At one point or another in our lives, almost all of us get into some legal trouble. When that happens, it can be hard to know what to do, or how to react well to whatever pickle we’ve gotten into. But when it comes to drama inside and outside of the courtroom, you don’t need a law degree to know that these stories take the absolute cake.
1. Joy Ride Gone Wrong
So I dropped my Subaru WRX off to be serviced at a third-party service center. They called me to tell me my car was ready for pick up. When I arrived today, I waited around two hours while they were getting my car ready for pickup…to finally be told that they accidentally gave it to another customer. They offered a rental car for the meantime until they can get it back, which they said would hopefully be in the next few days. But that’s not what happened at all.
I called the authorities and the employees got mad and stressed out immediately. Turns out one of the managers took it for a joyride and wrecked it, which they admitted to. I still have not seen it but I was told the damage was extensive and that I would be held liable for payment to fix part of it. At this point, I’m going to get a lawyer involved.
I shouldn't have to pay for anything they have messed up on. Even if they offer to cover fixing it, I’m a little uneasy about that. Now that it has been in a collision it has much less value and could be prone to future problems. They said if I didn't get lawyers involved they would cut me a deal, but I’m really not having that. Not to mention, they have been lying to me for hours.
At this point, I am pressing charges against them for theft, and I have filed official complaints with the Motor Vehicle Dealer Board and the Office of the Attorney General Consumer Protection Section, and I will be suing for an undisclosed but reasonably high amount.
2. If It Ain’t Broke…
I had some of my friends over at my house, and one of my friends invited one of her other friends to come over. Then the worst moment of my life happened. She had her MacBook on my couch and when I sat on it, I broke it. Since it was completely my fault I offered to pay her the money for it and she agreed. She got the old one three years ago and it cost $2,200 dollars at the time.
I told her I'd wire her the money in a week to her bank account. She's now emailed me, however, saying that as per our conversation, she's expecting the $2,700 that I have agreed to(!!!!) I didn't know why she added the extra money, so I got her number from my friend and called her. She told me that she's now expecting me to pay for her new upgraded MacBook since she was "upgrading anyway". She said if I don't agree to do that she'll be suing me in Small Claims Court.
3. Without A Trace
In June 2019, my neighbors came to my door. I’d had some experiences with them before, as they invited us for a BBQ not long after they moved in. They asked me and my wife if we would look after their pets and their house for the next three weeks, as they needed to return to Taiwan since his mother was dying. They even left me $500 dollars for food for their two German Shepherds and their cat. This is where it gets interesting.
I don't know what happened to them, but they just never came back. I don't know if they ended up in some sort of trouble or decided to just not come home at all. Today I found out their basement flooded, probably sometime within the last week. Apparently a pipe burst, but the entire room is completely screwed. I paid to have the leak fixed and I spent all of today using my shop vac to drain their basement to the best of my abilities.
Between this and one of their dogs needing surgery, I have spent several thousand dollars of my own money, and frankly the damage to the basement was pretty awful. I don't have their insurance paperwork, and don't really know if I can even do a claim for them. On top of this, his two giant German Shepherds, while they are amazingly good boys, are becoming almost too much for us to handle.
Their last name is extremely common, and their Facebook profiles are private, which gives me very little avenue to tackle this down.
4. An Apple A Day
I quit drinking soda and energy drinks a few months ago and I replaced that habit with drinking Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Juice. The juice comes in 10 oz. glass bottles that look very similar to Corona bottles. Here lies my issue: This morning I was walking to my car from my apartment and I had a bottle of my juice in one hand and my one-year-old daughter, in her car seat, in the other hand.
My neighbors basically jumped me from behind. One grabbed my daughter’s car seat and the other was punching, kicking, and yelling at me. He was saying stuff like, “The nerve of you to drink and try to drive with your baby". As a result, my juice bottle shattered in the parking lot, cutting my hand, my cell phone’s screen is destroyed, and I think my nose is fractured.
Most importantly, the neighbor who took my baby went inside his apartment with her and it took 10 minutes of me explaining through the screen door that I was not about drink and drive, but that I WAS DRINKING APPLE JUICE. This all just happened. By the way, I didn’t get any apologies or anything from the neighbors. They said they were doing their “duty” to protect the community.
I called the authorities, and as soon as they pulled up more than a half dozen neighbors came out and gave witness reports.
5. Mother Doesn’t Know Best
I'm 15, and my family is deeply religious. I respect that but sometimes, you know, I'm 15, and I have to, you know, rub one out. I try not to but like...I can't concentrate on anything else if I don't. And if I see a pretty girl, it'll get worse. It basically feels like sleeping to me, if I don't do it I can't function. I don’t know if I'm normal or not. I'm definitely ashamed of it.
But I'm not lying I promise. However, my mom doesn't believe me. My dad is out of the picture so I can't talk to him and ask him if this is a guy thing. Anyway, my mom has tried a lot of things to get me to stop. She took my door off, for example. She grounded me and stuff. I try to hide it so she gives up, but now she's come up with a horrific plan.
She decided to get some kind of device and put it on me so that I can't touch myself. She seemed serious and it wouldn't be out of character for her. She also does other weird things, like on Fridays we can't eat at all because of Jesus. I try to respect that but often times I go out on a bike ride and get food somewhere. Because, well, I get hungry. But then this took a twist.
I told my math teacher about my mother—and she got detained. I got my 13-year-old brother after school yesterday and we went to see my math teacher. I didn't tell him all the details, but I told him my mother wanted to put a device on me to keep me from being intimate. At first he wanted to call our mom but that actually made my brother cry in fear so he didn't because I told him I'd run away and call the authorities if he did.
Still, he called a bunch of people, and about an hour later officers a bunch of other people showed up. Apparently they'd already been suspicious about our neighborhood. That’s when the lid on my family blew right off. Turns out, my mother has been doing things like burning us for punishment that are completely verboten and I honestly never really knew. They also found a stash of substances she apparently does with our preacher.
My mother wasn't home but all my other six siblings who are homeschooled were. Then they went down the street to where my mom and our preacher were and I don't know what happened but they took her in think for illicit substances and other stuff, but not the preacher. There were a bunch of people who talked to all of us and eventually they took us to a place where they said we'd stay for now.
I should have done this years ago, I feel really bad because I could have had my siblings taken better care of. I don't really know what's happening or going to happen, but the place I'm in now is way cleaner than I'm used to and we have clothes and stuff and food and we don't have to watch toddlers anymore. They weren't happy when they figured out stuff like the burns and that my 11- and 10-year-old sisters can't read at all.
They also weren't very happy with our house I could tell. I hope we don't have to go back.
6. Power Trip
I live in a small town in Wisconsin so law enforcement kind of knows everybody. But there’s this one officer who keeps pulling me over for the craziest and most asinine reasons, like I was too close to the curb or I stopped too close to the stop sign. He’s a young, attractive cop and I’m young and attractive as well, so I’m thinking he’s trying to flirt with me or something?
But the situations are so aggravating and the things he says and does seem like he’s intentionally trying to antagonize me so that I’ll say or do something out of anger and he’ll have an excuse to escalate the situation. But today he crossed the line. He pulled me over again under the guise that I wasn’t going the speed limit (it was 45 and I was going 50) and when he came to my car and said his usual stuff in the most condescending way, he said he had to search ME, not the car, because my car smelled funny.
My car smells like vanilla and I’ve never smoked anything in there so I know he was lying to me again. I told him that if he wants to search me he’ll have to get a female officer to do it, but he said if I don’t comply he’ll detain me. So I got out of the car. He told me to put my hands on my car so I did, and he just starts rubbing me up and down. Not even searching for anything, just rubbing me.
He went over my thighs twice, my lower back, and almost cupped my chest. I was wearing a skin-tight skirt set, no pockets, and you could clearly see that I had nothing on me. I’m typing this like 30 minutes after it happened, I’m upset and angry and I feel violated. Is there any way I can get him in trouble for this? I have a GoPro in my car but I don’t know if it caught this on camera, as I didn’t check yet.
7. Family Means Love
Hi, so my life is falling apart. A few weeks ago, my father and my stepmother perished in a car accident. They have been married for seven years, and my stepmother had a daughter from a previous marriage who is eight years old. I love her unconditionally as if she were my own sister and I would fight tooth and nail to keep her safe. She has no immediate family other than her father in the area, so he was going to receive full custody of her.
Except this guy is an enormous jerk. The reason my stepmother left him is because he was abusive, although she never reported it, and the reason he was abusive was because my stepsister was born and he didn't want a child. As a result, he has never cared about her, never asked to see her, and has never wanted anything to do with her…until now, that is.
I was at home with my stepsister a few days ago and he knocked on the door. I opened it and we had a really ugly conversation about what was going to happen to my stepsister now that her mother and my father were gone. I told him that if he did end up having custody I would want to be seeing her as often as possible as I consider her my family. His reply stunned me.
He told me, verbatim, "That's not gonna happen, son. I don't want my daughter spending time with half caste blood". He's referring to the fact that my father is mixed race, and that I am too as a result. I slammed the door. I was absolutely livid. But then I got to work. I got a family lawyer who was one of the most kind and helpful people I've ever met in my life.
I told her the circumstances of my stepmom and dad’s passing through tears and sobbing, and then she told me she'd do everything she possibly could to help me. After my stepsister’s bio dad was informed that I would be trying to get full custody, he basically folded within hours. The lawyer told me that it wouldn't have mattered anyway, though.
She said that because he hadn't visited her for such an extended period of time that it was considered "abandonment" in the eyes of the law, and the likelihood of him specifically getting custody was unlikely because of this. After her bio dad said he didn't want my stepsister, I then spent weeks and weeks filing out the right papers and seeing the right people.
I've never signed so many things in my entire life. Because my stepsister had no biological family other than her dad, I was given custody on a silver platter, according to my lawyer. Her bio dad didn't ask for visitation rights, and it appears he didn't even care in the first place, he just wanted my stepsister for no reason other than to further upset me.
Yesterday, I signed the last piece of paper that confirmed that I had 100% custody of my stepsister. After I signed, we both cried and cried for hours. We're both working on processing what happened to her mom and my dad. As I write this, she's asleep next to me with her head on my shoulder. The past two months have hands down been the worst of my entire life.
I consider meeting my stepsister the best thing that's ever happened to me, and adopting her is the single best decision I've ever made. These events have made me realize that family isn't just DNA-based, it's actionable investments in the life of someone you love. I hope you all lead wonderful lives. Give your loved ones a big hug for me.
8. A Bird Of A Different Feather
To make a long story short, I’m a late 20-something living in Oregon. I had a pretty intense goth phase as a tween that I thought I had grown out of. A couple months ago, I was watching a nature program on our local station about crows. The program mentioned that if you feed and befriend them, crows will bring you small gifts. My emo phase came back full force.
I figured that I was laid off and had lots of time, so why not make some crow friends. My plan worked way too well. The resident five crows in my neighborhood have turned into an army of 15 strong. At first my neighbors didn’t mind and enjoyed it. They're mostly elderly and most were in a bird watching club anyway. They thought the fact that I had crows following me around whenever I go outside was funny.
Lately, though, the crows have started defending me. My neighbor came over for a chat and the crows started diving at her. They would not stop until she left my yard. They didn’t make physical contact with her, but they got very close. Honest question: Am I liable if these crows injure someone, since I fed them? I obviously can’t control the crows.
I would rather them not attack my neighbors. But since I technically created this nuisance, could I be financially on the hook for any injuries? To be clear, they're not aggressive 100% of the time. If just the neighbors are out they are friendly normal crows. They only get aggressive when someone gets close to me or my property. Honestly, what have I done?
9. Strings Attached
I worked as head bartender for a local restaurant for a number of years, and there was a regular customer who was there very frequently. I interacted with this customer frequently, too. They tipped exclusively in scratch tickets and specifically called to ask for my schedule, asked me out on multiple occasions, et cetera. Probably about 40 years my senior.
Then I won something from the scratch ticket that wasn't five or 10 dollars; the final amount after taxes was about three months’ salary for me, and I was making good money. I specifically didn't tell the customer, not because I thought they wouldn't want it but because I didn't want them feeling like I owed them something or that I should be thankful towards them.
I did tell a co-worker, and it got to the customer through the grapevine. The next time I came in, he congratulated me, and asked me a question that sent a shiver down my spine. He asked how we wanted to split it. I sternly told him that it was my tip and long story short, he went to my manager, who took his side. I actually quit since I had been planning to anyway since I'm about to finish school. But that wasn't the end.
My manager then GAVE THIS GUY MY EMAIL and he (the customer) emailed me saying that if I didn't agree to give him 50% of the winnings he'd take court action. Do I need to worry about taking his threat seriously? Is there anything I can or should do to protect myself? I'm assuming this is a bluff but I want to have my bases covered.
10. Sleepaway Camp
I am 16 years and two months old. My parents believe I am a disaster and unruly child, but they are delusional parents. My mother has bipolar disorder and does not take her meds regularly and I'm sure my father has undiagnosed mental health problems as well. They have been wanting to send me to a camp for troubled teenagers for a while, and two people recently came to take me without me knowing.
I thought they were kidnapping me. I screamed and my brother who was at home (but wasn't supposed to be) took my father's pistol and threatened to kill them. That was when they told us who they are and why they are here. We called the authorities but they did nothing after they talked to our parents. I do not trust my parents anymore and I want to get emancipated. I don't think my parents will object; they will be happy to get rid of me.
11. Skeletons In The Closet
I’m 16 and I have good reason to think my mom and dad aren't my real parents. I had a much older sister who took her own life when I was six and she was 26. All of her stuff is in the basement in boxes. I don't remember too much about her honestly and it makes me sad sometimes. My parents don't talk much about her.
There's also a painting in our house that she painted. It's a very nice painting of a swamp, and it's my favorite thing. Anyway, one day I decided to go looking through all of her stuff, mostly for more pictures. What I found was a bunch of notebooks of writing she did, mostly poetry. I felt weird reading them at first because they were mostly about her depression…then I read a story that cut me to the bone.
I read this one that was about how she had a baby and someone took him away. It's really short and I didn't really understand it, like a lot of it seemed metaphorical I guess is the word. Anyways, I asked my mom if she ever had a baby and my mom was really weird about it. She wanted to know why I would ask that. I said I just found some stuff in the basement and was curious.
She got mad at me and told me not to snoop and said she didn't have kids. Then I started thinking about it. I am the spitting image of my sister but I don't look like my mom or dad. I casually asked my mom to see my birth certificate the next day and she got mad again and wouldn't let me see it.
12. Keep An Open Mind
My mom and stepdad are really into "new age" science and beliefs. I've never agreed with them on this but didn't know how extreme it was. Recently, they have become involved in an extremely weird "support group". I say that in quotes because I have no clue who they are. When I'm around they never mention any group names or what "organization" they work for or are a part of.
Because of this, I have not had much luck finding out stuff as "new age cult" gives too many results to look into. This Monday, my mom and stepdad sat me and my four siblings down. They told us that we will be moving at the end of the month to a more "stable" location within a spiritual community. Oh, and that's just the start. According to them, they plan to pull all five of us out of school here and enroll us in their "mind awakening" school wherever we move.
I tried to get anything out of them but they refused to talk to me at all about it. According to them, because I’m still a child in "mind, body, and spirit,” I need to listen to them not ask questions. I’m 16. I've actually been freaking out since then and have been trying to get advice but I've been unable to. They cut off the internet, phone, and TV and they have been keeping a laser focus on me and my siblings since then.
I'm currently at a friend’s house and this is the only way I've actually got access to the internet. This seems like a cult 100% to me. Last night they had three people come and talk to me and my siblings, and what they told us was absolutely crazy. I was talked to alone by an old man who told me about how my mind is "closed" and that I will slowly learn to open it as my parents have and that the "leaders" will love to meet me and put me in their programs.
I need to know what I can do here. My dad has shared custody of me but I’ve had no contact with him since they told us. He is supposed to have a call with me every night but my mom claims he's been "informed" and supports this 100%. I tried calling him this morning but he didn't answer. He lives in another state so it's kind of hard to get into contact with him outside of phone and email.
I'm at a friend’s house because I was able to leave the house for the first time in a week this morning after I told my parents I wanted to go to the park, but came here and told my friend everything. Her parents are not home but she's trying to call them and I plan to stay here tonight if I can. My parents have forbid me from using the internet because it's "full of lies from them".
I'm so lost right now it makes me sick. I do not want to go with them to this obvious compound. I also will be going and buying a burner phone tomorrow and withdrawing all my money from the bank.
13. Get It Off Your Chest
I had mammary cancer about a year and a half ago. I got surgery and luckily I didn’t have to undergo chemo or radiation. Surgery was able to remove all my tumors. I still have check-ups and screenings occasionally, however, and have to miss work. Another co-worker in another department has cancer but unfortunately was unable to have it removed by only surgery and had to be out longer.
She is still undergoing treatment. I declined reconstruction on my chest so I was able to come back to work at 3 1/2 weeks. I have nothing on my left side, just a flat scar—no tissue or anything and only a smaller amount of tissue on my right side. They removed a lot of tissue with a lumpectomy but were able to salvage about 55% of the tissue.
My co-workers and my immediate supervisor have been talking about my cancer for weeks because I had to miss an important meeting for an MRI and a bone scan. I requested it off and got my manager and HR to approve it. But now this co-worker and supervisor have been spreading rumors that because I came back to work so soon that I didn’t actually have cancer.
I wear a prosthetic at work so no one sees me flat. They are saying everyone they know with any cancer always has to take a lot of time off work and I seem fine. Someone said they saw me out at the store—this was after an oncology appointment that was approved by my manager, and I did stop by the grocery store on my way home—and I looked fine.
Again, I am not on chemo so my appointments are check-ups and blood draws. I feel fine after. They are emotionally draining but physically I feel great. It got to the point where I was scared to even take appointments because I knew coming back to work would be the worst. Again, my manager has always been supportive and HR too. This is just my supervisor and my co-workers.
I have surgery coming up to help with some scarring. They are just going to clean up some of the tissue now that everything has healed and I have been cancer-free for over a year. I let my supervisor know they are thinking about scheduling it for the summer and he said, “Right, the cancer thing again". One particular day last week, I got upset because I heard them in the office next door talking about me.
They were saying I was scamming everyone and that I didn’t deserve the upcoming raises. They talked again about how I didn’t have cancer. Then I did something supremely stupid. I got upset, walked over, lifted my shirt and prosthetic bra, and showed them the scars on my chest. I did cover my remaining 55% there stuff with no nip with my hand, but my scars were on display for all to see.
I then told them to go screw themselves and went back to my desk. This was on Friday at 3:30 pm. I left at 4:30 like I always do. No one has said anything. It is now Monday and I am worried. I had time to think over the weekend and realized it was a huge mistake. I should have just gone to HR about the gossip. I have seen my manager but they haven’t said anything.
My supervisor hasn’t said anything. None of my gossiping co-workers have said anything. The ones that don’t gossip haven’t said anything and are acting like normal. What should I do to un-mess this up? What can I expect them to do to me?
14. Famous For The Wrong Reasons
My butt has been a location on Facebook since 2012 and I can't get it removed. I wish this was fake but it's not. The first thing you see when you type in my full name on Google is "Original Poster's Butt". This page was created in 2012, and I was only 15 at the time. I have reported it a million times, and even asked friends to report it. It's humiliating.
I tried requesting the name change of the page and reported it under every option possible. Facebook says it doesn't violate terms. I tried claiming it as my business since at the bottom of the page it claims to be automatically generated off interest of the topic, and it wouldn't let me claim it. It was never a business. I was a child. I feel so hopeless.
15. Let It Go
Five years ago, I was stalked for six months by a guy I knew less than a month as an actual person. We dated very briefly; I broke things off and things seemed amicable…until he started showing up outside my house and demanding I be with him or else. He had decided that he was a good man and he deserved a chance. He threatened that if he didn't get a chance, he'd kill me or hopefully I’d kill myself.
After six months of daily threats, 10+ reports, multiple restraining order attempts, moving, and getting rid of all social media, he found me anyway and kicked my door in at midnight. This is where my world spun out of control. I shot him in the chest in self-defense, and he was finally sentenced and went behind bars. I thought I was done with him. I was so, so wrong.
I guess he was on parole for about four months after his release recently because I immediately started receiving messages and comments from him afterward; he just picked right back up where he left off. I contacted the parole board and they said he was released from supervision a few days before. I have contacted the authorities and was approved for a restraining order but of course they haven’t been able to serve it.
They said they can’t prove the messages are from him despite him using his name, posting his pictures, and literally commenting my name and talking about the incident in the comment replies. The detective is waiting for a subpoena to prove it’s him. I am documenting every bit of harassment of course…but I am just...exhausted. I am so incredibly frustrated with the lack of help available and closed doors there are for people being stalked.
16. A Friend In Need
Last month, a friend of mine began to cross a flooded river in his car with me in it. I jumped out because I'd been caught on a flooded causeway before. I now have a letter from his lawyer asking for damages because the car was washed off the causeway and written off. I'm pretty sure this is a case of my (probably ex) friend being an idiot on a lawyer's letterhead or not telling his lawyer the whole story.
When I'm in the middle of it, it feels a lot different though. Early in November, we went to pick up car parts after work that my friend I'll call Aaron (because his name's Aaron and I think he's being an idiot) had bought on eBay. We had to go through some back roads to get to the property and picked it up and all was well. It'd been raining for part of the day but really picked up when we were loading the parts.
We got to a causeway we'd passed only an hour before, but it was now covered in what looked like half a meter of water and we stopped. I'd been navigating and knew we could back up and take another much longer route, even though the highway was just a bit on the other side of the causeway. There was no way I'd go through the water as it looked, because I'd been caught on a causeway 20 years ago in less water and had my car pushed off into the river.
I didn't want to risk it. I didn't lose that car but it was one of the scariest moments of my life. I said we had to turn back and could take a different road and that it would take us via a bridge over the same river. Aaron decided to push on and started moving and I panicked and got straight out. It was FAR more water than I'd had to go through when I nearly lost my car and life before.
Aaron didn't even get halfway across before the water pushed his car off the side, rolled it completely over, and it ended upright on the bank downstream. He was EXTREMELY lucky not to drown, and I ran down and helped him out. Immediately he was aggressive and combative because he said with my weight in the car he'd have made it across.
The car is commodore wagon with a couple hundred kg of eBay parts in the back, so it's not like I'd have made much difference. We phoned for help and the river went down within an hour and we made it across the causeway by foot. We haven't spoken since and he's avoided me in places we usually go. But on Friday I received a letter from a lawyer I know is real in our town, but it sounds like it was written by my friend.
It's asking for $50k for the car and personal damages because I made the car unsafe by getting out. It was a 1997 commodore, maybe worth $1,500 on a good day. I think he's being a jerk.
17. You Get What You Give
I’m not sure what to do. Earlier today, my neighbor came pounding on my door shouting at me. When I finally got him to stop yelling, I found out that he was flying his drone in my backyard again and this time my dog finally managed to catch it and destroy it. He claims this was a $900 drone and I had to pay him right then and there. I refused and closed the door in his face.
A couple of hours later, an officer showed up to retrieve the drone. It was still in my yard, but my dog completely ignored it once it stopped buzzing. The officer asked about the situation. He said the neighbor called them, stating that I refused him access to my yard to get it. That's not true, he never asked. I'm worried the neighbor will try to press charges against me for the destruction of property or sue me.
He has a history of flying his drone low over my yard to tease my dog. I have asked him to stop several times, which he always refuses, telling me that I don't own the air above my yard. I have called the authorities to complain once before, as he was doing "fly bys" over my dog and getting very close to hitting him. The authorities didn't say he couldn't fly it in my yard but did ask him to stop doing so in order to avoid conflict. That only seemed to egg him on.
18. Too Close For Comfort
Background: my mom worked at a very small hospital in a very small town for 30+ years and is close to most of the doctors, nurses, and office workers, not only in the hospital but around the whole town as well. My GP, who I have seen since I was ~10 years old, is one of the people my mother is close with. I moved away for college when I was 18 but continued seeing him due to just not wanting to mess with finding a new GP and my mom wanting me to continue seeing him, since I've seen him half my life. This was a huge mistake.
I get routine blood work done to measure how my liver is doing as well as monitor the levels of a certain medication I take to make sure that I'm not getting too little/too much. The results of this information or the fact that I have those tests done isn't a big secret I want to keep, they don't really mean anything unless I were to become sick and they don't test for information, like say illicit substances.
The first time I had this work done, I hadn't been to that doctor in a while to really remember if this had happened in the past, but they called my mom with my results. They even told her specifics, like what my liver enzymes were and what the medication level was. Again, it's not like to my mother this is anything I want to hide, but it was a little concerning that she got the call and I never received any call about my results.
I go in for these monthly, so the next month that I went I told the woman working in the lab of the office that I wanted to update my information to make sure I got the results. I thought also since I had been seeing this doctor since I was 10, I probably had never given them my phone number. A few days later, it happened again.
My mother again got the call and called to tell me my results; I again got no call from the office. Once again, not a big deal, but since this happened when I explicitly gave my phone number in place of my mother's, I was a little ticked off that I wasn't called again. I chose to wait until my next lab work to say anything again anyway. At this visit, I had both lab work and an appointment to get a refill on birth control.
My doctor asked me to do a pregnancy test in with this blood work due to me running out of said birth control a few days earlier. I wasn't worried that I was pregnant, but I knew that now it was serious time to make them stop calling my mom with my results. I asked the lady drawing my blood to confirm my phone number to see if it even got put in last time.
It did, so on my way out I stopped to talk to the women who always work in the office/at the desk and tell them explicitly that I and I alone want to be called for my results, not my mother. They nonchalantly agreed and I asked them to check my phone number on the system they use in the office, and it was there. I happened to be visiting in town during this time and staying with my mom, who, you guessed it, got the phone call right in front of me telling her my results, including the negative pregnancy test. That’s when my mom BLEW UP at me.
She starts asking why I needed to take a pregnancy test, even though I didn't think this was a big deal especially since it was negative. That all blew over, but at this point I was so mad that she kept getting this information. I ended up getting into it with my mom, telling her that that was a direct breach of HIPAA and she knows it after working in a hospital.
She laughed it off and said something about the doctor knowing me since I was born, her being friends with the office ladies and the doctor, and the one that hit me the most: "It's not a big deal, I'm your mom!" Since then, I've been getting my lab work done elsewhere. To no surprise, there are no issues. I don't really know what to do here. Since I cut ties with that doctor, I no longer have personal problems with this, but I don’t want him to do it to anyone else.
19. Everything Has A Price
So my parents are heavily Mormon and we just recently had a tithing settlement, and when they asked me if I had paid my tithing I told them no. They then asked me if I had a plan to “fix” that and I told them that I worked too hard just to give that money away. Anyways so afterward, my mom, who is my account co-owner as I am under 18, decided to take 10% of my bank account out and refuses to give it back.
This isn’t right, so I planned to slowly, over the next few days, withdraw the money over time. But then it got ridiculous. Turns out, my dad is sick of my mom overspending so he did two things. He’s stopped paying tithing himself AND swapped my mom’s credit card for a debit card. My mom took my money to pay off tithing for him and she gave me roughly $200 back.
She said she’ll give me the rest back and that she’s still disappointed in me for not paying my tithing. Still, it doesn’t sound like I’m getting my money back any time soon. Both my parents are in a significant amount of debt, and my parents fought a lot yesterday apparently. My mom spent almost $10,000 on stuff for the past month or so.
My dad has started making cuts in our budget to fix this, tithing being one of them. I’m still following through with taking my money and putting it in a place where my parents can’t touch it. Just in case they get any ideas.
20. You Can Always Do More
I am a 16-year-old Junior in high school and work part-time at a gym. I generally open the gym on weekends at 7 am, and am alone in the building until our housekeeping staff comes in at 8:00. It starts out slow as members come in, and usually picks up around 9 when our Sales staff and General Manager come in. The gym is a two-story facility.
Earlier this morning around 8ish, I was approached by another member who stated there was a woman in the locker room downstairs who was laying on a bench shaking and presumably having a seizure. So I RUN downstairs to the locker room, and sure enough, there is a woman shaking uncontrollably, but breathing. I had my cell phone with me and immediately called 9-1-1.
I stayed on the phone with the dispatcher while waiting for the EMTs and paramedics, who arrived about five minutes later. The dispatcher stated I should absolutely NOT try to perform CPR/First Aid (I am licensed) or move her, only to hold onto her to make sure she did not fall off the bench. The EMTs manage to revive her, and she gets wheeled out of the gym and to the hospital.
I'd say we were in the locker room for about 20 minutes trying to convince her to go—she was VERY stubborn. There was a personal trainer who was there to help me and for whom I am EXTREMELY grateful. I filled out an Incident report and filed it with our general manager when he came in. We have had concerns with this member before, as she has health issues.
The thing is, I have absolutely no idea how long she was suffering from a seizure. It looked as if she was in the midst of changing into gym gear when it happened. She checked in shortly after 7:15 am. I just received a text message from my general manager and she is now threatening to sue us for her seizure. Can she come after me personally?? As I said, I have no idea how long she was in that state for and I am terrified.
21. Fighting Like Cats And Dogs
We live in the city limits of Wake county Raleigh NC where there are strict leash laws. Our new neighbors moved in next door about six months ago and have two large Labradors who are let out the back door into the open yards each day and night. One of their dogs is very sweet and well-behaved, while the other is rather aggressive and will charge at people and other dogs.
We have asked them multiple times to walk their dogs on leashes and explained about the city leash laws of our state and county, but they refuse to keep them on leashes. Two months ago, one of their labs charged at myself and my small beagle from across the yard. The next few seconds still make me so angry. The dog’s owner just sat there and watched as I tried to fight off her dog while picking up my beagle.
The dog bit my arm enough to draw blood, and I kicked her dog to get it to stop and back off from its attack. The owner then went into a rage over me doing this and the next day filed a complaint against me. That backfired because they contacted me for my side of the story and ended up charging the neighbor a $250 fine. I didn't file an animal control report because my bite wasn't that bad and I thought the fine would set them straight.
Also, it's not the dog’s fault her owner is an idiot. They continued to let their dogs run free and we have multiple videos of them letting their dogs run free and of the aggressive dog running onto our porch and throwing her body against our glass door, trying to get at our dogs inside our house. Last month, I confronted our neighbor with the multiple videos and told her she needed to walk them on leashes and we were no longer willing to be afraid to use our back porch or walk our dogs anymore.
I told her this was the last time we'd be nicely asking her and next time we'd call animal control. Fast forward to six days ago, when I wokee up to a nightmare. It was the sound of one of my dogs, for lack of better term, screaming. I jumped out of bed and ran into the yard where my sister and one of my beagles were being attacked by her dog. AGAIN.
My sister had curled around our dog and was being repeatedly bitten by the neighbors’ dog. I tackled the neighbors’ dog and (not proud to say as a lifelong animal lover) proceed to grab the dog by her neck and force her to the ground by her neck and shove her head into the ground while practically sitting on the dog to control her.
The neighbor finally got her dog inside. The results were my dog had a huge chunk ripped out of her throat, multiple rips in both ears, six broken teeth on her bottom jaw, a shattered front paw and a broken arm, and multiple bites to her face and rib cage. My dog needed all broken teeth removed, pins in her arm and paw, dozens of stitches, and a skin graft (had no idea they could do this for dogs) to close the hole in her neck.
My sister needed 38 stitches from the bites she received, I ended up with 29 stitches from bites I received, and all three of us are on a plethora of antibiotics and follow-up care including rabies shots for my sister and me because her dog had no current shots. Those shots are not pleasant in any way. Our combined medical/vet bills are 29k with still needing follow-up visits for all of us over the next few months.
My neighbor is refusing to pay anything at all and claims she's not at fault because our yard isn't fenced. She's also claiming she's going to sue us because apparently I broke two of her dog’s ribs when I tackled her to the ground. I cleared out my savings account to make the basic payments to save my dog’s life and don't have any more money to hire a lawyer.
We can hardly afford the co-pays on our insurance to get our rabies treatments and prescriptions filled. I filed to get an advance on my pay but it can take up to two weeks to go through and I was served with a court summons today for injuries to her dog and her pain and suffering from the trauma of her hurt pet. The claim also states that I intentionally caused harm to her pet and used unnecessary force to subdue her pet.
I'm a 4'10 female and my sister is a 4' 8 female. Her dog is almost as big as I am. I really don't know where to start or how to deal with this. I feel like we have a solid case due to the videos and the paperwork from the first time she tried to blame us. I also have messages that span her time as our neighbor via the Nextdoor app where she admits to walking her pets off-leash and her refusal to stop because it's "her house".
With not many other options, we took drastic measures. We each submitted a report with law enforcement. The officer called animal control and viewed it as a good use of their weekend emergency service because the neighbor did not/could not provide proof of a rabies shot and is viewed as a public health risk and no one can confirm the dog’s aggression isn't attributed to that.
That's probably not the case but city law requires all dogs within city limits to be registered with the city and up to date on all shots. The officer suggested that we take our dogs and cars and leave the neighborhood between 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm or until we receive a follow-up call from animal control. He also suggested we call our homeowners’ insurance after we were done at the station and had a report to give them.
They took photos of our injuries and said we need to take pictures of our dog once we got home. We already took photos of ourselves and dog last night, but they wanted their own to file with the report. We asked about getting a protection or restraining order but he said it would be very hard to do because we'd have the burden of proof showing that she maliciously and intentionally used her dog to harm us.
My boyfriend went out this morning and bought two cameras and a stack of SD cards. He has one set up to look out over our back yard and one looking out to where we park our cars and front porch. This lady is still letting her dogs run out free after the attack and we can get that on video. My sister, dogs, and I are going to spend the night at my boyfriend’s house tonight just so we can stay clear of the crazy neighbor. But we went further than that.
We messaged most of the neighbors on our row and a few of them have had bad experiences and are willing to write statements. The kicker is the family directly behind us has a teenage son who took a VIDEO on his phone of the big attack! The neighbor dog had tried to attack her son’s cat while he was on the back porch once, so when her son heard the yelling he whipped out his phone.
I haven't seen it yet but his mother said they'll gladly turn it over to our lawyer and write statements.
22. Squatter’s Rights
I just moved and it was just me and a couple of friends unloading, so we left some things on the street next to the moving truck while we did heavier items like desks, shelves, etc. as a team. I came out after bringing in some more boxes (I had been gone roughly 15 minutes) to find a guy had loaded my couch into the bed of his truck. I ran up to him and explained I own the couch.
He said since it was on the street corner, it’s public property and he’s within his rights to take it. He drove off before I could block his car. I did get his license plate and went to the station make a report, but they asked me if it was in fact on the curb. I said it was, but it was also pretty obviously next to a moving truck, and it was wrapped up and surrounded by boxes.
They didn’t say anything that inspired hope. The couch has been in the family for three generations now and while it probably isn’t worth more than a few hundred bucks, it is sentimentally priceless.
23. Soup Surprise
I’m currently on vacation visiting family for Christmas. I’m a vegan by choice, but I am also allergic to red meat. I was bitten by a “lone star tick,” which caused me to develop a severe allergy to meat. My family makes fun of me for being vegan, though I cook for myself for all meals and don’t mention it much at all. Anyway, I guess some of my extended family didn’t know the severity of my allergy because my younger cousin chopped up steak (extremely finely I guess) and put it in my butternut squash soup.
Shortly after I ate some of my soup, an awful feeling crept over me. I couldn’t breathe and was breaking out in hives. I woke up in the hospital on Christmas Day, as my mom called an ambulance when she saw my face was swelling. My cousin didn’t say sorry when I started breaking out in hives. He started laughing and told me what he had done.
I woke up to a text from him saying “stop overreacting, you need protein” with a picture of a slaughtered cow. His parents aren’t very well off, but my God do I want to pursue him in court.
24. Hold Please
A former Air BnB guest put a hold on my mail for everyone at my address and has been paying to hold the mail for two months. It’s kind of a genius revenge tactic, but the ones who suffered the most are my new renters. One guy has a thyroid problem and had to repurchase $500 in meds. A lot of people missed paychecks or credit cards. One lady missed the receipt of a Death Certificate.
We thought someone was taking the mail from the mailbox at first, but then we started watching the mailman just skip over the house every day and some "test" mail didn't move. So I tried calling the USPS and that got me nowhere. Going down in person was the only way to do this I guess. Turns out, some lady who we'd kicked out for being nasty, attracting bugs, and breaking furniture was mad or something or maybe using my address like a personal PO Box?
Who knows. The post office was really nice about it though and gave me back all my mail. Still, how could this have happened? Surely this can't be legal. I got copies of her hold requests too as proof it was her. She hadn't lived there in two weeks when she put in the first one.
25. Clear Out
Tonight when my husband got home from work, he told me devastating news. He informed me that he wants a divorce and will be leaving until it's done. This is not a huge surprise honestly, as ever since our daughter was born we've just not been getting along. What is a surprise is its suddenness. I've been a stay-at-home mom since our daughter was born two years ago, it just didn't make sense to work and spend 90% of what I made on daycare. But worse was to come.
So in talking to him before he was finished packing, he told me, "Good luck with the mortgage and bills, I've taken MY money out of our bank account and turned off your card on MY credit". Again, I would say I was shocked, but I really am not. He's very mean when he's angry and never has seemed to connect with his daughter. He wanted a boy and from the day we got the word we were having a daughter he's been distant.
I obviously need an attorney. I logged into our bank account, and sure enough, it's at $5. I don't see how he can just leave us with nothing all of the sudden, and not enough for me to defend myself.
26. Airing The Dirty Laundry
I moved into my apartment at the start of January, and since then I have been convinced that someone was taking my underwear. Every floor has a pair of washer/dryer units, and since moving in I have had almost a dozen different things just disappear from the washer or dryer. The laundry room is so tiny that there is nowhere to sit, aside from sitting on top of one of the machines, so it makes it very hard to wait and see what’s happening.
Two weeks ago, I went and bought a bunch of new things, and when I went to go remove stuff from the washer, I noticed that several things I had just bought went missing. Armed with this and the fact it was early Saturday morning, I went to our landlord and she was able to tell me during the 35 minutes of washing, the only person who entered was my next-door neighbor’s son.
Now at this point, I was furious and confronted the parents. The parents called me a liar, and basically told me off. They absolutely refused to believe me. Yet since confronting them I had nothing go missing for a while. But today I put laundry in and started cleaning my unit. When I went to go drop trash off, I checked the laundry—and witnessed a shocking sight.
I discovered our neighbors’ son, red-handed, going through the dryer I was using. I again confronted the parents, and they immediately started screaming at me for targeting their son, and threatened to call the authorities on me for harassing their son. They also threatened to sue me for "slandering" their son by implying he is a pervert.
27. Ring The Alarm
So this past Friday, our entire apartment building was evacuated after a "bum-like person" (landlady's words) broke into the building and busted a gas pipe at around midnight. We COMPLETELY slept through it. I found out about it the next night at work (which is nearby) when my co-worker asked where my boyfriend and I were the night before during the gas leak.
He filled me in on what had happened and that everyone was outside the building, and that there were fire trucks, works.Just afterward, a fire marshal inspected our alarm that's connected to the building and said it needed to be replaced because it doesn’t work. It has yet to be replaced and when my boyfriend confronted our landlady about it via text, she refused to give us a copy of the order for our replacement alarm.
She also blamed us for not hearing the commotion and waking up (I sleep with ear plugs and my boyfriend is a heavy sleeper), didn't apologize, and told us if we don't feel comfortable she'd make arrangements for us to move out. All we asked for was the alarm for our unit. Luckily neither we nor our cats are hurt or anything, but if the gas leak had been any more serious we could've been in trouble.
My boyfriend's dad is a real estate agent and the first thing he cited was the law that landlords need to have an evacuation plan for all tenants and units. I dislike confrontation and feel like we were too harsh in our texts, but c’mon. My dad is telling me to report the landlady to the tenant tribunal or the fire department.
28. The Cat’s Out Of The Bag
I went out of town for five days and a co-worker offered to check on my four cats while I was away. I came home to find they had no food or water and their litter box hadn't been cleaned in days. My oldest girl was in really bad shape, and she couldn't move her back legs at all. I thought she just fell down the stairs and broke her back.
I took her to the ICU and the doctor ran a lot of tests. They revealed my worst nightmare. The doctor explained to me that nothing was broken. She was actually extremely dehydrated, likely due to not having access to water in days. This caused a previously unknown/undiagnosed diabetic episode, which sent her into shock. She suffered for two days in the ICU before the doctor told me she was only getting worse and a decision had to be made.
There was nothing they could do and she was terrified and suffering. I stayed by her side as they euthanized her. That was about three days ago. My heart is in pieces. There is no signed document of my friend agreeing to watch my cats, but I have text messages of when I tried to check in on them, then 42 messages in the morning and another four hours worth of messages from this friend trying to blame me for not reminding her and not telling her about an undiagnosed condition, and even blaming me for trusting her.
I know I'm angry and grieving. But because of what this person did, my cat suffered for days until I had to let her go. I want to take her to court.
29. Nuts To That
My son’s school is completely ignoring his allergy to peanuts. This has been an ongoing issue since the second day of school, where he was given peanut butter crackers. We sort of brushed it off as a new school year, new students, teachers a bit frazzled dealing with first graders, no real big deal. His allergy isn't really severe but still not fun to deal with and can potentially become life-threatening.
We had already informed the school of his allergy before the year started and even talked directly to the teacher about it because the default snack during the day if no other parents brought in a snack is peanut butter crackers. We even offered to purchase a special alternative for him, but they said it was unnecessary as they have other alternatives.
So we figured the issue was over…when a few weeks later it happened again. This time they claimed he grabbed another student’s snack and ran off to eat it before they could stop him. Now, my little one can be a little bit of a hard-head and I can potentially see this happening, so again we talked to him about peanuts and how dangerous they are to him.
He continued to adamantly deny doing that and said Mrs. gave them to him. We then decide a meeting with the principal is in order, not to blame the teacher or accuse her of lying but to hopefully get this under control. Again a few weeks of no more issues, then it happened again. When I heard their story, I was immediately suspicious.
Once again the story is "he grabbed it and ran off and ate the whole package before we caught him". Okay, so a six-year-old managed to grab an unopened package of crackers, elude a teacher and an aide, and eat the whole package before he's caught? Twice? He's crying and swearing to us he was given them, and after so many incidents we have to start believing him.
Another meeting with the principal and teacher gives us a "Do not worry! This won't happen again". We have another long sit down with our son to explain that even if it's given to you, ask to make sure it doesn't have peanuts or other nuts in it. Then, the very next school day (the meeting was on Friday) he's given another snack of peanut butter crackers, but this time he asks if there is nuts in it and THEN he's given the alternative.
We figure it kind of sucks that the kid has to be the adult right here but at the end of the day he's learning to ask about nuts. We send an email to the principal detailing the issue and say that the next stop is the school board if he is given peanuts again. We get a response back: "If he's asking now, what's the problem? He should have known to ask to begin with. We are teachers not parents".
We had no issues for a while until this week. Some parent brought in PB&J sandwiches for snack time and he was given one. He forgot to ask about nuts but thought "it was only in the crackers". But that's not all. We find out the parent WAS aware of a nut allergy in the class (it's on the parent snack sheet) and brought in just a jelly one that was made separate from the peanut butter ones.
He was not given this one. We spent a day at the hospital. We've had endless talks with him about nuts and do our best to teach him, but some of the blame has to be on the teachers here, right? Do schools not have an obligation to deal with allergies? The school lunch seems to have zero issues with this and has never given him a nut when there are several things on the menu rotation that contain them. He gets a special tray that was nowhere near any nuts.
30. Absent Mom
I will probably consult with a lawyer in the near future. I have a daughter (13) with an ex who was not in her life. We were young, in our early 20s, when she was born. My ex wasn't ready to give up her life and be a mom yet, so I assumed full custody. She had another child when our daughter was nine and never spoke to our daughter again or really acknowledged her.
I remarried as well and my wife has been an amazing stepmom to my daughter. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. I made sure to let my ex know of course and sent periodic updates. She didn't visit or call and basically, things went on as normal. In December 2019, it became apparent that her fight was drawing to a close and there was nothing anyone could do.
I sent the following email: "Jess, I want to let you know that we got the results of E's scan today. The cancer has spread significantly with several new growths and no change to the old sites. At this time, doctors are advising that treatment is unlikely to be successful and we would be better off providing her with comfort care instead.
She will be a lot more comfortable and be allowed to go home, which she really wants. L, the doctors, and I have all talked to her as well as child life. She has agreed that it's time to come home. She is being discharged tomorrow to hospice at home. As always, she would love to see/hear from you". She replied to that email a short time later with "Thank you for the update".
She didn't call or reach out to our daughter at all. After coming home from the hospital, my daughter asked me to mail a letter and to send an email she'd written to her mother. I don't know what the letter or email said but I know that neither one was replied to. In January, our daughter passed. I sent the following emails: "Jess, I wish I didn't have to write this email. Our sweet E passed her sleep. It was very peaceful. I will send another email with funeral details. Don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything".
And then I sent one about the funeral. This is the important part of that email: "Jess, In addition, we have decided on cremation. Please let me know if you would like any of her ashes. I can even get them made into jewelry or put in an urn for you and have it shipped if that's easier for you". She replied to that one thanking me and telling me she would rather not have the ashes and that I could do what I liked with them.
We did. We gave some to my mother, had some turned into jewelry for my wife and three younger girls, I kept some, and we buried some in a few of her favorite places. At this point, the only ashes that physically exist are mine, my mother's, and my wife and daughters'. Fast forward to the end of February, and I get an email from my ex stating that she'd had a change of heart and asking if she could have some of our daughter's ashes.
I told her that unfortunately, we didn't have any "left,” but that my wife offered to send her the necklace she had made. She declined and did seem a little offended that we'd offered but it was all we had to give. A few days ago, I received a notice that she was suing me for emotional damages for "failing to offer her our shared child's cremains" and "offering a used necklace" and some other nonsense.
I'm going to be honest: I feel like the only person who is being emotionally damaged here is me. I'm dealing with a huge devastating loss of my first child, my best buddy, my constant companion while also dealing with the stress of two young kids who don't understand AND a brand new baby. I feel like I've been nothing but nice and communicative to her and this is what I get for it?
I'm angry, I'm tired, and I'm frustrated. Realistically, I don't even have the emotional energy to fight it and I'm seriously considering throwing some money at it and hoping it goes away.
31. One Weird Morning
This has been a really weird morning. I have a five-year-old who stays with me during the weekends. He sleeps all night without any issues, except for the very rare nightmare or sleep talking. Last night, he was the happiest little kid in the world because we put up our Christmas tree. I put him to bed around 9 pm and watched some movies with my fiancée, who lives with me.
Around 3 am, I got sleepy and went to join her in bed. She gets up around 4:30 am to go to work and leaves around 5 am. At 6:30 am, I am awoken by a single low knocking sound. I get up, all sleepy, thinking it’s my kid jumping on the bed. As I exit my room, my heart nearly stopped. I am greeted by four officers staring me down across the hallway.
I don’t immediately register what is going on and wonder if I should serve them a drink. One officer asks me who I am, to which I reply with my full name and ask what is going on. He continues his interrogation, asking if I live with a woman. Fear slowly starts to creep up to me, because I start thinking she was in an accident. I answer that I live with my girlfriend.
The officer asks me if I have a son, to which I reply yes. He asks me where he is. At this point, I lean over the wall and I see my door busted open. I am thinking someone hurt my fiancée and took my kid, so I look at the office, turn, and head down the corridor to his room. I slowly open it, fearing the worst. I see my son in bed, still tucked in and looking at me as if nothing happened.
I come back down the hallway and tell the officer, "He is there, what is going on!?" They tell me to step out into the dining room. I put my hands up as I walk past them. Two officers walk into my room and check inside. I sit at the table and the officer sits next to me as another watches over us. I look to the door and there’s the lady that guards the complex I live in with another lady I have never seen before just peeking into my home.
The officer questioning me tells me someone heard a child crying and called the authorities. He says they got there at 5 am, which would mean they got there just as my fiancée left for work. He claims they called at my door for an hour and a half and no one answered, then they heard “detonations” inside and decided to storm in. They never went outside my window to call me, which would have done the trick.
My apartment has weird acoustics and I cannot hear knocking in the living room from my room. He asks me why I didn’t hear him and I told him I must have been deeply asleep. He asks if I am under the influence and I say I just went to bed late. The officer gives me a case number and tells me to give that to administration so they can fix the door, and they leave.
As the officers leave, I could hear them talking with one of the ladies, who was saying the child was crying too hard for it to be nothing. The cop told her there was no evidence of wrongdoing, and she just couldn’t believe it. I asked my son if he was crying and he said yes. I asked him why, and his reply was totally nonsensical. He said the fan stopped working...
So now I am sitting in an apartment with my son and a broken front door. I fear when I go outside I'll be judged by my neighbors as the child-beater or worse. I have been trying to understand the timeline of events. I went to bed at 3 am and my fiancée got up at 4:30, then left at 5. If the officers got there at 5 am as they claim, then the call must have happened around 3:00-4:30.
My son must have stopped crying before my fiancée got up and didn’t resume his crying for the rest of the night. The officers get here at 5 and hang outside my door until 6:30 when they hear the "detonations," NOT a crying child. My son had no signs of having been crying and he even stood next to me on his own during the questioning. What the heck?
32. It’s My House Now
My girlfriend and I rushed into moving in together, and after two weeks of living together we realized it wasn't going to work. She agreed to move out by the end of February...but now she refuses to leave. I have one bedroom in my apartment, and I am tired of sleeping on my couch. But wait, it gets worse. Lately, she has started denying me entry into my own unit.
She uses the deadbolt on the inside and pretends to not hear me. Last night when I came home around 11 pm, I discovered I couldn't get into my apartment as she had bolted it. After pounding and calling for an hour, she started screaming at me to go away. I ended up calling the authorities, who after talking to her briefly told me to go find somewhere else to stay for the night and said I needed to leave.
I slept all of last night in my car. This morning, after she left for work, I removed the deadbolt from my door. Oh, and the piece de resistance. I also discovered a complete and utter stranger sleeping in my living room, along with another girl passed out in my bed. After I kicked them out, my ex came home and told me I have no right to kick out her guests.
She called the authorities again and the officer said it was a civil issue. Tonight I have a late shift again, and I guarantee you the same thing is going to happen. What am I supposed to do?
33. Back To The Wall
Three nights ago, my parents and I got in a huge fight. I am not a Christian, while they are extreme bible thumpers. I am bi, and they believe I'm going to be burning in the afterlife. I was forced to come out of the closet due to blackmail reasons, and my parents promptly kicked me out. I managed to get my dogs and my keys, took my car, and left.
We just moved to this state so I have no friends. My siblings all have the same beliefs as my parents. My related family is all thousands of miles away. Last night, my parents cut off my phone plan and told me they're kicking me off of their insurance. Right now I am on my own with my two large dogs, a pit bull and an American bulldog, sleeping in my car.
My parents forced me to quit my job last week so I could focus more on school. Last night I checked my bank account. My parents drained the 1k savings I had in it. It is completely empty. I'm just scared and don't know where to turn. I primarily want to be able to take care of my dogs. I do not want to give them up but I'm not sure how much longer I can without neglecting them.
34. No Visitors Allowed
My sister and I have a strained relationship with our mother and have not had contact with her for months. Our mother took it upon herself to show up to my niece's school to have lunch with her and brought her a slushy to drink, without my sister's knowledge or permission. My niece told my sister about it when she got home. My sister called the school and come to find out, our mother is not on the list at all for anything.
So they allowed a stranger into the school and allowed this person to give a drink to a five-year-old all without my sister's knowledge. The principal is calling my sister later and so far they are trying to make it seem like it's not a big deal, but we feel differently. The only thing I can think for her to do is maybe call the school board. They risked my niece's safety and I think they need to realize the gravity of the situation.
35. Bait And Switch
So I put a gaming computer on layaway with Walmart a few weeks ago so I could make payments versus $1,000+ at once. I finally paid it off brought it home, and the motherboard was cracked. So I returned it, and unfortunately, they said that amount was too much for a gift card (as I was going to immediately buy a new one) but since my mom has a Walmart debit card they said it would be available to me immediately.
Well, it immediately locked her account for fraud, so we called the Walmart money people and they said all we needed to do was submit the receipt as proof. We did and called back and the lady said that the receipt wasn’t good enough?? She said that it had a “different balance” on all the receipts but that’s because it was layaway and I made payments!
She told my mother the account may never be unlocked as we did not have sufficient proof? I’m totally distraught, I’m a college student and I don’t have extra funds and this was something I worked hard for.
36. You’re Not In Good Hands
I just started work for the first time since having my daughter two years ago. I left her at a daycare with a group size of 11 and three care providers. On the second day, I got the shock of my life. I was driving and saw her walking down the street several blocks from the daycare with a woman I had never seen before, truly never.
I jumped out and asked what was going on, and the woman said she’d found my daughter a block away walking in the middle of the road. She said was taking her to the station—I have no reason to doubt the woman’s intentions because there was a station on this road. I drove my daughter back to the daycare and the caregivers were unaware she was even missing.
I was in such a state of shock and panic thinking of everything that could have happened to my daughter if she had not been discovered by a Good Samaritan. I just calmly asked questions, gathered information, wrote it all down, and sent it in an email to the owner to get a timestamp and confirmation of the events, as well as notify them we would be withdrawing her.
This occurred last week and I have yet to receive a response from them, despite the seriousness of the situation. I would like to know if I can take action against them for endangering my daughter and if I can alert the other parents as to what occurred so they can keep their little ones safe, without opening myself up to slander charges.
37. Think Of The Children
I get my daughter every other weekend. She’s nine years old and her mother bought her a cell phone, obviously to keep tabs on my daughter. This weekend, we were watching a movie when I got a text from my ex-wife asking to speak to my daughter. Now, I don’t attach myself to my phone (unless I’m working) and I got the text about 30 minutes after it came through.
When I saw it, I told my daughter that her mom wants to speak to her and I also texted my ex, saying that we were watching a movie but that I told our daughter that she wants to talk. The movie ended around 9:10 pm and I had my daughter go shower/brush teeth/go to bed. I told her I’d be up to tuck her in. I went into my daughter's room at about 9:40 and she was on the phone with her mother.
Her mother was SCREAMING into the phone “YOU TELL HIM SCREW YOU!” I took the phone from my daughter and I said to my ex-wife that she was acting very inappropriately and that if she has a problem with me she should bring it up with me, not our daughter. She yelled at me about not allowing our daughter to use her phone, which isn’t true at all.
I asked her to calm down and to keep in mind the effect her words are having on our daughter. My ex was furious and was breathing heavily, obviously biting her tongue. I handed the phone back to my daughter, and said loudly enough for my ex-wife to hear “Daddy is going to leave the room now, please don’t stay on the phone long, it’s way past your bedtime".
I had to get my stepson to bed anyway. I walked by my daughter’s room maybe 10/15 minutes later and she’s repeating “I’m sorry” into the phone. I fought my instinct to take that phone away because of the torment my daughter was experiencing. I walked downstairs to do some chores and distract myself from my anger. It wasn’t until 10:50 that my daughter came downstairs. She had obviously been crying and was exhausted.
I sat with her in her room, prayed with her, and tried to talk to her about what happened. She was really upset and wouldn’t speak much. I hugged her. My daughter told me there were 11 missed calls from her mother and that her mother said she was just worried about her. I’m sick of my limited time with my daughter being questioned. Divorce is hard enough on children, and I think my ex-wife is making it a lot harder on my daughter than it needs to be.
38. A Work Of Art
My boyfriend’s sister-in-law mistreated and over-medicated her autistic child, so I called Child Protective services on her months ago. I was living up there near his family and long story short, when I drove home for the holidays, it was just supposed to be a short trip but all chaos broke loose and my boyfriend quickly packed everything we owned and followed me down a few days later.
However, he forgot this one painting that has been in the family for over 100 years that my grandfather gave to me before he passed 14 years ago. Well, my sister-in-law and her husband then sent me a video. Its contents made me rage. It was them setting the painting on fire and saying, “this is for calling CPS, witch". They’re both clearly seen in the video and called it a priceless painting.
This was literally my most prized possession and my heart is in so many pieces because my grandfather gave it to me so long ago. I would give everything I own just to get it back.
39. Fight Fire With Fire
I have been accused of a litany of perversions, some against children, because of the way I dress. My neighbor is so adamant about all of this she's got me a bit worried. About a month ago, I moved in with my sister and her boyfriend into a neighborhood that's mostly families. I didn't expect any trouble. My first introduction to this woman, let's call her Karen, was my first week here.
I went to check the mail and I wasn't wearing a bra. I had on a baggy t shirt and basketball shorts, though. Karen is one of those Southern women who spend all day in their yards, pretending to garden, but are really spying on their neighbors. You know the type. She waved at me and I waved back, trying to be pleasant. She came at me, I thought to make a proper introduction, or whatever, but she started lecturing me about not having on a bra.
It was creepy and weird. I am not at all well-endowed, I go without frequently and so far, no one seems to pick up on it, but not Karen. Karen urged me to think of her children and Jesus, who was always watching, and my parents (bless their hearts) she knows they raised me better than this. It was so goddarn weird, I felt like laughing in her face, but I didn't want there to be any issues so I said I'd be more diligent in the future and Karen went about her business.
Well, wearing a bra wasn't good enough for Karen, y'all, oh no. Not only is blasting my nips lewd, so are regular women's shorts and any form-fitting type of bottoms even if they cover my sinful legs. Karen seems to have an issue with the lower half of my body. While chest is small and humble, I am "aesthetic" from the waist down.
The second time Karen confronted me, her brood was playing in the street, and any semblance of pleasantness was gone. She threatened to call the authorities on me for indecent exposure in front of her children, insinuated I got off on arousing her tween boys, called me a hussy, a Jezebel, and said that I needed Jesus. Because I was wearing jean shorts.
We live in a nice area, lots of woods, by lakes and parks and I like to go out for walks, but it seems every time I step foot out of my door, there’s Karen making snide remarks or gossiping with other bored housewives. It's getting annoying. So I got my revenge. I got dressed up in my skimpiest daisy dukes that barely cover my butt and give me legit camel toe, plus I wore a half shirt with no bra on and my abs exposed to check the mail (I do not regularly dress like this).
I must have been quite a sight to Karen, who immediately stormed over once she spotted me, nearly knocking over her lawn chair she stood up so fast. She started laying into me. I just stood there letting her bump her gums for a minute, then I said, "You can stop the games, Karen. I see the way you look at me, I know you want me".
Her face went beet red and she stammered out, "I'll pray for you". Then scurried away. Actually went inside her house.
40. Water Under The Bridge
My girlfriend is a type-1 diabetic and has a heart condition called dysautonomia where her doctor requires her to drink above 120 ounces of water a day. Sometimes she can get dizzy and fall over, however only for a couple of seconds. My girlfriend isn't a quitter, she is very outgoing and won't use her conditions in the wrong way. She's also only 16. But one day, she got a phone call from her manager explaining that she will most likely be fired.
She told her that she should be able to go four hours without water and said she isn't entitled to water while working. She's job hunting now and quitting soon.
41. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I was eating at a diner with some friends at 3 am, and the guy in the booth next to us started coughing and gagging. I realized he was choking and went to help him, since I had Heimlich training at my place of work. The guy managed to get the thing out and it flew across the booth. He looked really angry, paid his bill, and left. I felt like a little hero the rest of the dinner and then just kind of forgot about it. Until the most ridiculous thing happened.
Today I got a letter from a lawyer saying that I’m getting sued for battery. They said I bruised a rib when I did this. I have no clue how this guy figured out who I am. I thought I helped the guy seeing as he probably would have choked without help.
42. Heart-Stopping Problem
I should first and foremost say that this happened about 10 years ago, so at this point, I doubt it's possible to do anything about the situation. When I was 16, my mom was driving me to a friend's house when her defibrillator started shocking her repeatedly every few seconds. She thought it was just doing its job, until the shocking continued where it surpassed 40 shocks at 600 volts.
This led to severe heart damage and required multiple open-heart surgeries to fix. It turned out that the wires that connected to her box malfunctioned and were sending signals that her heartbeat was off. It could be some form of PTSD I suffered from seeing my mom nearly die in my arms, but her defibrillator almost triggered again today and it brought back those memories.
She told me that her and my dad tried to pinpoint who was responsible (the company who made the wires, the defibrillator company, etc.) but all of the doctors she saw denied responsibility. I feel like she suffered so much and was given absolutely zero compensation for what happened. It makes me furious knowing how much pain she went through and nothing was done about it.
43. Sticky Situation
I currently have a restraining order against me, and turns out the girl who has the restraining order against me just got hired at the company I work for. I know this because I’ve seen her in the lobby of the building. She has told me that if I don’t leave the job she will call the authorities on me. I probably won’t be able to get another job at this time, especially with my background.
44. Going Above And Beyond
My wife had surgery recently to remove a kidney stone. While she was in surgery, the doctor noticed a small buildup of scar tissue related to the childbirth she had a few months before. He called in a gynecologist and she removed the scar tissue. This was explained to me after her surgery was over, while she was in the recovery room. But this was actually very bad news.
Insurance covered the kidney stone removal but did not cover the removal of scar tissue. The bill for that procedure by itself is $4,000. That procedure was never in the scope of the original surgery, neither of us consented to having it done, and it was not medically necessary or related to the kidney stone removal. Do we have a case to make this $4,000 go away?
45. Car Trouble
I recently came back from college and I couldn't get a parking decal from my property manager's office since they're closed currently. However, I was able to get into contact with someone and was given an online permit to prove that my car can park there. This is an official permit that I paid for and doesn't expire for months. However, my car gets towed EVERY time at 2 am and I have to pay the driver $60 every morning despite showing him my decal.
He says although the decal is official, the head of my HOA who lives in my neighborhood keeps reporting my car to get it towed and once he gets the order I have to pay him to get my car back. As much as I hate to be this person, I am the only Black person in my community and this guy has made it clear that he doesn't like my family living there and had always given us a hard time since he moved in three years ago, even though my family has lived here for over 23 years.
I have no idea how to contact HOA or the property manager as my mother deals with them, and every time the car was getting towed except the last time, she was the one to catch them and pay. I will be contacting the HOA with her when she gets home and will try and contact the property manager. My neighbor is a jerk and I will also be speaking to him personally when I get home.
46. Miracle Babies
My ex-wife is suing me for child support…but I don't even have the “equipment". I lost it when I was 14 due to a major health problem. I married a woman who at the time claimed to be asexual, however eventually she told me that she was pregnant with twins with a man she was sleeping with. We divorced before the children were born. This is now four years later.
So I received a letter in the mail that said I'm being sued for child support. The children are definitely not mine and we divorced before they were even born. I'm in a horrible situation, my health is very poor and my finances are very, very limited. I'm barely affording to survive here.
47. A Scorned Man
A new neighbor bought a house across the street about six months ago. A few weeks back, I was working in the garage when I saw h+im take his dog directly across the street, into my front yard. He let it pee in my yard and then walked straight home. He didn't notice me—my garage is set up as a shop and is pretty busy, and the garage door is up a lot—but this piqued my interest because it's weird.
Now, my wife and I have a dog so there are a few dog droppings from her that we pick up on a regular basis. My wife had been doing the dooty duty recently, so I asked her if there are more piles than normal. Sure enough, she said there had been a ton for a while now. She figured it was jerks walking their dogs and letting them poop on our lawn.
I figured it was our new weirdo neighbor. It happened again around a week later: I was in the garage as the neighbor took his dog into our lawn. This time the dog dropped a deuce and he started to walk away without picking it up. I called out to him, asking him if he needs a plastic bag to pick up after his dog, and he avoided eye contact and scurried back home. But I wasn’t about to give up that easily.
I went across the street and knocked on his door. He didn't answer. We then set up a security camera to discretely watch the front lawn and I kept an eye out for when he was next out in his yard so I could talk to him. I reviewed the footage over the next few days and, sure enough, he was consistently taking his dog to do the deed in our yard. Why our yard? No clue, we've never had any interaction with this guy whatsoever.
The next time I saw him walking to his car, I confronted him. I simply told him that I knew he was taking his dog to poop in our yard and if I caught him doing it again I'd call the authorities to report him for trespassing. He denied doing it, claiming it must be other neighbors. Then he got in his car and drove away with me standing in his driveway.
So I review the footage from the last few days. The tapes made my jaw drop. Dude is not walking his dog into my yard anymore: he's letting the dog poop in his yard…he then scoops it up, walks it across the street, and tosses it into my yard with a shovel. What the absolute heck is going on here. How do I even begin handling this?
48. Little Girl Lost
For the past seven months after moving into my new house with my daughter and dogs, the neighbors’ 16-year-old child, who has pretty severe Down Syndrome, has increasingly been entering my property and home. At first I just talked to the neighbors and they were really sorry and vowed to monitor her more while she's in their backyard.
However, after a few months they just genuinely do not care anymore and brush it off. But it took a turn for the worse. I've installed security cameras in the backyard and front yard purely for my own safety insurance-wise because we do have a pool. She will climb the fence into my yard with a ladder from their shed and let my dogs out.
I've fixed her letting my dogs "free," as she says, by using chains and padlocks on the two gates. Before this became a common occurrence, she even would let the dogs out of the house and then "free" them. Numerous times if my garage door is open, she will leave their backyard and just walk into my house to “free” my dogs. I don't know what the purpose is other than it's something she just has to do for whatever reason.
When she climbs into the backyard (sometimes when I'm not even home) and she cannot get back out, she begins screaming and crying and just shuts down. Before I started chaining and locking my gates because of her releasing my dogs, her parents would just walk in and get her and leave. Now since I've chained it, they took it up a notch.
They start a huge fit about me having her locked in my backyard and they have to climb the fence, bring the ladder over and carry her back over. Somehow this is my fault. Now I'm not really blaming her because she mentally doesn't know any better. Still, she’s lucky my dogs are super nice. I just honestly worry about her safety in the backyard, climbing fences and her seemingly not being watched as she needs to be.
I have a pool and if she falls in when I'm not home she could very well drown. That's why I installed security cameras to cover my own butt if that ever happens. I truly hope it never does but it seems her parents just put her in the backyard and that's it. I've called the local child and family services office (CPS) several times in the past two months to report it because I feel she is at risk with her parents inattentiveness and their seemingly not caring attitude of her just going into people's yards, garages, houses etc.
I have a full garage of power tools, table saws, etc. that I've now had to resort to flipping the breaker off when I open the doors out of fear she may severely injure herself. I feel like I've done everything I can, talked to the parents numerous times, called child and family services, installed cameras, locked my gates further. I just have no idea what to do now? I've debated calling the authorities when she enters but I don't know how that will escalate.
49. Get OUT
I think my boyfriend has been secretly drugging me for a while now and is gaslighting me. I know this is going to be hard to explain, but I have been having gaps in memory that I have been explaining away as being tired, or overworked, or whatever else. I was going to ask my boyfriend about it, since he is a doctor, but then I started to notice one chilling thing.
This seems to happen when I go on dates with him. I know it must be crazy, but I have woken up with dried…stuff…on my chest several times with no memory of the night before. I know it’s him, too. The first time it happened was when we were drinking and I wrote it off as too much to drink. But then there were a few times when I KNOW we were not drinking.
I decided to break up with him over it…only to suddenly find myself on a date with him a few days later. I had not yet had the conversation to break up with him, but planned on it next time I talked with him. I remember being at the restaurant, but nothing before that. My car and his car was in the parking lot too so I was confused. I decided to play along when he asked me to come back to his place.
After three days at his place I remembered everything so I was starting to trust him again. I was going to ask him about my memory issues when he randomly pointed to these red bumps on my thigh and said I should be treating those sores. I had completely forgotten they were there. These little red bumps that look like needle injections that got infected. I got so freaked out he mentioned them that I decided to leave.
The next day he came over to “Check on me” and I remember waking up in bed with no memories. Then today he met me for lunch saying we had agreed to meet. I never agreed to meet with him and would never want to now. He does this all the time, saying we agreed to do something I have no memory of. I am sick and tired of it and want him punished.
This has started to affect my work life as well as I start to get paranoid when I see a boss walk into a room after making eye contact with me. I get paranoid that they are about to fire me. My friends also state I have been acting strangely and out of character. I have even begun to lose sleep and sleepwalk when I do. Is there a way to have blood work done to see what kind of drug he is using on me?
50. Psycho: The True Story
In October 2020, my husband and I were renting in a duplex where my father-in-law owned the half we lived in, and a separate family (an adult daughter acting as a caregiver to an elderly mother) owned the other half. We brought our son home from the NICU in August, and towards the end of September, the caretaker neighbor started to pound on the shared wall if she could hear him cry.
The pounding escalated over the next two months. And then it took a cruel twist. The younger caretaker neighbor bought a megaphone to yell through the wall and threatened to “rip us apart". She called us child predators, and she’d yell threats until 3 or 4 in the morning. The authorities were called multiple times, but nothing could be done about it.
One officer told us “The threats don’t mean anything if you don’t actually do it". The elderly mother hadn’t been seen in several months, but requests for wellness checks were brushed off. The general advice I got was that as renters, we couldn’t do anything. It was also suggested that this was reasonable behavior, since the crying baby was probably really annoying.
Eventually, we moved in with my grandmother for our safety. This was after the neighbor busted a softball-sized hole through the shared wall to scream at us, and occasionally just stare at us. But the outcome to this was almost indescribably wild. See, the smell that came out of the hole was awful. We should have known something was up then.
Our security cameras also recorded her coming to my son’s nursery window at around 2 am almost daily, just staring and holding her cat. It took until the end of January for the authorities to be able to enter her property. When they arrived, they discovered that the elderly mother had been deceased since at least June, and the daughter had the body dressed in her Sunday best, rotting in a deadbolted bedroom.
The news article said the mother passed from natural causes. The daughter was taken to an inpatient psychiatric facility.
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