Phones are a blessing and a curse. Sure, the world is at our fingertips—but they can also get us into a lot of trouble. Take, for example, these phone moments gone horribly wrong. From disturbing, creepy calls to notifications that revealed dark secrets, these stories are enough to make us want to drop our phones in the toilet and then leave 'em there.
1. Machine Reading
I was riding in the car with a co-worker when my wife texted. I told Siri to read it. Huge mistake. My wife texted to yell at me about leaving dingleberries in the shower drain.
2. Beyond The Gyno Veil
Oh boy. My experience of this was the most harrowing thing I've been through. This was how I found out a girl I was dating had end-stage terminal cancer. She was on the phone with me as she walked into her “gynecology appointment”, then proceeded to put her phone in her purse, but I think she mis-tapped or something.
I listened to a 30-minute conversation that was to the effect of: “You have four months to live. There are no treatment options”. She'd been aware of it for three years but refused treatment because essential oils can cure any malady, am I right???
3. Thin Wall, Huge Separation
My fiancée at the time—three months from the wedding—used to use my laptop all the time for social media and stuff while she was watching TV. She comes to me one night and says she thinks stuff isn't working out and that we should talk about whether we should really continue. I'd not felt any problems that I didn't just dismiss as wedding planning/financial stress. So I explained that and she said she wanted to sleep in the spare room that night to think things through, to which I agreed.
I wasn't very happy with it at all, so I decided to go get my device and watch some YouTube before bed. She had her Facebook left open on my user account—completely normal. Then I see a notification from her ex-colleague.
She was live-sexting him with just a thin wall between us. I instantly knew I'd never forgive that, got dressed, quietly snuck away into my car and drove to my mum’s. She didn't even realize I knew for days. Didn't speak to her at all after that. All communication was through her own parents, who were devastated.
Getty Images
4. In What Reality
My boyfriend left his phone on the sofa while he excused himself to use the restroom. A text popped up, and I automatically looked. We had great respect for each other’s privacy, so, of course, I didn’t read it, but I did see the name. He came out of the bathroom, and I asked who “Jane” was. He had never mentioned her.
“My niece,” he answered. He came from a large family, and I couldn’t keep track of all of his nieces and nephews. We went back to the movie we were watching, and I never thought of it again. We had a wonderful relationship. The kind of love that’s made up to sell books and films. It was the most real thing in my life.
I had been twice divorced, and it was only with him that I learned what real love is. My own parents really didn’t love me. I wasn’t just happy with my life; I was ecstatic. Nothing else mattered because I was loved. It was five years of absolute bliss. I agreed to work late one day and was texting him during my break.
He told me our plans for the night, which were going to dinner with his best friend. He said he would tell him we’d be a bit late. I had to go back to work. I got home that night to find the best human being I had ever known was gone forever after trying to get into the shower. It was a massive heart attack, they said.
The only thing I remember is screaming and crying. It couldn’t end this way. He was far too young and healthy. It’s been almost two years later, and I am still in shock. Two days after he was gone, I got a message from “Jane.” Jane was the woman in his other life, as in he had two lives—another home, another woman, etc.
I still don’t understand how this was possible, but she had definite proof. Proof that she shoved in my face. She didn’t know about me either, so I felt bad for her. She was everything he couldn’t stand. I’ll never get over this. I’m just an empty shell now. I quickly stopped messaging with Jane as I could not take it.
All I remember about his infidelity is that text message. He’d never lied to me, so why wouldn’t I believe him? Now, I have no idea what was a lie and what was the truth. I thought losing him was as bad as it could get. Boy, was I wrong! What he did doesn’t make me love him any less even though sometimes I wish it did.
5. Earth To Dad
One time, back when my dad used to be a coach bus driver, he left his phone on after calling my sister. It was in his pocket while he was still on the job. The radio was on inside the bus and my sister, who was still listening on the other end of the call, could hear that it was playing our local station.
My dad often listened to this station and phoned in for quizzes and anecdotes. Then my dad heard something super strange. My sister had called up the station and managed to get the radio host to make a live air announcement to tell my dad to turn off his phone.
6. Over-Staying Their Welcome?
My in-laws are EXTREMELY religious, and we just got them their first iPhone—the first smartphone they’ve ever had. In the middle of me showing her parents how WeatherBug works—we were outside, wife was not—she texted me a spread eagle shot of herself from the bedroom with the words "I can’t wait for them to leave so I can literally go to town on you in bed". Let’s just say things got very awkward.
It may have been small as heck on the banner, but they were both wearing their glasses and paying very close attention. Nevertheless, not a single word was said about it and they left 15 minutes later.
Getty Images
7. Demon Slayer
I'm a dispatcher. got a call from a gentleman reporting an issue with his toilet. For whatever reason, it was a bit hard for me to understand exactly what the problem was, except that it definitely involved his toilet. After a little while, I determined to the best of my ability that the toilet was overflowing and he didn't know what to do.
Although plumbing issues are absolutely not an appropriate reason for calling an emergency number, it wasn't unheard of. To a certain extent, I can understand the thought process and people have certainly called it for less. After a bit more talking, however, I realized that he had not called about a plumbing issue. It wasn't water that was coming out of his toilet, but demons.
The demons were spilling out of his toilet and he needed help. I put in a complaint for law enforcement and kept him on the phone. It was a busy evening and the officers wouldn't be able to get to him for a few minutes, so I asked if he could close the toilet lid. He said he could and he did. I asked him if this stopped the demons from coming out of his toilet and he told me it did. This made him calmer and I was able to release the call.
8. Missing No Detail
I was heading to my school’s office of career services to have my resume reviewed. I got a couple of texts from a guy vividly describing what he wanted to do with me, but I didn’t open my messages since I was thinking about the meeting. I used my laptop to show my resume. The career services woman started reading it over.
She was giving me some feedback, and the notifications I didn’t clear on my phone from the texts all popped up on my screen. The notifications were there for a couple of seconds and she definitely saw them. As my face burned and I turned bright red, she just primly said, “Now those aren’t the “skills” we’d list on your resume, now are they?” Not only was I mortified, but this middle-aged lady also had to go and roast me too. It was the most excruciating hour of my life.
9. Time Is Money
A patient called and left a voicemail for a refill on his prescription. He thought he hung up, but he didn’t. Instead, he proceeded to negotiate a price with someone for the refill he had just requested.
10. Nothing to Hide
Oh boy, I have one and it is famous at my company now. I was the one to see the notification.
I teach English in China and two years ago I arrived at my first job about a month late thanks to visa issues. I survive the first two days OK and now it’s Friday and I get invited to a co-worker’s apartment to hang out, have a beer and meet some other expats. There's just a handful of us chatting and drinking casually.
Sometime later people have walked off or called it a night and it’s just me, a guy and a girl sitting on a couch. The guy shows me his phone, he wants to show me this mobile game that's very popular here in China. As he's doing this, a message pops up. It reads:
"I want your body in my mouth right now." It’s from the other girl in the room.
Me and the guy make brief eye contact immediately and then I look at her. She goes beet red and leaves the room. I'm then informed that I am the second person other than them in the company to know that the two of them are an item. She wasn't a shy girl at all and we now frequently make reference to this event.
And here’s a bonus happy ending: Mr. Body and Ms. Mouth are getting married this summer too!
11. Cheating Thievery
I was borrowing my boyfriend's computer to send him some pictures from his computer to his phone. In the upper corner, it was non-stop messaging from girls. I clicked on one, and she sent pictures. I found out he was sending money to women. My money. Several hundred dollars.
12. Honesty Is The Best Policy
I once worked as a secretary in an office that for some reason got pocket-dialed a lot. During one such occasion, I got to listen in while some gentleman from New York absolutely roasted one of his employees. The employee said, “Well what the heck do you expect me to do"? The boss's response was legendary. "Honestly, Tom, honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm sleeping with your sister, you would be out of here right now”.
13. I Hope You Were Taking Notes
It wasn't me, but my professor used to have his laptop hooked up to the projector up in front of the class. While he was going through a presentation one day, a text popped up on his screen from a woman and all it said was "I have herpes.” He stopped connecting his laptop to the projector after that.
14. Surprise Features
I moved to Japan a few years ago, and early one day, I was at a market and saw a tanuki statue with its junk on display. I took a picture and thought it’d be funny to send my brother a message reading "UNSOLICITED DICK PIC!" then send it. Halfway around the world, my brother was doing some late evening car shopping.
He’d recently been in an accident and totaled his car so was in the market for a new one. He’d handed the salesman his phone so he could see pictures of the damage, and the guy was looking through them when the words "UNSOLICITED DICK PIC!" showed on the screen. The guy nearly dropped the phone trying to shove it back.
15. Think Of The Children
I once went to a friend's house to borrow her phallus-shaped cake pans for a bachelorette party. We sat there for a few minutes talking about them. She had two different sized pans, so there were some jokes told…then I noticed the most mortifying thing. I was sitting on my phone and had pocket-dialed the Child Welfare Provincial Emergency line.
It was on speed dial because I worked for a Children’s Aid Society at the time. It was so awkward.
16. Bad Timing
My best friend in high school was in the process of being grounded and having his phone taken away, and as he was handing over his phone to his mom he got a text from me that said "Hey, I found your mom's bedroom toy" accompanied with a picture of a medieval battering ram. He told me that they both saw it right as the transaction was taking place, then held each other’s gaze silently for what he described as an eternity.
Getty Images
17. Learning Bad News
One day in high school, my history teacher brought her 4-year-old daughter on one of the last days of school when we were doing practically nothing. The teacher handed her daughter her iPad so she could play, and a few other students and I were talking to and playing with the daughter and showing her games on the iPad.
My teacher must have had her iMessage set up on the iPad and forgot because it kept getting texts from her husband such as, "She's just a friend," and, "Well maybe we need to finally go through with it and end this once and for all." I had to turn on do not disturb.
18. Troubleshooting
I work with a guy who used to work at an IT helpdesk. He made a habit of muting himself and very aggressively cussing out whoever it was he was on the phone with, then unmuting himself and acting as if nothing happened. I knew at some point he was going to miss that mute button. One day I’m on a conference call with him, another company, and another individual at the director level within our company for some troubleshooting.
After a bit, we decided to call it a day and reconvene in the morning. Suddenly, we heard him unleash a string of loud expletives followed by silence. The director said, “Excuse me”? After a brief second he dropped off the call and we apologized on his behalf. But it didn't end there. He came in the next morning with an immaculate story about how he spilled hot coffee on his leg and had to drop his pants outside his car.
He showed everybody in the office this massive burn mark on his leg. The interesting thing is that he had been on this call with us for about four hours, away from his home, and in his car this whole time with no access to a fresh pot of coffee. If there was coffee in his possession, it was very likely cold by this point. My guess is he realized he had messed up, so he went home and staged an injury to avoid persecution, but we’ll never know.
19. The Elephant In The Room
An old woman called, extremely confused, because she said that there was an elephant in her back garden. I question her but she is insistent that there is a fully grown elephant in her garden. She’s frightened—probably because she thinks there is a giant elephant in her back garden. The immediate assumption is that this woman may have dementia.
An officer is sent to do a welfare check on the poor woman. When he got to her house, she let him inside and took him through to the kitchen to look out into her garden and, yep, there was an elephant, and it was eating her plants. The officer called for backup. Turns out there was a circus relatively nearby and the elephant had escaped overnight.
20. Just Like The French
I had this roommate in my sophomore year of college, and we had a very weird, close personal relationship. I was in my Spanish professor’s office hours, and she was waiting for me at the cafeteria to have lunch together. Just before going in, I texted her and asked her to get me some fries, and then I turned off my phone.
I was showing my professor my paper on my laptop forgetting that I had iMessage on my laptop. A message from her came in, and I’ll never forget the look on his face: “I’ll get you fries but only if you sensually feed them to me while you call me daddy,” That was my last time visiting his office hours!
21. Of Angels and Demons
I had a job where I was in the position to write-off a substantial phone bill because the customer said her mother was dying overseas. She said her mother had dementia and needed to hear things in her daughter’s voice to believe anything, including the doctor’s instructions. She was heartbroken and sobbing about how if she had the kind of money to pay this phone bill, then she would have just gone back to her country because the flight would have cost less.
She was right about that. I wrote-off the entirety of the phone bill. She cried like a jilted lover in a rom-com and went on and on about how people like me are angels sent from heaven. After we were done I wished her a good evening and she obviously thought the call had ended. She turned to someone and said in a perfectly normal voice, “Well, that worked”!
22. So That’s What You Really Think Of Me, Huh?
I was with a group of friends and this person gave me their number. I often save people's names with a detail that reminds me of who they are—such as James From Chicago, for example. So this person was talking nonstop about their yacht when I met them. So I wrote something like "Gary Hasayacht" as their name in my contacts. Anyway, he sent me a text but it didn't go to my phone for a while because we had a bad signal. Then it popped up when my phone was in clear view right in front of me.
He sees the text, and his name as its listed on my phone, and then goes “You know, it's really not that big of a yacht”...I wanted to sink into the floor, he definitely thought I was hitting on him and/or a gold digger.
23. Guest Again
My sister-in-law was staying with me for a week, which I didn’t really want. My sister knew about it and messaged me, “How are you dealing with (her name)? Do you need to pretend to have a nap again lol?” My sister-in-law was using my tablet at that time and saw the notification pop up. She hasn’t stayed with us since.
24. Silent As A Fish
My daughter's school had an author come on a Zoom call to do a reading of a book called The Pout-Pout Fish. The school wanted to get the kids in on the reading, so the teachers set it up so that the kids would join in towards the end. They rehearsed it as such: “Okay, everyone, on the count of three, we'll say ‘blub blub blub’” and proceeded to read the book.
When they got to the part where they wanted the kids to join in it went something like this: “Okay, everyone, on the count of three. One...two..." and whoever was in charge of the meeting unmuted 300 children at once at the count of two. It was chaos. Imagine 300 children screaming “BAAAAHHHAAA BLUUUUBB AAAAAAAAHHHHHH SKKKKRREEEEEE FFFIIIISSSHHHHHH BBLLLUUUUUUBBBB” until they immediately muted everyone again.
25. Perfect Date
One day, I met a guy from Tinder in a pub for our first date. Things were going well. We were having a laugh and flirting. After about an hour, I took out my phone to show him a funny meme and up popped a notification from my new period tracking app saying, "Today's the day! You're ovulating!" I swiped it away quickly.
I don’t think he got a good look at it, but I was still worried he'd think I was some child-obsessed weirdo who timed my dates so random Tinder guys could impregnate me. I turned off ovulation notifications after that.
26. Kiss And Tell
I accidentally pocket-dialed someone and left about a two-and-a-half-minute voicemail of my son and me badly singing “Kiss” by Prince. But I had made an even more fatal error. See, the person I called was a DJ, who then turned it into a five-minute song mix. It was given to someone I worked with and eventually it made the rounds.
27. A Bit Of A Mess
A Hangouts notification popped up on the screen while the new boss was standing behind me to train me on a new program. The message from my husband asked, "How's the Pooper?" I was so focused on the task that she saw it before me and collapsed to the floor uncontrollably laughing. I read it and immediately lost it too.
In tears from laughing, we were frantically talking over each other. She was trying to apologize for the unprofessional reaction, and I was trying to explain that Pooper was our dog's nickname because he was getting over a bout of diarrhea! The rest of the office was so confused!
28. Fluent Sarcasm
A couple of decades ago I was at a meeting with a few BizDev guys from a Japanese company we collaborated with. At the end of one of the design sessions, one of them said something to the others in Japanese and one of our artists who looked the part of a large, late-90s rapper responded in fluent Japanese. The meeting stopped, they stared, then asked for a few minutes alone.
Apparently, the exchange was: "I hate working with these guys, why do we continue this"? Trev, the rapper, said, "Of course you do. I mean, just look at us" or something to that effect. Ahh, memories.
29. Generational Problems
I was showing my grandma pictures. She chuckled and quickly gave me back the phone. I saw that my husband had texted me, and my stomach dropped: It said, "I hate it when I'm pooping and my junk touches the water. Big junk problems." We laughed, but my husband is still horrified by the thought of my grandma knowing about his "big junk problems."
30. How To Lose 150 Pounds In One Day
In the early days of Facebook, my former father-in-law was just starting to discover it and connect with old friends. He was having fun seeing who gained weight, who got divorced, who’s a millionaire now, and so on. One guy he connected with gave him his phone number, so my father-in-law called him. The guy didn’t answer, so he left a message.
He said something like, “Hey Bill, it’s been a while. Just wanted to catch up. Give me a call back”, then he hit the end button and jokingly adds, “and I heard you got fat”! He looked down and to his horror the call was still active and recording the message. It probably sounded like, “….and I heard you got fat!….oh no! Oh my God, it didn’t hang up. Oh no, it’s still recor….click”.
To my knowledge, Bill never returned that call.
31. Want You Back
A notification from a story app I play popped up while my boyfriend was holding my phone and said something like, "Mike misses you! Come back and play!" or something like that. Of course, all he did was pull the drop-down menu down to see the full notification and laugh. He teased me about it for hours.
32. Budding Bromance
A few years ago a guy was on the phone with my boss while we were in his work truck. He had the speakers on and I could hear everything. The guy goes to sign off and out of habit from talking to his kids he said, “Okay, love you. Bye”. But this is what made the moment perfect: My boss didn’t skip a beat and replied, “Love you, too, brother. Bye”.
33. Get The Picture
I was working at an Apple store as a Genius and was helping an older woman with her phone. This woman had to be in her late 60s early 70s, as sweet as could be, and was having some minor problems with her phone. So, she handed me her phone and just as she did, a message popped up with a picture of a toilet full of poo.
The message read, “How many times do I have to tell you to flush the stupid toilet?!” Not knowing really sure what to do, I gave it back and told her she had a message. She took the phone, half smiled, closed the message, and handed it back telling me, “Sorry about that, sweetheart, my daughter can be a bit of a jerk.”
34. Karen Mode Enabled
I once got a call from one of my three least favorite patients at a dental office. Her tone was always accusatory, even when she was calling to ask if we were open that day. After we hung up, I saw her call again on the caller ID.
I couldn’t pick up because I was now talking to another patient in person. Then I noticed line one (her line) is on for a long time…like she’s leaving a...five-minute message? I check my voicemail and indeed, I have a long message of her walking around a grocery store with her daughter.
She had pocket-dialed me. I listened to the whole thing. She was trash-talking our office, but the thing is she kept outlining how we went above and beyond: “Oh, they think the problem is resolved just because they called me back three times and I didn’t answer after I didn’t text them back”.
It was clear we were giving a ton of effort to this patient and she was unhappy anyway. She thought it made us look bad. About a year, later she finally transferred to another dentist. They asked for records and I sent X-rays and such. Eventually, she filed a complaint against that dentist.
I don’t know why. Anyway, we were asked to provide our records to the state board. When that happens you dig up everything you possibly can or it can look like you’re hiding something. I knew just what to do. Luckily, I had saved that voicemail, included it in an mp3, and sent it down on a thumb drive with everything else.
I don’t know if they even listened to this woman needlessly complaining about excellent service, but I do know her complaint was dropped by the state board.
35. Please Don’t Fill ‘Er Up
I had a lady call who was sobbing so hard I could barely understand her. I determined it wasn't a medical issue, but she wasn't making much sense through the sobbing. I finally got her to calm down a little so that she could relay what the issue was. She said that she was at a full-serve gas station (I didn't even know those existed anymore).
She told me that the attendant had pumped too much gas into her car, but she had only asked for $20 and they had filled her tank. Then she broke down sobbing again. I asked her if the attendant was being rude or if they were threatening her (because I still couldn't figure out what the crying was all about). She said, "No, the attendant apologized and they gave me a receipt for the gas."
“OK,” I said, “Then what is the issue?” She burst into tears again and said that she was afraid they would chase her down if she tried to leave and say that she had stolen the gas. I went over what the attendant said to her again, and that clearly the attendant acknowledged that it was a mistake, so she was free to leave.
She was still sobbing when I said I had to let her go because this was not a matter for us. The very next call I got came in on the non-emergency line and it's the attendant from the gas station. She's super worried about the lady having the meltdown over getting at least $20 in free gas. The attendant was pretty sure that the lady wasn’t fit to drive due to all of the tears.
The attendant was just as baffled as I was over the lady's reaction to free gas.
36. The Call Is Coming From Inside The House
I was invited to my friend's house for a girls night. My friend has a kid and when I arrived it was already past his bedtime, so I decided not to ring the doorbell but to call my friend on her mobile and ask her to let me in. I dial and then...nothing.
I wait and wait for the call to go through, but nothing happens. Okay, then. I hang up and try to get my friend's attention by gently knocking. It works, she lets me in, and we begin drinking. Shortly after, my friend gets a voicemail and listens to it. She goes pale, swears, and plays it for all of us.
It's some pretty loud heavy breathing. The sound of someone getting it on, basically. Gross. We're all pretty freaked out, wondering who would do something like that, and if they called her phone on purpose or if it was just some random dialing a random number.
After much discussion, she decides to use the "call this number back" option, and as she is too spooked to talk to whoever might be on the other end, I bravely volunteer, prepared to cuss out some pervert for messing with my friend. You can guess where this is going.
She hands me the phone, having already dialed. Everyone is waiting with bated breath and my heart is beating like crazy. It rings, rings…And my own phone on the table starts ringing! Turns out that when I was waiting in front of the door, completely out of breath after having biked there for 30 minutes and then climbed four flights of stairs, the call did in fact go through to her voicemail.
My heavy breathing sounds remarkably like getting it on.
37. Can I Take A Message?
I was using my roommate's desktop Mac, and any notification you get on your iPhone will appear on-screen on all of your other Apple devices. I was on the computer in his bedroom while he was in the kitchen getting a snack, and he received a phone call from an unknown number. I saw the notification pop up on his screen.
I had an option to answer the call for him. I thought it would be funny if I took the call before he could answer it on his phone meaning he would have to run through to his bedroom where I would be silently laughing myself to an early grave. I clicked to answer expecting it to be some kind of cold-call, but it wasn’t.
That voice on the other end, amplified by my roommate's gratuitous speaker setup, went, “Hello. This is official business.” My soul then left my body. I absolutely cannonballed out of his room making the most apologetic eye-contact I have ever made with a human being. He’d been caught in a “traffic incident” while out.
They got his contact details from the dashcam footage of his registration plate. They were calling him in for some questioning. It was a wonderfully devious experience, for which I was absolutely not prepared, and we have never spoken of it since.
38. That’s Wassup
When I was a college exchange student in Germany I asked my mom to call my home university's housing department on my behalf to inquire about my assigned dorm room for the next school year. You couldn't book online back then and their telephone hold times were legendarily long. To call the university from Germany was way too expensive, so my mom called on my behalf.
She explained that I was abroad on exchange, but when the lady put her on hold to check on my assignment, she didn't mute the phone. My mom heard, “This lady is calling for her daughter. When are these parents going to make these kids grow up and manage their own lives"?
She then returned and told my mom that I didn't get my first or second building request, completely unaware that my mom had heard her. Guess who got their first building and room pick upon return?
39. Friends Are A Blessing
In high school, my friends and I started this thing where we gave each other funny contact names in our phones based on inside jokes. My high school friends’ contact names are things such as Baby America, Sugar Mama, and even weirder names. When we were juniors, there was a girl who was obsessed with a friend.
This led to me changing his contact name to “Booty Lord” with some rather suggestive emojis following it. Everything was fine and dandy until a few months later, when I had forgotten about it. I was applying for a leadership position in a club where I was a member and was required to have two letters of recommendation.
For the second letter, I asked one of my teachers, who was a very conservative man in his late 70s, if he could write one for me. Being a lazy man, he told me to write the letter myself with all the things I wanted him to say in it. Then he’d sign. After I finished writing it, I handed him my phone to let him read it.
I needed him to approve it before I printed it out. About 45 seconds after I gave him my phone, he, very loudly and incredulously, said, “Booty Lord?” and gave me a horrified look and shoved the phone back into my hands. That was hard to explain.
40. A Creature Of Habit
During one of my cold calls at a call center, I was speaking to a seemingly very sweet if not a little sad-sounding old lady. She very politely told me something like, "No, I don't think so, it's just not a good time". We said our goodbyes, but as I'm navigating my software to hang up I realize she was still on the phone. Then it got really creepy.
I hear her walk a few paces, presumably to a sink where the faucet starts to run, and then she begins talking to herself. She repeats only that one phrase on a loop as if she's rehearsing it: "No I don't think so, it's just not a good time". She said it over and over in the same cadence and tone, for roughly two minutes before the creepiness got the better of my curiosity.
41. Sorry, Mom
My roommate’s mom visited and we decided to go to lunch. While waiting, my roomie took out her iPad. We started playing Sorry. She didn't think of how all her devices were linked because a, "u wanna bang," text notification came on her screen. That was mortifying enough—but what came next was so much worse: A thumbnail of the dude’s junk. Sorry indeed.
42. Let Them Eat Cake
I work in a hospital and last week the operator was having a conversation with someone at 3:00 am. She did not realize it was broadcast over the entire hospital PA system. The conversation went like this: “I can’t believe they gave those nurses stupid cupcakes for nurses week. They should have gotten a bonus instead”.
I just about peed my pants laughing, but you know what? That lady was spot on.
43. Picture Perfect Parenting
My father-and-law and I were looking at pictures on my phone. My wife texted me, and the banner on the top of the screen read, "I've been a bad girl. I need a spanking…or maybe just a hard pounding?" Dude looked at me. I answered, "What kind of daughter did you raise?" He did not laugh as hard as I think he should have.
44. Beyond Tasteless
One time I got a call from some lady at a call center, and from her voice you could tell she was a hefty type of gal —she was the heavy breathing type. Anyway, the call ended but I didn’t press end since I assumed they would. They didn’t. I could hear this lady talking to her coworkers about fried liver and onions.
The way she talked and gushed over it made it sound so lewd. It was disgusting. She said she has it at least once a day as her meal. She even made slurping sounds followed by some type of moaning. I’ve never felt so disgusted in my life listening to someone describe food.
45. Medieval Punishments
My best friend in high school was being grounded and having his phone taken away, and as he was giving his phone over, I sent him a text that said, "Hey I found your mom's toy," with a picture of a medieval battering ram. He said they both saw it and held each other’s gaze silently for what he described as an eternity.
46. She Who Shall Not Be Named
My grandfather was once on the phone with his mother while his mother's sister was sitting beside her. When his mother went to hang up she said, “Love you, bye” as normal, but she forgot to hang up. It went from normal to tragic in an instant. The sister said, “You don’t really love him do you”?
To which his mother said, “No, not at all". Unfortunately, she outlived all her kids, but she passed on last year and I still refuse to call her my great-grandmother.
47. Did You Want Something?
My boyfriend has a friend that I have always suspected is in love with him. Once, she was showing me something on her phone, and a text from her mom popped up saying, “I still don’t understand why you can’t get with [bf’s name].” We pretended it didn’t happen.
48. The Math Ain’t Mathing
On my 21st birthday, I stupidly drank myself into oblivion. At the end of the night, I staggered over to the skytrain where there was this glorious 10-foot-tall stone abacus. Naturally, one's first instinct while under the influence is to play with an object of such wonder. It absolutely crushed my hand and broke through my fingernail.
But do I need a doctor? No way! I sauntered onto the train and proceeded to bleed profusely. A stranger handed me a glove to wrap around the wound and the rest of the night was a blur. Apparently, I had pocket-dialed my significant other when I sat on the train and he could hear people trying to offer me help while I screamed, "Don't trust the abacus! Screw the Abacus"!
Apparently, this went on for a long time before I started telling people that I injured my hand in the war. The moral of the story? You can't trust the abacus.
49. Scary Teenagers
One of my classes in high school had a group chat to talk about homework and stuff, and when the nickname function got introduced, a lot of people ended up with exactly the type of nicknames you would expect from high schoolers. I was showing my dad a picture or something when the messenger bubble popped on the screen.
It said, "hxrny hardtick sent a message." My dad just like, awkwardly coughed and then stood up and walked away before I could explain. He never brought it up again, and I never got in trouble for it, so it could have been worse. I'm sure my dad was mildly traumatized seeing that on his teenage daughter's phone though.
50. The Way Of The Dododo
One time when I was using voip software on my work computer I was leaving a message for a client about data conversion services. After I left the message I thought I had hung up and I started singing the Jim Henson song, “Mana Mana Doo Doo Dododo”. Then noticed I was still on the call, so I hung up. I thought it was the end...it wasn't.
The next morning I come in to check the conversion voicemails. There was a very clear and professional message left by the client. He left his contact number and said to have a nice day followed by a short pause. Then he starts to sing the same song from the first message, picking up where I had left off when I realized I was still being recorded by the voicemail.
It was hilarious and made my day.
51. Not Another Child Bride
It was one of my first calls. I had a young girl call to say that she was about to run away because she was being encouraged into an arranged marriage and she felt she couldn't say no to her family. She asked that when she runs away we don't look for her, no matter who calls up to say that she's missing. It stumped me.
No matter how much training you go through or role-plays you enact, you can never be fully prepared for what may come in and this was a scenario I hadn't even thought about before. I managed to calm the girl down and go over the differences between an arranged marriage and a forced marriage. I explained to her that forced marriage was not allowed and had protections available.
Not to mention, everyone should have the right to choose who to marry, and when or if they want to marry. I had to explain that we couldn’t ignore a report of a missing person if it came in, and then made her aware of the various supports available to her, and the charities that specialize in these circumstances so that she didn't feel she had to go through this alone. I haven't been able to shake that feeling since.
52. Pulling Double Duty
I got a voicemail from my nana asking me to return a glass dessert dish she had brought over for dinner one night. The voicemail she left was over three minutes long, which I found intriguing for such a simple request. As she “hung up” she must have set the phone down and soon after asked my papa to come sit next to her on the couch.
He replied, "I probably shouldn’t because I'm about to rip a nasty one". My nana then shared with him that she had to clean the couch only a few days before because, and I quote, he “left a skidmark on the couch”. She goes on to tell him he needs to wear pants on the couch, and he says he does, causing her to plead that he wears two pairs next time.
My girlfriend and I practically skid marked my car seats laughing so hard while listening to it. I saved it. I cherish it. It will be with me long after they’re gone to remind me of them, as outlandish and sick as it may seem.
53. Poor Delivery
I was showing my brother something on Amazon and got a text from a guy I was talking to at the moment saying, "Let me put ranch on them lips pretty mama." My brother just looked at me and walked away.
54. Unfinished Business
Back when I was in the army I got the chance to call my girlfriend and I took it. It was a nice call. She told me what she'd been up to and all that. We made plans for some leave that I would be getting soon, said goodbye, and then she hung up.
I still had a few minutes and I was just sitting there holding the phone so that the next guy wouldn't hassle me for it. The next moment made me want to die. This is what I hear from her line. Male Voice: "So when's he coming back"? Ex-Girlfriend: "Not for a couple of weeks, we have plenty of time".
Male Voice: "You're going to breakup with him before that, right"? Ex-Girlfriend: "Of course"! I hung up and felt terrible, then I ghosted her when I went on leave. Later I found out she'd been seeing the other guy for a while.
I didn't see her for years and years until one day I was taking my kid to get pizza at a place in a strip mall and there she was, standing next to an SUV, staring at me like she'd seen a ghost. I waved, went inside, and that was it.
55. In The Wrong
I was waiting for a job interview, and the interviewer was late. Being nervous for it already, I was texting my friend every detail, which included the interviewer's lack of timeliness. He showed up. I was showing him my phone, and my friend messaged me saying how unprofessional it was to be late. I didn’t get the job.
56. A Slow Burn Romance
My uncle, who is a carpenter by trade, remarried this lady and she turned out to be really entitled. Her mother was living with them in a brand new house that my uncle had just built himself. One day the mother called my uncle while he was at work and said that a log had rolled out of the fireplace.
He told her to either put it back in the fireplace or put it out. Apparently, this was too difficult of a task because she left a series of voicemails describing the continually burning log. It got so out of control. By the time he got back home the house was completely burnt down. I mean total rubble.
To explain how ridiculous this is, the log rolled out onto a hardwood floor and the voicemails spanned like a 20-minute period. I never got to see that house. My uncle soon divorced that lady and she ran off with a good chunk of his bank account.
57. Online Greeting
I was at work giving a presentation. My laptop was projecting on the big screen. I had neglected to turn off the Dropbox app notifications. My friend, with whom I shared a folder, uploaded a file to it. The message box popped up, “The file ‘Hey, Bum Head.wav’ has been uploaded to your Dropbox.”
58. In Praise Of Silence
I called a tech support number for a work-related issue. The tech support guy was clearly at home and I could hear a dog whining in the background. He got my error code straightened out and we both said bye, but before I could hang up my phone I heard, "Who's a good boy! Are you a good boy"?
I said quietly, "I am". I heard laughing and he said, "I am sooo sorry"! and then hung up. I was disappointed. I wanted to hear his puppy...
59. Scanner’s Regret
My best friend and I were out eating. I went to pay while she went to poop when we finished. I had a coupon on my phone. So, right when I handed the lady the phone to scan the coupon, my friend texted me to describe the poop she was taking. The poor lady just handed me my phone really fast and didn't say anything else.
60. Elective Amnesia
Oh, God. The horrible memories. I put my call on mute/video off as I was only needing to listen. In a hurry, I decided to bring my phone in the shower to listen while I was getting ready for another meeting. Well, the ringcentral app was buggy and it was all on. I was clued in when I heard someone say, “Do I hear like shower water running”?
A coworker kindly disconnected me. But that wasn't the worst part. I talked to her later and she confirmed…everyone could see my chest. I was vomitously embarrassed.
61. Acting Differently
In high school, there was a couple who had recently started dating, John and Sarah. They were both seen as quite innocent—but we were so wrong. We were all in theater together. I was at a rehearsal at John's house, and he was showing me his phone. Right as I looked, a text popped up from Sarah saying, "I want you to do me from behind."
I was a bit in shock and started laughing uncomfortably, and when John took his phone back, he was horrified. Personally, I just thought it was hilarious and definitely a pivotal moment with that group of theater kids.
62. Bored Silly
I sat in on a remote interview in which we were in the conference room with two screens, one showing the interviewee and the other showing us. Nearing the end of the interview I noticed my boss had seemed to develop an unusual neck spasm.
He would face the screen, suddenly look to the side, then face the screen again. At the end of the interview, as the candidate was exchanging thank yous, etc, I leaned over and asked if my boss was okay. His answer was just loud enough to be picked up by the microphone: "If you twist fast enough you can see your own ear"!
Needless to say, the job offer was not accepted, but the memory makes me smile.
63. A Too Close Call
I was waiting for a speaker to finish for my turn to address a group of 100 or so employees in a small auditorium. After her presentation, the speaker hurriedly left the stage and the auditorium without passing me her lapel microphone. It wasn’t a big deal because my voice really projects. Less than a minute into my presentation, we hear it.
An extremely loud poop broadcast over the PA System followed by a huge sigh of relief and the speaker’s voice as she remarked to herself, “That was close”. After listening to the toilet flush three times—each flush making me cringe—we eventually saw her come back into the room and calmly take her seat, hot microphone still on her lapel.
64. Swatter No Swatting
Back when I still worked in an emergency center, I got a call that was pretty obviously a swatting attempt (where you prank send officers to an address). They described a horrible situation a few feet away from them, but it was silent in the background, they were using a normal tone of voice, and the phone location was not showing remotely near the area they described.
I started two calls with one located where they claimed it was, just in case it was true. I started another call where their phone actually located them, so we were covered in case of real issues, but still actually investigating what was likely happening. Anyway, they said they had to hang up because it was not safe to stay on the phone.
Then I heard pocket rustling sounds and the same person talking in the background. They were laughing and going on about how "that brat Anna is gonna get what she deserves when them 'Poh-leece' show up and point them pieces at her". It was clearly not meant to be heard by me. But karma was about to get them.
Law enforcement found them pretty quickly because the area they had actually called from had a very low-density population. Hearing them panic when they saw the flashing red lights outside of their house was a special kind of fun.
65. Like A Canary
I was the director of an a cappella group. During auditions, I projected sheet music from my tablet. After one girl finished her audition, the assistant director texted me from across the room, “Oh, that was awful.” My tablet received the message, and everyone saw the notification...including the girl who’d just auditioned.
66. Bless Your Heart
I’m from the Deep South and have an obvious accent. I called one of our New York City suppliers and while I supposedly was on hold I heard one of the salespeople mocking my accent with various insults and uproarious laughter. As soon as she came back on line, I purred in my most Southern drawl, “Y’all are fired” and hung up.
My boss agreed and that company lost a valuable contract. Don’t bite or mock the hand that feeds you.
67. Jurassic Mistake
I was dating a girl who would lose her phone, and she would borrow mine to make calls. Another friend who is a girl texted me a picture of her in her dinosaur Halloween costume. Her reaction was, in a word, nuts. The girl came back to me, slapped me in the face, threw my phone at me yelling, "What kind of sick stuff are you into?!" Then she stormed off.
This was at my work where I’m a bartender in the middle of a busy night. Everyone in the restaurant looked at me like I diddle kids or something.
68. A Good Mind Boggling
Years ago I worked at a cold-calling call center and I had a customer who was kind of panting and trying to sound normal at the same time. As soon as the conversation ended, it became all too clear to me what was going on. He obviously thought he hung up because he started to talk dirty to his partner, complete with full-on sounds.
They just continued on with whatever they were doing before answering the phone. What boggles my mind is the fact that he answered the phone to begin with.
69. The Pint Of No Return
My father-in-law was an independent truck driver whose office was inside his home. One night my husband and I were staying there when he got back from a long haul. He went to the bar before going home to wind down, called my mother-in-law, and spoke to her on speakerphone while she was cooking.
After they “hung up” we hear, “Well that’s done. Okay, people, I have $1,000 in my pocket! Drinks are on me”! We all froze. My mother-in-law then slowly put down the spatula, walked into the office, and grabbed the work phone. Meanwhile, my father-in-law is just steady running his mouth.
She called the bar and asked for him. We hear a muffled “your wife is on the phone”. She then very calmly said, “There had better be $950 in your pocket when you get home or don’t come home”. She finished with “and hang up your phone”.
Then she hung up and busted out laughing so hard she was crying. I assume he came home with the money since we didn’t hear them arguing when he got back. My mother-in-law was great. She was just as calm as could be through the whole thing, then lost her mind as soon as she hung up. Man, I miss her. Rest in peace, Mom.
70. Girl In Progress
I have a friend that is awesome to hang out with, but she can be super flakey. Her brother was dating another friend of ours and they lived in Thailand together. The mutual friend was back home for a bit and was heading back to Thailand the next morning, so we met up with a few other friends.
The flakey friend said she would be there, but surprise! she flaked. When I called to see if we could get a hold of her, it went to voicemail and I thought I hung up. Here's where I made my big mistake. Instead, she got a voicemail from an exasperated me saying, “She always does this. I don’t think she shows up more than a third of the time we make plans”.
She confided in me a year later that she’d got it, but thanked me because she said she hadn’t realized how bad she’d been about keeping plans. The voicemail had her reflecting. After that, she started making a point of keeping plans. She even said it helped improve her depression. I was so embarrassed, but I’m glad there was a happy ending.
71. Mea Culpa
Once when I was playing Destiny and I got a call from my mom. I picked up the call without realizing it while I was talking about “how obnoxious this woman can be”. Her reaction broke my heart. When I put the phone closer to my ear I could only hear her in a shy voice say, “Oh, I'm sorry. I wanted to know how your day was”.
I don't know why, but it hit me harder than it should and the tears came up. I'm sorry, mom.
72. There, There
I overheard my boss talking to his daughter after I gave him my notice of resignation: “He said his biggest regret was losing me as his manager”. He was an average manager at best and I never really commented on his management skills one way or the other.
73. Seen It
My boyfriend and I met through a mutual friend who happened to be my FWB. When my boyfriend and I got together, my FWB and I stopped sleeping with each other. We all stayed friends. They were both in the car, and I didn’t know. I was teasing my boyfriend with pictures and videos. He said he saw the notification pop up.
He had my ex FWB open it since he was busy driving. They quickly realized it was a video of me for my boyfriend, and my ex FWB shut it off. It was super awkward, and I didn't know until the next day.
74. Coming Soon To A Pocket Near You
My parents are divorced and remarried. When I was 17 I lived with my mom and would see my dad on the weekends. I knew that my dad and stepmom were possibly trying to have kids, but they hadn’t really said much to me about it. Then one, day I got an accidental pocket-dial from my dad while they were breaking the pregnancy news to my stepmom’s parents.
I answered and I could hear my step-grandmother saying, “Congratulations, we’re so happy for you both”. I listened for a couple of minutes and was able to put together what the congratulations were about. My dad and stepmom told me about the pregnancy the next time I saw them and I acted surprised.
I didn’t want to ruin it for them. I didn’t tell them until years later that I had found out about my future brother from inside my dad’s pocket.
75. One McBummer, Please
I was ordering food at McDonald's and I showed a coupon on my phone to the employee. In the same moment, my girlfriend texted me, "I'm breaking up with you."
76. Kind Of A Pig Deal
I once had a guy who worked in the construction industry join a morning conference call with a client from a portable toilet. But there was a really crucial thing he didn't count on. He didn’t realize his phone’s front-facing camera was on, and he stood up from taking a dump only to accidentally show his hog to about 20 or so people.
77. A Grandmother’s Devotion
An older lady, I want to say maybe in her early 70s, calls in with a sort of polite urgency in her voice, and tells me she thinks she’s having a stroke. She tells me she has her grandchild at the house with her and asks me to call her daughter to come to get the child. By the time she’s done giving me the phone number, there’s just a very slight slur in her speech.
By the time EMS got there (probably no more than 5 minutes or so) I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying. It was disturbing and profoundly sad hearing someone having a stroke on the phone as they’re talking to you.
78. Well, This Is Awkward
The last group call I ever knowingly participated in where others didn’t know it was a group call was in Junior High School. My friend was dating this guy, Brian, and I had a huge crush on his friend. So she’s like, “Let’s call Brian! You stay quiet and I’ll casually bring you up and ask if his friend ever talks about if he likes you”!
In hindsight, I should have known that was a terrible idea. It could have really crushed me. Luckily for me, it didn’t even get that far. Something worse happened. As soon as he answered he told my friend that he didn’t like her anymore and that they were “broken up now”. I sat quietly on the other line listening to my friend sob and beg this guy to not dump her before it just got so awkward that I had to hang up.
79. Confirm Your Identity
My boyfriend and I were looking at my phone when we were first started dating, and I needed to look something up. Lo and behold, the last thing I was looking at was checking him out on Google, so it was awkward, and he said, “...did you Google me?” It’s funny now but was so awkward then!
80. Did I Stutter?
I used to work in a call center. It mostly sucked, but whatever. There's a mute and a hold button. Hold gives them the music and mute is just silence where they can't hear you. One time I had this lady on the line that just kept going on and on about all her problems and stuff.
At some point, I thought I had hit the mute button and I plopped my head on my desk and said: “Oh my gooooddd I don't caaaarreeeee!!” Kinda like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. To my surprise she goes, "I know ya don't care but I'm telling ya anyway!"
She carried on while I sat there kinda dumbfounded. I was like “whoops…” but she didn't seem upset and 30 seconds later she said, "Okay, thanks again. Bye". Then she hung up. It was different, but it was still funny.
81. Personal Calls
My new boss was sitting at my desk on my computer, and my phone started ringing. The screen said REHAB. I forgot I put that number in after I finished rehab just in case. I was so mortified. Thinking fast, I said, “My sister just called do you mind if I call her back?”
82. I, Object
I was wrapping up my work in a small office where we communicated with our field employees by radio. Our assistant manager noticed I had a call from our new bank representative, who was apparently a very attractive woman. This was our undoing.
The assistant manager put the phone down for a moment while he radioed our owner with the banker’s question. The owner responded, “Are you talking to our new banker?" The assistant manager responded "yes” and the owner said, "Tell her if she’ll bend over, I’ll drive her home”! He obviously thought he was funny because he let out a series of “Haw haw haw!"
The assistant manager reached for the hold button, but it was way too late.
83. 9-1-1 Is Not A J-O-K-E
I took a call from a kid who was about 10 years old who thought it would be funny to prank call emergency services. He started off by saying there was a fire. I could hear him giggling in the background. He followed that up by meowing at me over the phone. I managed to get a good location off the call and got his address. I read the address to him and asked if that was where he lived.
CLICK. I had a deputy go out to the house, as was our policy, and explained the situation to his parents. The Deputy told me later that the kid got the chewing out of a lifetime.
84. Oh My Cod
In middle school, my best friend at the time had been conducting a year-long prank on me. I was too stupid to know any better. She claimed to have a brother that had seen me on campus and who had a crush on me. She did a very convincing voice impression of a guy and would sometimes hand-off the phone to her brother when I would call.
She was living with her grandparents while her other siblings, which included two sisters that were real and the brother that wasn't real, lived with her mom. So when I went over to visit I never saw him and never suspected a thing.
One day I was talking to this fake brother and it was starting to get a little intimate. I was a romantic, what can I say? He abruptly tried to end the call and he thought he had when I heard my best friend say, “That was close, she almost got me”.
I didn't talk to her for months. But there was another side to the story. Later on, due to other events I won't get into, I suspected she was a lesbian who actually had a crush on me and was in denial. I don't know where she is now and it's been years since I've heard from her.
85. Sliding to Doom
I was hanging out with some friends and acquaintances. I didn’t know one of the girls, Lisa, too well, but she was like an annoying frenemy of one of my friends. They always told me this friend made the “Lisa face,” and I always wondered what a Lisa face looked like. They told me she makes this weird annoyed rude face.
We were all sitting at this table, and I was sitting across from Lisa, and my friend was sitting at the other end of the long table. Then, Lisa did the “Lisa face.” I got excited and thought, “Oh, I finally saw the Lisa face! I get it!” I texted my friend, “Hey wow. Lisa really does do that face!” Then I pressed send—if I'd waited another second, I could have avoided disaster.
At that exact moment, Lisa called over to my friend and asked, “Can I borrow your phone to make a call? My friend slid the phone over to her like a bartender. When Lisa got it, there was a “ding!” My text message popped up on the screen, so then I said, “…Uh, well, you do kind of make a face…” It was all very shameful.
86. Task Failed Successfully
A couple of years ago my grandpa pocket-dialed me while going through the drive-thru. I thought it was the most adorable thing ever. He had just gotten a cell phone and had no idea how to use it. I was so surprised when I saw I had a voicemail from him. It's just two minutes of him ordering a big mac, fries, and a coke, but he passed a few months later and I listen to it sometimes when I miss him.
87. Reduced To Frames
A friend of mine had a dude listed in her phone as, “Tinder Guy Glasses,” which worked great until he became more long-term, and she never bothered to change it. She'd been on a bit of a serial one-night-stand kick for a while; it was easier for her to have descriptions instead of names. After all, she knew who he was.
She knew his name. She thought he was great, and she had left her straight-hoeing days behind her. What difference did it make? He found out when she lost her phone, and he called it only to find he’d been sitting on it. By all accounts, she was mortified when he handed it back to her with that Caller ID on the screen.
88. Come Acid Rain Or Shine
Once, while inside one of those drive-thru carwashes, I accidentally dialed a girl I was kind of seeing and left a long voicemail. It might not have been so bad if not for the fact that I was going through an old childhood habit of making commentary on each step of the washing process.
It sounded something like "Here come the hula dancers!...The rain! The rain! It's a monsoon!...Those spinning Russian hats are attacking the car!...Okay! Time to dry off! Hot wax makes me shine"! Later I found out she thought I was tripping on acid in a laundromat. I was almost more embarrassed by the real explanation.
89. Happy Ending
I started sleeping with a girl from work, and we hooked up one night after work drinks. Before anything went down, she told me she's on the pill. I, being dumb and tipsy, was happy that I did not have to wear a condom. The next week, I decided to get checked just in case. No symptoms thankfully. It’d just been a while.
The clinic told me they would text me the results. The test included everything. The girl and I were chilling in bed watching TV after some afternoon delight. I was using my phone to cast it on my TV. The first text from the clinic came up and hit the screen. "Hi, these are the results for your recent health check-up.”
“You will receive one text for each test you took. The results of your HIV test were...” And that's where the preview stopped. I felt her tense next to me. She’s clearly worried she did it without protection with somebody who could be HIV positive. I scrambled to show her the rest of the message, which was HIV negative.
90. Let There Be Life
After thinking I'd hung up on my customer, I said, "We'll be making babies tonight, you should really come". Without context it made it sound like I was inviting someone to some kind of adult party for a game of Russian roulette to impregnate my wife.
Then I heard my customer say, "Uhhhh…sounds like fun, but no thanks". I wish they'd known the real truth. In reality, I was telling one of my college students, who wanted to skip class for something, that they should come to the biology lab because we were learning about meiosis by combining little discrete cardboard chromosomes into "complete people" with various alleles of interest.
Yeah, that's definitely not how it sounded to my customer. I couldn’t stop laughing.
91. Immatured Alert
My friend changed all the nicknames on my phone to things like Insatiable Poonhound, the baby blaster, the toot heard round the world, etc., without telling me. Then he messaged me a whole bunch while I was at work teaching. A student asked if he could use my phone because he needed to call his parents for a ride home.
As I was handing him the phone, I saw all the notifications sitting on my screen.
92. I Love You, I Hate You
Once, we were hiring a new employee who seemed like a totally normal guy and was soon to be married to his fiance. Mid-interview process, his phone somehow called our human resources guy in the middle of the night during a vicious domestic with his boyfriend.
Yelling, screaming, crying, glass breaking, accusations, “I love you”, the whole bit. We still hired him and we never told him that we overheard their dispute, but I think just the potential embarrassment of that situation is enough.
93. Getting to Know You
I teach English in China, and two years ago, I arrived at my first job about a month late thanks to visa issues. I survived the first two days okay, and it was Friday, and I was invited to a co-worker’s apartment to hang out, have a drink, and meet some other expats. It’s just some of us chatting and drinking casually.
Sometime later, people have walked off or called it a night, so it’s just me, a guy, and a girl sitting on the couch. The guy showed me his phone. He wanted to show me this mobile game that was very popular there in China. As he’s doing this, a message popped up. It read, "I want your balls in my mouth," from the girl.
The guy and I made brief eye contact immediately, and then I looked at her. She went beet red and went out the room. I was then informed that I was the first person other than them in the company who knew that the two of them were an item. She wasn’t a shy girl at all, and we now frequently make reference to the event.
94. Where Credit Is Due
Someone once made an announcement over the hospital PA system that was totally appropriate, but then they forgot to hang up and started ordering a pizza. It got so, so disastrous. They read out their credit card number with all the needed details, then they forget to hang up again and announced patient identifiers over the PA system.
I have no clue how it went for so long, but it was insane. I feel bad for the person on the phone, but I also feel terrible for the patient.
95. Breaking News
My friend is a professor at a college, and I’m a first responder. We would usually leave around the same time in the morning for our work days, so I knew he would be awake if I was bored at work and wanted someone to bother. On this one shift, my first call was a prolapsed bum hole. Of course, I needed to tell someone.
It was a medical marvel! So, who did I text just before of 8 AM? He had just plugged in his Mac into the projector, and the text message, “Nothing like starting your day than with a prolapsed bum hole,” popped up on his screen for the entire class to see. I got an earful later, and he changed his notification settings.
96. The Wonderful Pharaoh Of Oz
While I was in Italy a few years ago. My freelance work wasn't doing great, so I was applying for any job I could find, and I had a job interview scheduled on Skype. The job offer was pretty vague, but I had nothing better to do, so I gave it a shot. Five minutes into the call I had a stomach-dropping realization. It was an obvious pyramid scheme.
I let the guy finish the introduction of his pitch, then I said, "No thanks" and hung up. He must have thought he had closed the call or perhaps Skype glitched, I’m not sure, but I could still see him, looking disappointed. I could also still hear sounds on his side. I heard the unpleasant voice of an old lady come from off-screen.
She had clearly been there the whole time and the dialogue went something like this: Her: "He didn't fall for it"? Him: “Nah”. Then the call finally ended for real. It still makes me laugh.
97. An Unsubtle Bubble
My brother-in-law got a friendly reminder that the company he works for can still hear him even when he puts the customer on hold. This was because he was taking a big bong rip while waiting on the customer.
98. A Cell Phony
I went to a wedding where the bride got drunk and the groom picked up her phone to discover that she had been racily texting a coworker throughout the entire wedding. He told the officiant to not file the paperwork. This occurred towards the end of the reception, as they were leaving to go to the honeymoon suite. The story is that she was very drunk.
Her phone kept getting notifications so he decided to pick it up for her. They did not go on their honeymoon and they returned the gifts to everyone. The guests weren’t told about what happened for a couple of weeks, as the bride was trying everything she could to save the relationship. Regardless, it was a great reception!
99. Caught Red-Handed
My then-boyfriend had let me use his iPad to watch a movie on Netflix. He had his messenger account linked to both his tablet and his phone, and messages kept popping up on it while I was watching without him realizing I could see. I got to watch in real time as he got his best friend's wife to agree to sleep with him over the coming holiday weekend; with the promise that he'd get rid of me for that weekend so they could get intimate in our bed.
100. Prius At The Disco
One day, I randomly get a call from this girl who's never called me once. We would only ever text. I shortly discover she pocket-dialed me while she was driving around with her mom and they were having a nice conversation about what she decided her major was going to be. I sat and listened for like seven minutes because I had nothing better to do.
I planned on mentioning how creepy I am in a lighthearted retelling of this silly incident. That's when the nightmare started. I heard a scream and some tires screeching followed by a crashing sound, then the call ended. I was worried, so I dialed her and got her voicemail. Not good.
I repeated this three times before considering calling an ambulance, but then I got a text from her saying she just saw a really bad accident between some Prius and a tow truck, so now traffic is blocked up and “why are you blowing up my phone”? I was relieved, but man, I won't forget that fear I felt.
101. Woman Overboard
A colleague of mine dialed into a meeting of two or three managers plus about 25 sales representatives, only for everyone to suddenly go quiet. One person told him the meeting was canceled and he could drop the call, as they were just chatting about sales stuff. He pretended to hang up and stayed on the line. That's how he found out the truth.
They were basically planning a mutiny because they didn't like that their regional manager was a woman. They had a whole strategy for how they were going to cause a massive screw-up that would cost the company a ton of money and make it look like it was her fault so that she would get fired. The idiots even did a little "are we all in agreement" roll call at the end.
We worked in a call center, so his end of the call was recorded. Within a week, every last one of them was fired and within a month they were replaced.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , ,
