by the courts (US I think).

Consideration is a hard requirement for a binding contract. Note however that consideration in contract law doesn't mean the same thing as in general usage: in contract law it means "something of value". So a contract promising to give someone a guitar is not enforceable, but a contract promising to sell a guitar for $100 is.

In general the likelihood that the parties have read the contract doesn't have any bearing on the enforceability of it. But most such contracts are also contracts of adhesion (roughly speaking a take-it-or-leave-it offer), and there are special rules for the enforceability of contracts of adhesion. The principle is that they can't be too surprising or too unfair. There's a fair amount of case law about where that line is (which I mostly don't know).

Yes. There are some rights you can't sign away (e.g. you can't sell yourself into slavery, or use your kidney as collateral), but otherwise yes.

Legally what's important is that you had the opportunity to read the contract before you agreed to it. In HN terms, as an example, you can't legally steal GPL'd code if you don't bother to cat LICENSE.md