Devastating Confessions
Ever had a secret that was so crazy it could ruin lives if the truth came out? From second families to confidential cover-ups, these people have anonymously shared their earth-shattering confessions.
1. That Escalated Quickly
In the mid-80s, my close friend had this penchant for breaking into vending machines, swiping the change and taking some drinks.
He tried breaking into one at an all-Jewish school (I'm going to leave the location out)—but inadvertently caused a real nightmare. The machine caught fire.
This was on a weekend and no one was around. It burnt down almost half the school and caused them to close the school for over a year and probably a lot of money.
The news ran this "hateful act" for weeks and let me tell you, we were sweating that it would get out we were there and he was responsible. Lucky for us, it's the mid-80s and there were no cameras like today.
It was all over the news and in the newspaper. They just assumed some prejudiced organization had targeted the school.
Nope, two dumb, poor kids in hand-me-down clothes and bikes trying to get a free Coke.
2. In Plain Sight
I once lifted a business bank deposit bag out a bank teller’s drawer at the drive-up window, she had not taken it when she closed the drawer due to standing there talking to her co-worker.
She just opened the drawer for me, I saw the bag, I looked at her and she was engrossed in her conversation so I reached in, dropped my check to be cashed, and folded my hand around the zipper part of the bag and pulled it back into the car, and waited.
She stopped talking, pulled the drawer back in, looked down and stopped for a moment.
My heart almost stopped. But she just shook her head and processed my check.
I got $400 and a bunch of checks which I burned.
As a single custodial parent of two, broke, with it being days before Christmas… I felt guilty, but my kids had a decent Christmas. This was about 40 years ago.
3. No Regrets
I used to work in a call center for my country's tax agency dealing primarily with benefits.
The government here gives regular payments to people under a certain income threshold which isn't that low and so a good chunk of the population here gets those payments.
A frequent type of call we would get at the call center was asking about why they didn't get the couple hundred bucks the caller was expecting to receive as usual. One day I answered a call from a lady who didn't get her expected payment.
We would get all sorts of callers, and you get a pretty good sense of when people were being legitimate and when they were telling you a fake story to play on your emotions.
This lady had my internal alarm bells ringing—she called in about the missing payment and was clearly trying to hide the fact that she was severely devastated about not receiving the payment.
It turned out that it was her daughter's birthday the following day, and she was planning on using that money to get her birthday gift which she now had no means of buying.
I noticed when she called that she lived in the same city as me, maybe about a 10-minute drive away.
The database we have access to is the government's central taxpayer database ... and it has a ton of info on every single taxpayer in the country.
Access to any account and any bit of information on an account is highly monitored, and anything you access is strictly and demonstrably need-to-know access only.
Even the slightest mistake will get you insta-fired, and depending on what was accessed your termination can be accompanied by charges. Needless to say, recording any bit of information and bringing it out of the office is a big no-no.
But something in me felt...different when she called.
I really felt for her. It wasn't a catastrophic situation like the calls sometimes are, but there are also a lot of callers who are clearly trying to guilt you into getting something.
And she was clearly beside herself and actively trying to minimize and hide just how devastated she was that she as a single mother wasn't going to be able to get her pre-teen daughter a birthday present.
After looking into the situation there was nothing I could do to get her the missing payment. And she lived barely 10 minutes from my place... so I decided to say whatever, I'm doing a good deed today, and memorized her street address.
After work that day I went to her house and knocked on the door.
She answered, and I told her that I was walking down the street and saw a $100 bill on her lawn as I pulled it out of my pocket and asked if she had lost it.
She burst into tears, and through happy crying she told me that I had no idea about the day she's had and how timely this was.
She did not refuse the bill when I gave it to her, and then I gave her some cheesy line about how the universe is a mysterious place. So I mean technically was this a gross misuse of our country's taxpayer database? Absolutely.
Did I feel bad about it? Not in the least lol.
