August 17, 2022 | Violet Newbury

Messed Up Favors


They say “a friend in need is a friend indeed”, but how well does friendship actually hold up when the need is something big? One never quite knows how far they are willing to go for another person until a major favor is called in. Keep reading to hear some outlandish favors people have asked of others that have—without question—pushed the limits of true friendship.


1. Friends Through Thick And Thin

There was a lingering smell of rotten sewage in my house. I was a bit short on money at the time, so I called a buddy who could fix anything to see if he could help me and figure it out. He identified the issue right away and crawled under my house—only to make a gruesome discovery. The previous owner had used Drano and must not have done a proper flush, so it ate away the main sewer pipe.

At least six months of sewage had built up and was probably about four inches deep. He went to his truck to put on his boilersuit and crawled through my waste for two hours, replacing the rotted pipe. I was down there with him trying to help however I could, but he pretty much did the repair solo. It didn't faze him one bit, and he wouldn't accept any form of payment even though I insisted I had to repay him somehow. He was the best friend I've ever had.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

2. Whose Stuff Is It Anyway?

I had a friend who was thinking about moving to another state and went to visit friends there for a couple of weeks in order to decide. After two weeks, the friend called me and said that he had decided to move to the new state. He asked me to gather and move all of his furniture and stuff to my basement and said that his parents would come by to retrieve it.

I told him that I was busy until the following week but would do it then. The following week rolled around, so I drove my pickup to his apartment. The doors were locked, so I climbed in through the window. For the next two to three hours, I loaded the truck with clothes, sofa, mattresses, tables, kitchen stuff—just everything. I threw away any food and cleaned the place up a bit.

I was happy to do it for a good friend who was getting his life together. I closed up the apartment and drove home to unload it all in my basement. The next day, I called him to say that his parents could come and pick his stuff up from my basement. That’s when I got the surprise of a lifetime. He said, “What stuff? They already got my stuff last week when you could not get it”. My stomach turned cold.

I asked him, “Whose stuff is in my basement?“ He told me, “I don’t know. I think the landlord rented the apartment”. I thought about what I should do all night. I decided to take all the stuff back to the apartment, apologize, and explain what happened to the new tenant. When I got there, no one was home. I looked around, and no neighbors were about. So, I again opened the apartment window, crawled in, and opened the door.

There was only an air mattress on the floor and some leftover takeout in the sink. Someone had indeed rented the apartment. I was going to replace everything just as I had found it, and if they came home while I was there, I would just explain. I thought the fact that I was returning everything should be a tell-tale sign that I was sincere.

After an hour or so, I finished moving everything back in, and everything looked very much as I had first seen it. However, no one ever returned. So, I just locked the door, exited the window, and closed it gently. As I was walking to my now empty truck, an old man sitting on his porch across the street yelled, “Hey, I thought I just saw you move all that stuff out of there the other day”.

I yelled back, “Yeah, it’s crazy.” He yelled back, “Yeah, it’s crazy”, and that was it. I got into my truck and drove away. I have often wondered what that poor tenant must have gone through trying to figure out what happened, or if it really happened at all. He may still be trying to figure it out to this day.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

3. Party Time

When we were in our mid-twenties, an old high school girlfriend and I reconnected on Facebook and hung out a little. We were not being romantic—we were just chilling. One day, she was really insistent that I should join her at a party that night. I agreed. Oddly, she insisted on picking me up. She demanded to pay for my six-pack at the store, even though she wouldn’t drink any.

Then, halfway to the party, she laid it all out. She wanted me to pretend to be her boyfriend in an attempt to make the party host jealous. I told her that it was a ridiculous idea. However, I agreed under some aggressive terms. I told her that I would not kiss her, that we could be mildly affectionate, but she could not be clingy.

She could tell her lie to anyone she wanted, but I wouldn’t introduce myself as her guy, and if anyone questioned things or if I met a woman I was interested in, the truth would come out. She agreed to my terms. When we got there, the party host was seriously making out with another girl. My friend moped around the whole evening, and I ended up meeting my future ex-wife.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

4. No Poop For You

I became friends with a female coworker because I was dating a guy who was friends with her boyfriend at the time. She had this weird thing about not pooping around him. It was to the point that when they eventually had a long-distance relationship, she would visit him for the weekend and hold it in the ENTIRE TIME. We planned a trip together, and all four of us shared a hotel room.

While she and I were getting ready to go out, she pulled me aside and told me she had to go very bad but didn’t want to be in the bathroom alone because everyone would know she was pooping. That’s when she came up with a disturbing plan. She asked me to stay in the bathroom with her while she did her business, so it would just seem like we were doing our makeup.

It stunk so bad that I was pretty sure the guy smelled it in the room anyways, and we both just looked like weirdos who went to the bathroom together.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

5. That’s The Ticket

A guy I was dating for two months worked at Disneyland. He wanted to take me into the park, but he didn't want to use one of his free tickets because he was saving it for a family member. So, he asked me to get busy with a coworker of his to get one of their complimentary tickets. His coworker was very hot, and since my boyfriend’s and I relationship was pretty unsteady before the request, I did it. We broke up within the weeks after anyway.

Messed Up FavorsFlickr, Walt Disney Television

6. What’s Cooking?

I don’t usually ask for anything, but I was hungry while I was at work. My friend was visiting me at work, so I asked him to go get the food that my mom had prepared at my parents’ home. He said sure and left. He came back and, instead, had brought me a dish of his own. He cooked a bacon and grilled cheese sandwich for me.

When I asked him why he didn’t get the food that my mother made at my parents’ place, he told me he had misheard me and thought I asked him to make my food. It was the best laugh that we had.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

7. First Timer

When I was a junior in high school, I had a friend who never really dated anyone since she was very quiet and often pretty nervous around a lot of people. One day during lunch, a group of my friends and I were joking around, sharing stories about our first times and poking fun at each other. Then, later in the day, she asked me to talk alone.

I met up with her at her house and asked what was up. She started by saying that everyone had been talking about what doing the deed was like for a while and she felt left out since she had never been with anyone before. She started getting nervous and told me that it was perfectly OK to say no, and asked me if I could take her virginity— as friends—so she would know what it was like.

There was a moment of extremely awkward silence for a bit, and I didn’t know what to say. She started crying and said no one would ever want to be with her and she was going to be a virgin forever and whatnot. I felt really bad and explained to her I was not disgusted or anything, but that once you sleep with someone, especially your first time, it can be awkward afterward.

She kept saying, “Please, I won’t tell anyone”, on and on. So, I finally gave in and said, “Sure, let’s do it”. We did the deed that night and the next day was super awkward. A couple of weeks passed, and we found it hard to talk to one another. She eventually got a boyfriend in senior year and looked happy. She even ended up marrying him a couple of years later.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

8. Bye Bye Alibi

I was friends with a girl through junior high and high school. We called one another best friends, but in truth, she was just a bad person and a worse friend. We drifted apart as one does after graduating and going to college. One day, out of the blue, she called me and invited me to meet her for lunch to catch up, etc. As we were eating lunch, she told me a fun story about an awesome party she and her new friend group were at.

She asked if I would be her alibi for that night because they had managed to burn down the house they were partying at, which they had unlawfully entered in the first place. I refused to get involved and told her while I wouldn't volunteer any information, I also would not lie to any official that asked me outright about anything to do with that incident. Needless to say, she wasn't happy.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

9. Back Off

While in college, one of my roommates begged me to take a picture of my bare back for an art project she was working on. She was not an art student, nor in an art class, nor an artist. I was uncomfortable with it but eventually agreed to do it. She showed me the final work. She had taken several pictures of people’s backs, made them translucent, and then layered them on top of each other. I didn’t really get it, but she was very happy with herself.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

10. House Hunter

I had known this guy since we were kids. He had a history of leeching off others—but one incident was next level. As kids, he came over to our house for dinner hundreds of times, but I had only ever been invited to stay for dinner by his parents once or twice. I think he had just gotten away with that type of behavior for so long that he thought it was normal and that getting stuff out of others was just a part of friendship.

One day, he told me he wanted me to buy a house so that he and his newly knocked-up girlfriend could have a place to live together—for free. I had probably mentioned wishing I owned a house once in passing, and he took that as an invitation to move in with me whenever I would get one. Getting a girl pregnant just added urgency to his weak plot.

I had a hard enough time paying for my apartment. I have no idea why he thought I had the money to buy a house. He didn’t ask just once, either. He would send me house listings all the time and try to schedule tours. I think he truly believed I just needed to see some houses in person in order to be convinced. He stopped speaking to me after I moved out of state and didn’t invite them to join me. I have absolutely no remorse.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

11. Not A Ghost Of A Chance

My best friend is a huge guy. He's 6'9" tall and 250 pounds and incredibly scared of ghosts. He believed there were ghosts in his house, even though I had assured him numerous times there were not. He lived alone, and every time he had to go to his basement, he would call me to come to his house. He would ask me to go into his basement with him while he did whatever he needed to do down there, even if he only had to go down there for a minute or two.

You would never think such a huge man would be so terribly afraid to go in his basement alone, but he was. As funny as I think it is every time he calls me to come with him to his basement, I would always show up anyways because that's what friends are for.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

12. Time To Move

When my best friend from high school moved out of his parents’ house, he did so without informing his parents about it. He moved out on the sly while they were at work and asked me to help him—but when I got there, it got even more bizarre. They came home sooner than expected, so my friend asked me to go down there and make up a lie while he snuck out the back and hopped the fence, so he wouldn't have to face them. I did it, but I can't say I felt good about it.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

13. Have I Got A Fuse For You

I was an electronics technician/engineer. Every so often, I get weird requests, but usually, it’s nothing too difficult or important. However, on the Friday before Christmas, a friend called me and told me that he had a complete failure of his fuse board due to a pipe leaking in the apartment above his. Because of the day, he couldn't get an electrician to fix it, at least not without breaking the bank.

So I grabbed my stuff from work—pliers, screwdrivers, power tools, an entire 100-meter spindle of cable, and a fuse box. All in all, it was about 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of stuff, and I strapped it onto my scooter that only had 50ccs of power. So, I got dressed, fueled up my trusty Honda, and drove 412km (256 miles) to fix his little problem. It took me 12 hours to get there. However, I didn’t regret it and would do it again.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

14. Hold The Phone!

A kid back in high school asked if he could borrow my phone to watch racy videos during class. I obviously told him, “No”. His answer was seriously disturbing. He said, “Come on, man, it’s not like I’m going to jack off. I just want to watch it”. I asked why he didn’t use his own phone, and he said, “Because it might get taken away”. So, he wanted me to get my phone taken away.

Not only that, but why would I want to get involved? He set fire to an apartment building a few weeks later.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

15. Hat’s All Folks!

My brother would wear a cowboy hat faithfully every day. He went on a date with this girl, and she asked him why he always wore the hat. Instead of just saying, "I like to wear it", he told her this weird lie that he was from Texas. Meanwhile, we were from North Carolina. He said that our parents shipped him off to Texas when he was born to be raised by our uncle—who also lived in North Carolina—and that my other two brothers and I stayed in North Carolina to be raised by our parents.

He told her he got sent back to North Carolina in high school, and he wore the hat to show off his "Texan pride". He asked not only me but my dad and brothers to back up this story for him when we met her. He started the request by sitting us all down and asking, "Would you lie for me"? Then, he told us that story. Now we call him the "proud Texan" as a joke. He never told that girl the truth. He just broke up with her because he knew we would not go along with that crazy tale he made up for no reason to tell that poor girl.

Man with a hatPexels

16. A Saucy Tale

Several years ago, a friend asked me to help him move his ex-wife's stuff out of the barracks he was living in. According to him, she had gone missing a few months prior without any notice and just vanished. He would have usually been able to empty her stuff out by himself, but he had a broken ankle and arm from a personal accident, so another friend and I accepted his request for help.

While moving her stuff, the friend and I had to open the trunk of the car. What we saw when we did made us both stop and take a pause, reevaluating the missing wife story he told us. Inside the trunk was rope, duct tape, gloves, garbage bags, and four one-gallon CONTAINERS OF BARBECUE SAUCE! My buddy turned to me and asked playfully—but with a hint of seriousness—"Hey man...umm...did Jacob eat his wife"?

We awkwardly finished packing the car. We had to pull him aside later and ask him what the heck. His response was, "I just like barbecue sauce". And the story didn’t end there. His wife showed up several weeks later. It turned out she ran off with a person she met while playing World of Warcraft.

 

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17. A Fool And His Money

A buddy of mine started dating this chick that I had advised against. She slowly made him stop hanging out with us so she could have all his attention. Like an idiot, he knocked her up. He ended up marrying her and having another kid. She racked up thousands of dollars in debt. She was then caught cheating on him with a guy practicing some seriously kinky stuff.

My friend believed her when she said he wouldn't need a lawyer for his divorce. The local judge always sided with the mothers, so he got hoodwinked. Then, he had to file for bankruptcy. Two years after not talking, he called me up and asked if he could have three thousand dollars for his new divorce lawyer. He was trying to get his child support lowered. I inquired why he asked me, and his response was, "We were such great friends, and I know you have it, so I figured you could do me a solid". The nerve of some people.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

18. United We Sand

My friend needed help getting sand for some project, so I agreed. I got to his house, and we left in his ratty late 80s Suburban. I was thinking we were going to get bags of sand at Home Depot or something, but I was wrong. He drove us to a giant mountain of sand down by the lake that was used as ballast for freighters.

However, he didn’t have any buckets. So, we just shoveled it into the back of the Suburban. The passenger window of his truck was stuck down, which would usually be fine as it was mid-summer and 90 degrees. But, in this instance, it just turned the truck into a sandstorm the whole ride home. The entire thing was an exercise in stupidity.

Messed Up FavorsFlickr, Robert Wallace

19. Funeral Home Freak Out

A friend of mine asked me to go downstairs to the lower level of a church and take a picture of her daughter in her coffin before the funeral home was going to come and take her away. I know it's not the worst thing, but it freaked me out, and it came out of nowhere. Thank goodness for another friend who heard the request, turned around, and said, "I'll do it".

Messed Up FavorsPexels

20. The Stuck Stops Here

I had a friend in high school who, while spending the night with me, got a tampon stuck sideways, and they were unable to get it out. I heard a very nervous, “I’m a little scared. Will you help me get it out”? Fortunately, they managed to get it unstuck before I was ready to help. I had my sleeves rolled up, and hands washed when I was told I wasn’t needed. It was a sigh of relief for both of us.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

21. He Was Out Of Step

A friend of mine asked me for a favor so terrible, I’ve never forgotten it. He asked if he could borrow money to buy a ladder to climb into a dumpster where he dumped his pants after pooping himself. He needed to get them because his wallet was still in his pants. I just let him borrow my parents' ladder. Later, he asked me if I could donate plasma with him so he could use that money to gamble. I ghosted him after realizing how terrible he was.

Messed Up FavorsShutterstock

22. In The Bag

A friend called me at 2 AM asking me to find him on a well-hidden countryside road. He told me to bring a shovel and the most enormous plastic bag that I had. I drove a scooter and driving a scooter while holding a shovel isn't easy. I was also expecting to help him bury a human corpse, so I brought two bags big enough for me to fit in.

However, the idiot had just driven over a chinchilla. I still can't figure out where a chinchilla came from.

Messed Up FavorsPixabay

23. Hot On Their Trail

When I was 18, my buddy called me in a panic. He and his friend were being followed by an all-black Cadillac. They didn’t know why but they couldn’t see the driver. They tried losing the vehicle, but it was still tailing them. He called me asking if he could drive to our house and if we could help them. He was so scared, and our other friend was with him and almost in tears.

We told him to come over, and we would be ready with shovels or whatever we had. But there was something that he didn’t know. The kicker was that WE were the ones in the Cadillac. My buddy’s car was in the shop, so he was driving his dad’s Cadillac. At first, we saw them driving, so we wanted to see where they were going. We could tell that they knew we were tailing them and trying to lose us.

We thought they knew it was us because he had seen our buddy’s dad’s Caddy before. But, when he called and sounded like he was scared, we just went with it. When they got to the house, we busted out of the car laughing. They had the most relieved look on their faces. We thought it was hilarious. Then we all went to In-N-Out Burger.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

24. Pink Spot

In a moment of complete inebriation, my friend and I were slouching on a couch and staring blissfully into the television screen. Our other friend—whose house we were at—entered the room after an extended silent adventure in the bathroom and stood in front of us. He said, “Guys. I know I’m black, but like…is my rear hole pink? I mean, it’s possible”.

He hesitated slightly, but it was too late! He had promptly and properly pulled his pants down to his ankles and pulled his cheeks apart! My friend and I were as awestruck as two slouching couch slugs could be. We replied, “Yeah, man, it’s pink”.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

25. To The Tinder End

My “sober” friend called me at 11 PM on a Wednesday night, asking me to pick her up because she went on a Tinder date gone bad. I, of course, said yes and got out of bed and ran out the door to my car. When I finally found her—in a sketchy neighborhood—she was wearing pajamas and was high out of her mind. She had a bag on her and was out of breath.

It was apparent she had been using with somebody, then robbed them, and ran away. She told me some story about her Tinder date being a creep and couldn’t keep the story straight. Then, she told me somebody tried to snatch her. Then, she told me some other ridiculous story. I listened to her lie to me for about 20 minutes during the car ride home and watched her walk inside. But the nightmare didn’t end there.

The next day, her mother texted me asking what happened. Apparently, she lied and told her mother she was sleeping over in my apartment and that I had made her leave. I told her mother what really happened, and her mother informed me my friend was on a rampage looking for her purse. My friend texted me crazy messages about leaving her purse in my car and even accused me of taking it.

I hadn’t. Eventually, her mom found the purse in the driveway, and it was filled with cash and smack. Her mother and I confronted her about relapsing. She flipped out and denied it like there was no tomorrow. Not only did she deny it, but she verbally lambasted me and then broke her mom’s computer. That was just one of her many relapses. We’re not friends anymore.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

26. He Took A Swipe At Our Friendship

A kid I knew from church stopped by one day during summer vacation and asked me if I wanted to walk to the store with him. I was bored, so I said yes. We got there, and he said he just needed to pick up a roll of film, so I told him I would wait outside. He went in and swiped it. I had no idea until he came back out, and the store manager stopped us as we were leaving.

I was so mad. I didn’t know why he chose to involve me in such a thing. Later, I realized he was doing the classic “cry for attention” from his parents. He was the only child of parents who took in a lot of foster kids, so that had messed him up emotionally. But, at the time I was just mad and avoided him as much as possible after that.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

27. He Socked It To Me

A friend and I were hiking around some local mountains. All of a sudden, my buddy said he wasn't feeling so good. I didn't think much of this as we were both recovering from a hangover. I carried on up the trail a bit, but I noticed he wasn't following me anymore. I turned around to see him taking an emergency poo in the distant woods.

Not knowing what to do, I stood around for a bit and waited. A short while later, I heard him screaming my name. It turned out my buddy was wearing Teva sandals and, as such, did not have a spare sock in order to wipe himself. I ended up hiking the rest of the way with one sock.

Messed Up FavorsFlickr, Eli Duke

28. Written Request

When my mom died, my husband wrote a beautiful piece to be read at her funeral. They were very close, and everyone at her service loved it. Two years later, my friend’s mom passed, and the friend asked ME to ask my husband if he would write something for her mom's funeral. We had never met her mother. I delayed responding to her, and within 48 hours, she realized the awkwardness of her request. She emailed me back to say it was inappropriate of her. I responded with compassion and understanding, and we've been fine since.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

29. Stranded With No Place To Go

I had a soldier in my platoon call me on a Friday evening. He had gone with a Tinder date down to Houston for a concert and hotel stay, despite admitting later that there were several red flags when she picked him up. They got down there, and he got cold feet. But, because he had driven down there with her, he had no way back to the base.

So, I drove the three hours from Fort Hood to Houston to go and get him—but that wasn’t the worst part. I got to the Houston city limits, and my phone conked out. I didn't have a charging cord and didn't think to buy one. So, I spent the next four hours driving around Houston trying to find this hotel based on the directions I had scribbled down from Google maps.

I finally found the hotel by sheer luck at 1 AM. I made him drive us back, pay for two tanks of gas, and a handle of Jack. I also spent the drive back reminding him that he was an idiot for thinking with his pants instead of the hat rack he called a head.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

30. Yule Dog

A few years ago, on New Year’s Eve, my buddy and his wife asked my wife and me over to celebrate at their house. A few days before the party, their dog died. She was fairly old, and you could tell it was coming, so they were sad but not just absolutely devastated. My friend was a bit of a pyro and was building a bonfire on the backside of his property when we got there.

I went out to help. While we were riding in his side by side, I said I was sorry about him losing his dog and asked if they had made plans to either bury or cremate her. He looked at me nonchalantly and uttered a truly horrifying sentence. "She's getting cremated. She's at the bottom of the brush pile". I sat there a little shocked and then just accepted that this was how the night was going to go and went with it. We got the fire lit and burning exceptionally well, so there is no doubt in my mind that she was gone.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

31. He Had A Need For Weed

I had two friends who recently had a baby. The mom worked all the way up until she was 38 weeks pregnant and then went on unpaid maternity leave. The dad didn't work at all. Not while his girlfriend was pregnant, not after the delivery, not during postpartum, not when their utilities were being shut off, not when they got an eviction notice, and not when I was driving them to food pantries so they could eat.

A couple of days before they were going to lose their home, he asked me for money. Not money to help, not money for a hotel, food, bills, etc., but money for weed. He didn’t just ask me to loan him money for it, but he also asked me to go to the dispensary to obtain it and drive it back to him.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

32. We All Scream For Ice Cream

A friend of mine asked me to go to Doncaster, England, to pick up an ice cream van that he'd bought on eBay while he was in Australia. First, he wired me £6,000 ($7,300), which I withdrew in cash to pay for it. That was the most money I had ever held at the time, so I was a little nervous. My girlfriend then drove me down the M1 to Doncaster and dropped me off at a house with a Pepto Bismol pink ice cream van in the driveway.

I knocked on the door, and a jolly, gigantic man in dirty overalls opened the door and spent the next two hours with me as I learned how to strip and rebuild the Mr. Whippy ice cream machine inside the van. I was thoroughly unprepared for this. I was also unprepared for the machine exploding in my face after loading it with the minimum four liters of ice cream mix.

With slightly sour milk now liberally coating my clothes, and the light fading, the friendly ice cream giant talked me through the intricacies of starting and driving a 1973 Bedford ice cream van. The ice cream machine inside ran off the engine rather than a generator like most did. So, there was an elaborate set of linkages that transferred the engine power from the wheels to the machinery when engaged.

These were entirely exposed and directly where you would normally put your foot when driving. The engine also didn't start on its own. You had to crack open the hood and spray a generous amount of combustible gas directly into the air intake before giving the accelerator a good stomp. Fortunately, the giant did this for me. He then let me drive it to the local gas station to fill it up.

At that time, I also discovered that the speedometer, windshield wipers, and lights didn't really work. Neither did the fuel gauge. And—for some reason—the fuel cap was level with the tank. Therefore, you couldn't pump fuel into it at more than a dribble’s pace, or it all ran back out. This meant you had no real idea how much gas was in it. I was assured there was plenty to get me home.

After sort of filling it up, struggling to start it, and chugging home at an unknown—but very leisurely—pace, I paid him, and we filled out some paperwork. But my ordeal wasn’t over yet. At that point, he let me know it was untaxed and, contrary to my friend's belief, not exempt. Therefore, I would be breaking the law driving it home, which I had to do—in the dark—with no real lights.

It had also just started to rain. However, off I went, gingerly traversing the on-ramp to the busiest motorway in the UK—foot to the floor—wind whistling through the various holes in the bodywork. I had no idea how fast I was going, but from the waves and gestures I got from passing vehicles, it definitely wasn't fast enough. I also realized I didn't know how good the brakes were or what condition the tires were in.

It was extremely wet out, and the off-ramp was downhill, with lights at the bottom. Then, there was smoke coming from the hood. By some miracle of agricultural engineering and blind faith, I made it back to my place. So, now I had an ice-cream van parked outside my apartment block. My friend was very excited, but when I filled him in on exactly what he had purchased, he was a bit less enthusiastic about it.

His original plan had been to hop on a train from Kent to Yorkshire and drive the ice cream van back down the length of the M1—around the M25—through the Dartford Tunnel—and down some windy country lanes to his house. I politely pointed out that even if the van could even make that journey, it would take him the best part of a week, as he’d only be able to travel during daylight hours.

The van did at best 40mph, and he shouldn’t run it for more than a couple of hours a day if he didn’t want it to explode. Therefore, it remained outside of my apartment. I was on good terms with the building manager, who found it quite amusing, but he asked me to move it from a visitor’s space to a resident’s spot. My first attempt simply drained the battery, with the van digging its heels in like a stubborn mule.

Fortunately, there was an on-site gym at our apartment, so I was able to get two burly young men to push the van to a new spot. The boys happily obliged, and with the help of gravity, they got the van to roll into its new home. But I wasn’t rid of it yet. Another month passed, and I had a knock on the door from the building manager, followed by a conversation about the “van of doom”. He’d had complaints and pointed out that commercial vehicles weren’t allowed to be stored on site.

I attempted to argue that I wasn’t actually using it for business—it was ice cream for purely personal or charitable consumption—but he was unmoved. I was given two weeks to get rid of the thing. I phoned my friend and told him he needed to come and get it. The van wouldn’t start, so he got a car transport truck to come. When the car transporter guy arrived, he had not been fully briefed on the situation at hand.

They finally got it started, but the van weighed quite a bit more than my friend had told the delivery company it did. The poor hydraulics of the transporter trailer took one go at lifting it and promptly tapped out. Finally, after three hours of leading two grown men on a merry dance, the van finally accepted its fate and left Yorkshire.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

33. Parental Consent

A friend of mine asked me if they could move into my parents’ house. They had only met my parents once briefly, and they wanted to live there for free—for an undetermined amount of time—most likely several months. When my parents said no, they got so mad at me that they wanted to end our friendship. They were a full thirty-something adult. I didn't even live at my parents’ house full-time. It wasn't my house or my call. I was so confused.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

34. They Took Me For A Ride

When I was about 17 years old, a “friend” asked me to take his mom and her boyfriend out to a friend’s house to pick up their laundry and some stuff they had left at the place because they had been crashing there. It was a long drive in the middle of nowhere from the already nowhere tiny town we lived in. Later, I found out the chilling truth about that night. It turned out I drove them to swipe tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of crank.

Years later, I got to tell the FBI the full story as part of a clearance interview because they were potentially going to be digging deep enough to find out. We were not friends anymore after that.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

35. Carry On!

My wife’s dad had died. My mother-in-law called to tell us and asked that we come up to see her. It was a 45-minute drive, but we got there in 20 minutes. The coroners hadn’t shown up yet. They finally showed up and saw that he was a bigger guy. They asked my mother-in-law if anyone was available to help carry him downstairs.

I was outside puffing away when my wife came out and asked me if I could help her carry her dad's body down the stairs. Of course, I obliged. We proceeded to bag him up before carrying him downstairs. It was weird.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

36. I Did The Rite Thing

A couple of months ago, I was in a Rite-Aid at about 8:30 AM. I saw a kid who looked to be about 25 or so with his arm in a sling. He approached me and asked me if I could pay for his prescription. He explained to me that he was from Oklahoma and was trying to get home. He said that all he had was ten dollars in cash and that his prescription was something like $16.

He told me that he had been hit by a car, which is why his arm was broken. I didn’t know if he was really telling me the truth, but I did pay for his prescription. He and his girlfriend then gave me the ten dollars they had in cash. I gave it back to them since they needed to get back to Oklahoma, and that was their only money.

Messed Up FavorsShutterstock

37. Strict For Life

My boyfriend had a friend move to the West Coast to be his roommate and live closer to his long-term internet girlfriend. Despite being involved and monitoring their relationship, the parents were very strict about allowing him to visit her in person. One day, they wanted to spend a night sleeping and waking up next to each other and requested my help.

The plan was for me to go incognito as a classmate to convince her family to allow her to sleep over at “my home” while, in reality, they would be together at an Airbnb. Because I was a bit older, I dressed up in my youngest-looking clothing and styled my hair similar to hers, and met both her and her parents for the first time.

I was immediately put under intense interrogation. They even put her cousins, brother, and sisters on a conference call with us. They scoured the girl and me with questions, asking me to call my own mother and father to approve, share their contact information, and confirm my address on the spot. They even asked me about my grades, what path I walked to school, and how well I knew their daughter.

At that point, I just booked it. I was socially anxious and being put under such intense pressure overwhelmed me. Needless to say, they had to wait another half-year when their parents had their security system down before she could sneak out, and they could finally have time together unchaperoned.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

38. Birthday Bummer

When I was about six years old, there was a girl in my class who was having a birthday soon. Her mother wanted this girl to invite me to her birthday party. Her mother really liked me and was really nice. I was at school, and this girl said to me, ''Hey, my mom asked me to invite you to my birthday party, but I don't want you to come, so don't tell your parents, please.” I just replied, ''Oh, okay'', and didn’t tell them.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

39. Rub A Dub Dub

I am a female. I was still living with my parents and my best friend at the time—who was male— came over pretty regularly. We were both 20–22 years old. My friend didn’t have a bathtub at home, only a shower. My house had a tub with a shower attached to the wall. Every once in a while, he would tell me how much he missed bathing and just soaking in the tub.

I didn’t make much of it at first. Then, one day he just texted me and said, “Hey can I come over and just soak in your tub for a few hours”? I said yes and informed my parents. They knew him, and he was like a brother to me, so we obliged. He straight up soaked for four hours. I had to knock and the door to confirm he hadn’t drowned.

He thanked us and just went home afterward overjoyed. It was an odd favor, but it made him extremely happy. I even showed him where the bubble bath foam was so that he could use it.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

40. Dumb-o Things Never Change

My friend called me and asked me if I wanted to make some easy money, so I asked how. She asked me if I would just go and sell some DVDs or Blu-ray discs to a Buy and Sell store. She had like 20-something copies of Dumbo, which had just been released at that time. I was immediately suspicious about this. They were brand new and sealed.

She wasn’t allowed to sell anything at the stores anymore as they were also suspicious. I didn’t know if she was swiping these items and turning them for a profit, but I obviously did not want to make easy money that way. I was a single mom with responsibilities and couldn’t be doing anything dumb. I stopped talking to her after that.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

41. Breaking In Was A Piece Of Snake

My friend’s boyfriend had accidentally locked himself in the bathroom because there was a black garden snake in the house. They didn’t have a spare key for the front door, and his boyfriend refused to leave the bathroom, so my friend asked me to break in. I had to break the window. It was the second best moment of my life as I had always wanted to break someone’s window and catch a snake with a towel and a Tupperware dish.

Messed Up FavorsWikimedia Commons

42. Out For Delivery

I ended up distancing myself from an old friend I used to be really close to because he got into dope. One day, he called me on a work night at 10:00 PM and I answered, fearing something was wrong because I hadn’t heard from him in close to a year. But I was wrong, and he was fine. He had simply sold his car and had ordered a pizza.

He was wondering if I would go pick it up and bring it to him and his dirtbag friends. He told me, “You are the one that never says no”. That was a big “Ah-ha” moment for me. I realized that I didn’t want to be the doormat friend anymore.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

43. She Was A Crafty Piece Of Work

A woman I had known casually from a church I no longer attended and hadn’t talked to for about three or four years, reached out to me after her relationship failed because she wanted to hang out. She wanted to make crafty things together to help keep her become distracted after her breakup. I had been through that, so I agreed. What a mistake.

We ran out to buy some supplies and were headed back to the house when she said, “I could use some food. How about you? My favorite Thai place is only a few miles from your house. Why don’t you call your husband and have him run and get us food, so it’s there when we get back to the house”. Instead, I had her call the food in, and we went and picked it up on our way back.

She had never even met my husband, not that it would have changed anything on my end. I still ended up paying for the food and all the craft supplies. I found out while crafting that she had wicked bad financial issues but bought a $600 puppy from a puppy mill. She was waiting on that while borrowing money from her parents to pay her credit card bills. I ditched her quickly after that.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

44. To Protect And Serve

When I was in my 20s, a friend of mine was the only one awake in his parents' house when suddenly there was a bark from his dog, followed by a kick at the door. My friend got his piece. The dog was going crazy, and he saw a car speeding off when he opened the door. He called me a couple of hours later, at about 7 AM, and filled me in.

He thought that it was his older sister’s junkie boyfriend because it looked like his car, and she had brought him over recently. It was the first time he was meeting their parents, and my friend’s father had plenty of tools that took up a part of the house. So, he asked me to help protect the house should he and his junkie friends come back.

I did. As soon as I walked in, he handed me a pistol and shotgun. He had another set as well. We stayed up all night checking outside every time we heard a car drive by. I have never been so paranoid in my life.

Messed Up FavorsUnsplash, Zachary Nelson

45. A Crazy Turn Of Events

One of my best friends called me up one day and said, "Someone arranged a blind date, and I already said I would go, but I'm busy. Can you go for me? She never saw my face, so she won't notice". I, according to the bro code, said yes. I went on the date, the girl was really nice, and we had a good time. After dinner that night, we went to a park and just chatted for a while.

We were both a bit tipsy, and all of a sudden, she turned to me and said, "I have something to confess". To make a long story short, the same exact thing happened but the other way around. The girl my friend was supposed to meet was busy, so she asked her friend to go on the date. Now, my friend and the original girl who was supposed to be on the date were dating, and the girl who actually went on the date and I were dating too. It was an interesting turn of events.

Messed Up FavorsFlickr, Ben Schumin

46. Tentacle Engineering

A friend of mine knew that I was good with papier mache and soft, air-dry clay. She asked if I would help her sculpt something for a roleplay. I thought it was for D&D, so I agreed. When I arrived, I was shocked. She was entirely in the buff, on her kitchen floor, with tubs of clay, rolls, and rolls of wire, large tubs, plastic tubing, fiber optic cable, several tentacle vibrators, miscellaneous items I didn’t even recognize, and large amounts of liquid silicone.

There were four other people on the kitchen floor, working on various different things. I was given a brief description of what she wanted—an Arduino-controlled tentacle contraption for pleasure use. I was thinking, “No way”, but was curious to see if it would even work. So I grabbed some wire, started making the frames, and worked on the papier mache, which would be covered in air-dry clay.

The people with casting experience guided me through how smooth and thoroughly sanded everything needed to be because they were going to use my work as the basis for the mold. About three weeks later, they had finished casting and wiring all the tentacles. The motors couldn't handle moving such large and heavy tentacles, but the glowing effect was really cool.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

47. Under Lock And Key

My neighbor was putting her baby in her car when the baby must have hit the lock, locking them inside the car. The house and car keys were inside as well. It was a hot day, and the mom was panicking. So, it was either break into the house to get the spare keys, or smash a window of the car to get in. We decided to break into the house.

My dad and I found a tiny window open in the kitchen that was about seven feet off the ground, so I tried climbing through. I lost my balance and fell onto a drying board with plates, cutlery, and knives piled on it. Then, I fell onto the floor, followed by the stuff I had previously landed on toppling over me. I crawled to the front door and let my neighbor in. She was so happy that she didn't care about the kitchen. Luckily, I only had bruises and walked with a limp for a couple of days.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

48. Sowing The Seeds Of Love

When I was in high school and shortly thereafter, I worked at a Papa John's in a smaller town. Most of the crew there were long-timers like me, so we all became close. One of the said crew members was a lesbian whose life partner worked at the Taco Bell across the street, which I frequented a lot. So, they both knew me pretty well.

One day out of the blue, my coworker said they wanted to start a family. I told them that was great and wished them good luck. That’s when she told me something that blew me away. She told me that she and her partner had talked about it a lot and wanted to use my seed. I was taken aback but tried to remain composure so as not to hurt their feelings. So, I told her I needed to think about it.

I asked my mom and my friends for their advice, and they all laughed and said, “No, it's not like you're really friends with them”. So, I politely declined. Six months later, they split up because my coworker got knocked up the old-fashioned way by another coworker. They got married and raised their daughter together for a couple of years. I was glad I didn't fall into a small-town drama sinkhole and get stuck there.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

49. Over My Dead Body

I had a coworker ask me to help him bury a body. It turned out that his grandfather was to be buried on their farm, and I was the only guy he knew who could use a backhoe—but that’s not even the weirdest part. His grandfather wasn't even dead yet. Not only was the guy walking around and talking, but he also brought us out iced tea and Diet Coke while we dug his grave. He died about five days later.

Messed Up FavorsPicryl

50. Clueless

My friend had been dating this girl for a few months. He started thinking she was attracted to me. After he said that, I paid closer attention to her behavior when she was around me. It was indeed kind of flirty. He asked me to hit on her to see how she would respond. So, I flirted back here and there, and I could tell she really liked it. That’s when I came up with a devious plan.

One day when my friend was at work, I got all serious and asked her to come over and hang out. I told her, "I've really wanted to ask you something lately. Do you want to hang out at my place while my friend is at work tomorrow"? She eagerly accepted. I didn't actually meet up with her, but I reported it all back to my friend.

He was not a person who could stand drama, so he just broke it off with her. He said he didn't see their relationship going anywhere. Then, she tried calling and texting me. I just told her we had been friends a long time and it wouldn't be right. I don't think she had a clue about what actually happened.

Messed Up FavorsPexels

Sources: Reddit,


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