Expectations: Meet reality. There’s nothing quite like the whiplash we experience when we plan for one thing and the exact opposite happens. From schools and workplaces installing rules that totally backfired, to trying to impress a crush and making an absolute fool of yourself, these best-laid plans went completely awry.
1. How Do You Say ‘Stupid’ in French?
I had a crazy French teacher who banned getting out of your seat during class for any reason. She was constantly handing out detentions for things as inconsequential as walking to the trash can to throw away a piece of paper. She absolutely could not deal with the fact that we periodically might need to actually leave our chairs for a perfectly valid and harmless reason.
One day, she accidentally locked herself out of the classroom and nobody would let her back in. "Sorry! We aren't allowed to get out of our seats!"
2. Two’s Company
I had a friend years ago who was a bit self-centered and prone to stretching the truth. But he was a nice enough guy with a rough back story and my friend group liked him, so I cut him a lot of slack. I like to host and I have friends staying over pretty regularly. Back then, I usually had one or two people spending the night at my place on any given day. Little did I know, my kindness would backfire—horribly.
Anyhow, over the span of a couple of years, this guy started taking advantage of that—staying over for days or even weeks at a time, eating my food and drinking my drinks without contributing, that sort of thing. And all of this while constantly talking about his grand plans and daydreams about the future, as if they had already happened.
At first this was a little sad, but it also became pretty annoying after a while. Anyhow, I sit him down one day and let him know that he's gotta head home. I told him that he's free to come over and hang out any time he wants, but I'm not comfortable with him staying over for the time being. He leaves, I think it went remarkably well, and I head out to work the next morning. I had no clue what was coming.
Later that day, he broke into my place while I was away at work and swiped a bunch of my sister's things because "his birthday was coming up and neither of us even thought about getting him a gift". It takes a special person to rationalize how burglarizing someone is really their fault. Anyway, all slack and sympathy went out the window immediately.
I called the authorities to report him, and I no longer associate with him in any way.
3. No Means Yes
I worked at Starbucks for like 5+ years before and during undergrad and at one point our district manager thought it was a good idea to implement a "just say yes" policy, where we literally weren't allowed to tell the customer no. It lasted for about three months and in that three months, our unaccounted product and waste went up over 300% because when the point of sale system didn't have a way to punch in a customer request, we had to just do it anyways.
We also got complaints from stores in surrounding districts because they had angry customers who were requesting things that were against local food service code, and told them that we did it for them at our store. I knew exactly how that policy was going to play out and I just laughed every time management was freaking out about the problems it was causing.
4. One Wild Ride
After a date, I dropped the girl off in the parking lot where her car was parked. We said goodbye to each other and parted ways without a kiss, as it was our first date. As she got out and began walking across the parking lot, I suddenly got the courage to whip my car around, stop it right in front of her, get out, and kiss her.
In my head, it was going to be like something out of a movie. In real life, I pulled up to her, forgot to put the car in park, got out, walked away from the car, watched her look at me in horror and point, turned around, and ran towards my car as it slammed into another parked car. Just a typical day in my life really…
5. We Don’t Support That Rule
My high school principal was known for sending girls home to change if their bra straps were showing. In my sophomore year, he tried to send one of my classmates home, but she knew just how to put him in his place. She was like, "Nah, I've got a change of clothes, no need to send me home". So she went to the bathroom, took her bra off, and made a show of putting it in her locker.
Well, she sparked a whole revolution. The principal was mad, but couldn't do anything about it since she technically was following the dress code. It became a thing. Like, hundreds of teen girls removing their bra at school or just showing up braless as a big screw you to the principal.
6. Give Me A Break
I worked for a company that had mandatory one-hour lunch breaks. Since we ate on the premises, our lunch break was often 15 minutes or so. We tried negotiating having shorter lunch breaks so we could leave earlier and beat traffic. The next day an e-mail was sent from the owner, stating the fixed work and break hours for the whole team, and they were to be followed with no exceptions.
Cool! Next week, a big client called about halfway through our lunch, and nobody moved. It rang and rang until said owner took the call, talked to them, and immediately came to scold us. "Sorry, boss, as per your rules, we are off until 1 PM, no exceptions". A couple of weeks later, we did some work on site for the same client.
They were, to be honest, one of the coolest clients I ever had in my life. They took us out to lunch, and while talking, we ended up relaying the owner's rule. They had a big chuckle over it, and while the project lasted, they made a point to always call while we were at lunch break just to annoy the owner.
7. Dinner Is Served
To celebrate our fifth Valentine's Day together, I was going to recreate our ever first meal together over candlelight. It was chicken patties with marinara sauce and mozzarella melted on top, along with pasta and a Dole bagged salad. In the days leading up to it, when she asked what I was going to do, I told her I was going to make a special meal. Her reaction broke my heart.
She laughed and said, "You’ll probably just make the same food we had years ago or something dumb like that". Needless to say, I had to change to plan B. For the record, my wife is a very sweet lady. She was laughing about me being predictable, not just trying to be mean or hurt my feelings or anything like that.
8. Personal Choice
When I was about 3-4, my aunt tried teaching me a lesson. It totally backfired on her. I used to stay with her a lot as a kid because she lived in a caravan and it was cool. Plus, it gave my parents a free weekend every once in a while. One day, in the car on the way back from shopping, my aunt decides to have some real talk. She says to me, "if someone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, you say no. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to".
Now, of course, my aunt was saying this in reference to substances and peer pressure and other things like that. Unfortunately for my aunt, I took this a bit too literally. We got back from shopping and she asked me to take in a few things with me. My immediate response was, "No, I don’t want to do this and you can’t make me," and I trotted off inside.
My aunt told my mum and she couldn’t help but laugh. In fact, my mum still laughs about it to this day.
9. In The Deep End
When I was a kid, I was at a local river. My friend pushes me into the river, and naturally, I came up spluttering and a little red in the face, but it was all in good fun. For the rest of the day, I planned to get her back, waiting for my opportunity to push her in, until she was at the edge of the river drying off. I pushed her—and it couldn’t have gone worse.
Her flailing and the slippery nature of the rocks she was on made her slip on the spot, and instead of just splashing into the water, she landed on her back, hitting the rocks hard, and then fell into the water. She was winded, but thankfully otherwise unharmed. Our parents were furious at me, and I spent the few seconds it took to get her out just hoping I hadn't broken her back or something.
2/10 revenge. Would not do it again.
10. Teaching Her A Lesson
I'm a teacher. A parent of a former student contacted me in an emergency situation, couldn't afford to pay bills, and needed help. She was super helpful to me in my first year teaching, so I asked friends and family to help out and raised her about $2,000. Never again. She has contacted me every few weeks since then, always with some new reason as to why she needs more money.
When I offer food and clothing resources, she refuses it. She insists upon cash only. It has placed me in such an awkward situation and I regret ever trying to help her out in the first place.
11. Under Pressure
I cooked a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner for an ex of mine back in 2002 or so. I was making some sort of chicken dish. I put it in a pot to cook. Meanwhile, my girl and I were hanging out in the bedroom while it was cooking. Let’s just say we got a little "preoccupied" for the next little while. Then, a few minutes later, I suddenly thought "Uh oh, the chicken!" and went running downstairs to check on it.
I ran into the kitchen completely unclothed and grabbed the lid off. Apparently, I had unknowingly used my roommate’s pressure cooker. I didn’t actually know what a pressure cooker was at the time, but I definitely do now! I forced the lid open and got boiling water all over my stomach, arms, and private area. I spent the rest of that Valentine's Day in the emergency room getting burns treated.
12. This Round’s On Me
We couldn't buy drinks at lunch with cash money. Instead, we had to buy these vouchers. They were just cheaply made laminated pieces of paper. This was 2001, I was 13 and bored. I scanned the vouchers and printed them out on paper that kind of matched the color of the vouchers and laminated them myself. They were horribly made and not even the right color on the backside.
I "made" about a hundred of them and passed them out after I tried paying with them myself and encountered no problems. Made some new friends and upped production. Took them about three weeks to find out, but by then the fakes ones had intermingled with the real ones and had already been resold to students via the student office. About half of the vouchers sold were fakes.
Drinks were cash only from then on. They had no choice to accept the fakes one for a little while longer though, as they had sold and charged people for some of them.
13. Stand Up For Your Right To Sit Down
We got a new manager for our office. She was an outside hire and was trying to prove herself quickly, and she was obsessed with efficiency. So, her first week here she sent out this very rudely worded email about employees eating at our desks. We have a very small break area of four tables and we have about 300 employees here. She said that we all had to stop eating at our desks, because, "it was not efficient to eat and try to work at the same time".
Through a coordinated effort by some of the sassier people at the office, they all had their lunches at the same time and filled the break room with about 90 people. Elbow to elbow, and they all ate standing up. Literally, the next day after that happened, she sent out a follow-up email saying that we could eat at our desks but she advised us to take a break from our work from time to time. It was pretty funny.
14. What Are You Trying to Tell Me?
One time, I wanted to do something romantic for my girlfriend. So, I decided to sign her up for painting lessons as a surprise present because I knew that she was getting into painting. She took the gift to mean that I thought her painting sucked. She never took the lessons, and I never got my money back either.
15. Better Luck Next Time
I was a young lad, about eight or nine I think, and I was at the local park riding my bike around. There was a big hill next to the basketball court that you could catch some pretty sweet speed going down. This girl I knew came to the park with her mom to play around and after a while, they sat down at the bench to relax.
I was the focal point of their field of view, so I decided there was no better time to show off my sweet biking skills. I pedal to the top of the hill and start to ride down. Thinking I'd ramp up the difficulty level I start to pedal pretty quickly down the hill. There was a little lip at the bottom of the hill just before the basketball court, so with enough speed, I figured I could show this little lady what sweet air really looks like in person.
I hit the dirt lip and went over the handlebars with all the grace of a paraplegic trying to do the high jump. I face-planted on the concrete basketball court and had some nice gashes on my face. She and her mom gasp and proceed to walk over to check on me. I got onto my bike as fast as I could and choked out an "I'm ok, no big deal".
All the while trying to swallow back the tears of pain and shame. I rode off until I was out of earshot and let the crying commence in earnest. It's always served as a life lesson in how not to act cool in front of the ladies.
16. Chalk It Up To Experience
Way back in elementary school, a friend threw a piece of chalk that hit me square in the forehead. It was the most humiliating moment for younger me, as everyone who saw that started laughing their butts off, and kids are jerks. I plotted and planned my revenge to get my friend back in the exact same fashion over the next couple of days.
One fine day, weapon in hand, I find him perfectly placed at a chalk-throw away from me. I yell out his name and quickly launch the projectile as he spins around. For some reason, he had his mouth open as he looked at me and the piece of chalk flew directly into his throat. His eyes widen and he starts choking. I stood frozen in shock as he fell on his knees coughing.
Luckily, somebody grabbed him from behind and thumped his back, so he swallowed the piece. An adult walks in, and she looks at me and asks what happened. At this point I'm shaking, realizing that I nearly took my friend's life. I tell the adult it was a mint he choked on. My friend, also shaken at this point, laughs it off saying it went straight into his throat and he didn't taste it.
The adult shakes her head and says next time just hand it like a normal person and walked away. Years later when we were moving away to another country, I remind him about the incident and come clean about the whole thing. He snaps and yells, "I knew it!"
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17. Risk Factor
My youngest boy would never listen and he was always totally fearless. He was also always really lucky. Nearly every time either of us told him, "don't do that, you're going to get hurt," he would do it and then not get hurt. So, we ended up inadvertently teaching him that when we said not to do something that probably meant it was a fun thing to do.
I remember really hoping that he would fall and break an arm or something non-life-threatening or disabling like that so he would stop constantly giving us heart attacks, which is weird to say as a parent, but it never happened so it doesn't matter anyway. He never got anything worse than a small scrape or cut that could be cleaned and covered in five minutes before he was back at it again.
Looking back, I'm just glad this was before there weren’t any movies or TV shows where they do stupid stunts for fun around to further encourage that behavior. Now he's a stunt man for movies. I can't say I'm surprised.
18. A Long Way Down
When I was in ninth grade, a kid ruthlessly tormented me for a few months. I had gotten sick of it and devised a plan for revenge—but it went so wrong. Every Wednesday, we would get to sit outside for "quiet reading time," and this kid would always go back inside to go to the bathroom. I had left and waited in the bathroom for him, peeking under the stall for his shoes to appear.
He came in the bathroom, peed, then played on his Gameboy for the rest of reading time. The bell rang and he walked out to the crowded stairwell, still looking down at his Gameboy. I bumped into him, and he fell face first down the stairs—and knocked out four front teeth. Everyone on the stairs assumed he fell because he was playing his Gameboy. I feel pretty bad about it.
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19. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
I once decided to make a bold move with a close lady friend of mine. I invited her over for a home-cooked meal on Valentine's Day at my lousy college apartment since neither of us were seeing anyone at the time. Pretty smooth move, right? I thought so. So, I cooked a pork loin and some pasta with something or other on the side.
I also purchased an expensive $12 bottle of vino. "She'll be here any minute," I kept telling myself as I waited. At around 9:00 in the evening, there was still no sign of her. I finally decided to text her. Her response made my blood run cold. She told me that she had assumed my invitation was just a joke. That’s definitely what you want to hear in that situation, right?
Believe it or not, she did eventually—albeit sheepishly—show up at my place once I explained that I had actually meant it. I think she was totally surprised and caught off guard. So, even though the initial romantic gesture backfired, the evening wasn’t a complete failure! We are now married, and I remind her of this story every Valentine's Day.
20. On the Rocks
During my senior year of high school, I had a girlfriend who I had been going out with for a while. With graduation getting closer and closer and each of us having different plans for our futures, things between us were starting to get tense and our relationship was feeling pretty rocky. After enduring this situation for a while, I decided to do something romantic to smooth things over again. What a mistake.
There were these really tall cliffs over the lake in the town we lived in. Our first official date was there, and in the early days of our relationship, we spent a lot of dates at those cliffs. When things got rocky, we hadn’t gone to them in a while. I thought that heading over there with her would be a great way to revitalize our relationship.
It was really still and there was fog over the lake. It’s a Great Lake, so it’s massive and it was unusual for there not to be at least some waves. We were sitting on the beach under the cliffs. She seemed happy and asked why I had wanted to come here. I explained my reasoning to her. I looked over to her and her face was in her hands. She said she wanted to break up.
So yeah, that was rough. But it’s been a few years, so now I can look back at it and laugh.
21. Nothing Comes For Free
When I was 17 or 18, I worked with a girl I had a huge crush on. She was around 25 or so, but I really had a thing for her and she knew it. One day, she asked me if I'd like to go shopping with her, and I, of course, said I'd love to spend some time with her. I assumed I'd hang out and watch her try on clothes or something. We went to the mall and I walked around with her, she tried on a bunch of stuff.
Before she added anything to her basket, she'd ask me if she should get it and I'd reply "Sure, it looks great on you!" She probably had $500 worth of stuff. When we got to the counter and the cashier rang it all up, she started looking at me. Then a horrible realization hit me. She expected me to pay for it...17 or 18-year-old me was smart enough to know I was being used, and I shook my head.
She got angry and yelled at me in the store for embarrassing her and said if I really liked her I'd prove it by buying her stuff. I was really devastated someone I liked so much was such a bad person. I told some friends about it while drinking and being mopey, and they encouraged me to get payback. That's when I thought up a devious plan to get back at her.
I went over to her place and apologized for not treating her like I cared about her. I offered to take her back out and make things right. While she went to get dressed, I pulled a credit card out of her purse. We went to the store and she grabbed a bunch of stuff, me saying yes to everything. She bought $700 worth of stuff. We went out to eat and spent another $100. When we got back to her place, she didn't thank me, but said maybe if I treated her the way she deserved to be treated the first time around, something could have happened between us.
However, since I didn't know how to treat a lady, we could never be more than friends. I pulled out her credit card and handed it to her, saying, "Here's your card back". Then I turned around and walked away.
22. Unsubscribe!
My spouse's workplace realized they didn't have a policy about sending vulgar images or jokes as part of their email acceptable use policy, so they added it. Except they made it a firing offense to send or receive vulgar content. I think the intent was to stop people from subscribing to such content. They also said that your access would be immediately revoked until a determination was made.
So, someone got fired at my job for something else and decided to send their whole management chain a vulgar explicit image, then report it using the anonymous tip line. IT got the report, concluded they did indeed receive vulgar content, and did as required—suspended all the involved email accounts.
23. Ring Around The Rosie
The bottom floor of my secondary school was a square that had a corridor all the way around. After some incident where a kid got knocked over, they implemented a one-way system. Unfortunately, they were Very Strict on enforcing it. If you accidentally walked past your class, you couldn't just turn around. They seemed very proud of their new rule...until everyone started showing up late for class because they had to do extra laps of the bottom floor.
24. Secret Source
I’m a janitor. I once had a new manager come into my former place of employment. Immediately, this new manager starts firing people for nonsense reasons and hiring people from her old job to replace them. The walls in that place talked, and few noticed the janitor—so when I heard rumors of the next heads on the chopping block, one of which was mine, I decided to be nice and help out the other two.
I considered them good friends, and it was the least I could do, right? I warn one, and he takes it seriously and begins looking for another job. So when the pink slip arrived, he landed on his feet running. The other promptly goes squealing to the manager in question, who uses it as an excuse to fire me. But karma came calling—can't say I did warn him. She then proceeds to fire the person who had squealed.
All three jobs were quickly filled by her old friends from her previous job, exactly as I had predicted. I've refused to lift a finger to help a coworker out ever since. I've had plenty of advanced warnings of firings and disciplinary hearings and other juicy gossip. People for some reason think I hear with my eyes and assume that they can talk in front of me and I won't notice.
I'm going blind, people, not deaf! But either way, I've kept all the secrets to myself. Screw 'em all!
25. Unwanted Guests
I liked a girl in high school so I decided to throw a party and invite my entire class over in order to make her think I was cool. So, everyone came over and we were all having a great time. I thought my plan was going to work out perfectly. Then it all backfired when I walked into my guest room and saw the girl in question making out with a classmate…
26. Just Get A Burner Phone
My company used to be a small start-up. In my first year, I was the Project Manager and Architect for a global system rollout. I put in my vacation days for Burning Man six months out (in February), and my PTO was approved. Then a few months later (~June) my boss (who had been head of the IT department) got a new boss (new head of IT).
With a month to go until Burning Man, the new head of IT told me that my project rollout was too important for me to be uncontactable at all and that I would need to take a satellite phone to Burning Man or my vacation would be canceled. We were still three months from go live but he decided that we were at a critical moment that I had to be available for.
However, neither my boss nor the new head of IT wanted to carry out the daily $18/minute satellite phone calls with me, probably because they knew it was violating some labor law. So they got one of the guys in the London office to call me in the Black Rock Desert each day. I said I wouldn’t take the calls before 1 pm, which was 9 pm for our man in London.
Every day he called he had had a few beers, and didn’t give a care about project updates, he just wanted to know what parties I’d been to and what art I’d seen.
27. Lesson on Lady Parts
My sister-in-law has a four-year-old daughter who was asking her tons of questions about her own crotch so she taught her all the different parts. Two days later while in the grocery store, the daughter starts screaming at the top of her lungs, "LAAAAAAABIA, I HAVE LABIA!!!!"
28. Paying Their Fair Share
In my freshman year of college, my friend of about two years got kicked out of his parents’ house. He said he needed somewhere to stay "for the night" till his parents cooled off. I told him he could stay a week if he wanted, but that for longer than that he would need to pay me rent. The guy made pretty good money, even more than I did actually.
I was kind of hoping to find someone to split the bills with anyway. A week rolls by and he hasn't even looked for another place. His parents aren't letting him come back. I ask him if he's going to stay, and he says, "If it's alright with you". I say, "Sure, just pay me half the cost of the apartment every month". He said he can't, even though I know darn well he can.
I say, "Well then you gotta go". He asked if he could stay for just another week. I said no. He got angry at me for that. I then got angry at him for getting angry at me. I gave you a place to stay and you are mad at me??? Totally ended the friendship. Never let anyone into your place unless they have a signed contract.
29. Cooking Up A Storm
My mother and her new husband had moved into a new place and invited all the "kids" over for Christmas. In previous years, we would buy a whole turkey dinner from somewhere so that I didn’t have to cook. So imagine my surprise when my husband and I walk in, my mother walks out of the kitchen, hands me a spoon, and says, "Good, you're finally here!"
She then went to sit down in the living room. After a quick and awkward conversation, it was made clear to me that she had deemed me in charge of making sure everything currently in progress or not even started got onto the table on time, while everyone else socialized. Basically, I was the help and should have realized that, so any feelings I had about that were my fault.
After all, I owed her, right? I was a good cook, and my mother had taught me everything I knew about cooking. Or so she claimed. I didn’t protest and took care of the dinner as she had requested. But this was just the beginning of her insanity. Not knowing the family dynamics, my new step siblings were very thankful and appreciative of all my efforts. This caused a meltdown from my mother about how we all should be thanking HER.
That was the first time I ever used a phrase that has come in handy for these situations, "I'm so sorry, it will never happen again". And it never did. They weren't happy when they finally realized what that meant…
30. Movin’ Out
Alright, my time to shine. I once had a friend, let’s call him Mark. Mark was going through a breakup and needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks while he landed a new apartment. I had just bought a place with enough room to share, so I said sure. Honestly, I was just happy to see him getting out of the tumultuous relationship, so I was happy to do whatever I could to help.
Their lease was running out for them, and he just wanted to spend the last few weeks searching up for a new spot instead of fighting with his girlfriend. I sympathized and told him he could crash here. Well, a few days later, the couple "worked out their differences," and "decided to keep trying". The lease was still running out though…
So they asked if they could both stay here for those two weeks while they searched. They promised they would keep to my spare room and only bring the minimum of things they needed. At least that’s what they said. They assured me that I wouldn't even know they were there. Hooooo boy! These are all now red flag phrases for me forevermore.
Of course, I'm also expected to help them move. Mark works long hours and the girlfriend, "Laura," can't drive, so I have to head to their old place after work on moving day, help load up the truck, and then drive it to storage. You know, all those non-essential items that they won't be bringing to my place. This was clearly already off to a great start…but it was going to get so much worse.
Anyway, the plan at that point was that Mark was supposed to get home by the time I was back, movers would then show up for the heaviest stuff, we'd get them into my place, and it would be a done deal. Holy cow, I was so naive! I get there on time. Laura is just getting out of a long bath, because she really wanted to soak up in the apartment on her last day there.
Nothing is packed. She's puttering around in a robe, lazily and haphazardly tossing things into boxes at random. The clock is ticking on the movers, the truck rental, and the hours at the storage place. So what can I do but help get stuff into boxes? Laura directs me generally on where said items should go. It's not until Mark gets home that I realize how badly this really is going…
Remember all that stuff that's supposed to be going into storage and not into my home? It's boxed up with the essentials, the stuff going to my home. So now 90% of their stuff has to come with and they'll sort it out into storage "afterward". Just like "two weeks," this is a phrase that actually stands for "whenever".
Hours of moving later, I got them started at getting things inside my place and left to meet an out of town friend. Had anything been done according to plan, we would have been done by that time anyway. Besides, this was already taking advantage of my generous nature, so I wasn't going to skip my social occasion to help them further. I found out later they were still moving stuff in until 3:00 AM.
Fast forward. My friend staying over for two weeks while he looked for a place has now turned into my friend, his horrible girlfriend, and their dog staying for three weeks. Then three became four. There was also no apparent end in sight, because they were applying for certain kinds of housing and the approvals kept falling through.
Fed up, I finally said as politely as possible, "Here is your move out date. If you're not approved the week before this, figure out a Plan B because I need my house back". Well, the week of reckoning finally arrives, and Laura tells me that they're waiting on final approval for a place. She also says that she can finally get in the last of the paperwork, since I had just brought her some envelopes from my office.
She said it would be resolved in two more weeks. Two. More. Weeks. So, I said, "Bummer, where are you going to live for the week in between?" She did not take this well. She pouted, then waited to get Mark alone to tell him how offended she was. She instructed him to tell me to apologize to her, which I laughed at and refused to do.
She then started a text-based rant against me for throwing them out, being a lousy friend, saying snarky things like, "Sorry that we needed help," woe is me, etc. This spun up into a full narcissist meltdown over the course of a few hours and crossed more lines than I care to remember as she accused me of being every kind of negative character you can name.
They moved out the next day and I changed the locks that night. They moved in with her dad for the interim, which it turns out was an option all along, just not as cushy for Laura's ego as squatting at my place. Sometime in week five, we had all agreed that with this dragging on as long as it did, I needed some rent money from them for the second month.
Never saw a dime. When they broke up for good a couple of months later, Mark had the nerve to call me up to try and insist on a face to face meeting to "brainstorm places for him to stay". Heck no, Mark. You're hundreds of dollars and at least one apology in the hole already, and I can't trust you not to wedge into my house long-term again anyway.
That was the last time I'll ever have roommates. Last time I'll ignore my gut feeling to be generous to a fault, too.
31. Work to Live
I wanted to teach my son the value of money and work ethic because he kept wanting Robux. I decided it would be a great teaching moment and a win-win opportunity as he was just getting to the age where I thought he should start doing chores around the house. He really wanted to buy some skin or something, so I created a chore chart and gave each chore a value.
We established a schedule and everything. It was working out majestically every day. Without asking, he was doing dishes, cleaning his room, picking up the dog poop, it was epic. Then one day, I came home and nothing had been done. I asked him "Hey man, what’s up with the dishes? Oh, and go pick up the dog poop too". He simply replied, "Nah". Fighting back rage, I simply said, "Excuse me?"
He told me that he made enough money over the last X days that he bought his skin and he was good now. It was hard to argue.
32. Just Follow the Yellow Brick Road
My mother once threatened to leave me in a parking lot because I refused to stop playing in the snow piles. So, she pulled out of the spot with the plan to just circle the lot and scare me to teach me a lesson about not listening. Well, I started walking home up the highway. She circled around, couldn’t find me, and freaked out.
She finally found me walking up the road about a mile away. I think I was about 11/12.
33. Missing the Point
I emptied all the clothes out of my wardrobe cabinet and filled the entire thing with flowers, chocolates, a stuffed bear, and numerous candies that my girlfriend loved. I wanted to surprise her with this stuff, so I asked her if she could go grab my hoodie out of the cabinet. I then patiently awaited her reaction to discovering the surprise.
Instead, she opened the door, said "It’s not here," and then proceeded to close the cabinet without noticing any of the stuff I had prepared.
34. Check Yes or No
In middle school, I wrote a love note to a guy in my class who I had a huge crush on, asking if he'd be my boyfriend. He was really friendly to me in the class we shared and always made it a point to talk to me, so I thought he liked me too. He was part of the cool group, though, and I guess I didn't notice that he never spoke to me outside of class.
I walked up to him during our lunch break to give him the note. For some reason, my stupid kid brain decided that passing notes in class was against the rules, so clearly doing it at lunch in front of everyone we know would be better. His jerk of a friend snatched it out of my hand, opened it, and read it out loud to everyone at their table.
They all started to laugh hysterically at me. My crush looked mortified, which I guess counted as a rejection. He never sat anywhere near me again in class, which unfortunately meant that we never spoke again. I was subsequently picked on and made fun of every single day by his group for the next year and a half over this incident.
It was pretty terrible.
35. Costume Change
I worked in Baton Rouge for a decade from 1999 to 2009. I would regularly give money to the homeless people who I saw around town, generously if I can say that without sounding like a boaster. In 2008, I was on a run for work and a guy caught me near the Target on Siegen Lane. He had nothing. He was homeless and, on top of it, he had been robbed an hour ago.
No worries. I emptied my wallet for the man. We all need help, right? Then, coming out of the shopping complex, I see him hiding in the bushes, opening a pack of smokes on a laptop while on his iPhone. Then, a month later, I saw a man that I had regularly donated to on Government Street. I couldn’t believe what he did right in front of my eyes.
I would always catch him on weekends, but this particular weekend my drop-offs started early. So I saw him as he arrived in the downtown area. I sat behind the TV station waiting for a pick-up, and watched as this cat gets out of a new car, changes into dirty clothes, grabs his sign from the trunk, and heads off to his corner.
I have given food and connected people with charities, but I have not given a single penny to a "beggar" since then.
36. Booking An Appointment
I was 17 years old and still in school. The corridors were empty as my teacher sent me out to go do a job. So I was just walking down the corridor when this girl carrying a bunch of books bumped into me and dropped the books. It was exactly like you would see in a movie. Naturally, I apologized because I wasn’t really paying attention.
I bend down and get the books for her, and hand them to her, expecting at least a small thanks. But no. Instead, this chick had to say "I have a boyfriend, so never ever purposely bump into me just so I can talk to you. You should’ve walked away". As she begins to turn away, I grab her by the shoulder which makes her turn around.
I then knocked the books out of her hand and said, "Now, that was on purpose". I walked away while she just stood there speechless. Some of you may think that this was a messed up way to react, but I don’t really regret a single bit of it. I fully believe that she got what she deserved. Don’t be rude to strangers for no reason, people!
37. The Key to Her Heart
There was a girl in my high school who I really liked. One day, I happened to notice her locker combination as she was putting it in, so I thought it would be romantic if I opened it and left a surprise inside for her. So, I left a note with a rose and a poem on her top shelf. The next day, the principal called my parents and security took me to his office to ask why I was harassing the girl.
That was quite an embarrassing ordeal…
38. Scummy Scammer
When I was young I was able to save money very well. No bank or anything, just a wooden box under my bed that used to hold dominos. Every week I would cash my paycheck, put the vast majority in the box, and keep a little pocket money for myself. When I was 18, I worked at a video store. Everyone who worked there was very good friends.
One day we were told by our boss, a really great guy named Drew, that he had come down with stomach cancer. I talked to him afterward and was sad to hear that the store's terrible insurance was causing Drew to have to choose between treatments or paying his rent. Drew was gay and his family had disowned him, so he had no help.
I thought about it for a few days and ultimately decided that I would be the one to help him out. I agreed to loan him money so that he could pay his rent. He would pay me back when able, and everything would be great. I gave him $3,000 that I had saved since I was 12—a little over three actually, but who’s counting, right?
Cut to five months later. I come to work one night to see Drew being dragged out of the place by the authorities. Turns out he had a massive coke problem and had been stealing from the store. He was such a good guy I actually fought for him at work for a month or so until I saw the evidence. I also learned that he never had cancer.
It was all a scam he had used on several "friends" of his, so he and his boyfriend could get high. I have never been able to get back to where I was financially. I am not sure what changed, maybe because I got a bank account, maybe emotionally it messed me up...I am not sure. I have $60 to my name now. One thing is for sure: I have never trusted people the same since.
Not sure anything will be able to give me that back.
39. Spreading Like Wildfire
I had a girlfriend cheat on me, then lie about it when I confronted her and gave her the chance to come clean and work through it. Then, she stalked me after I broke up with her. We were quite young—both around 17—so it was all very melodramatic, but I did love her a lot and was hurt by what she did. At the same time, I was very done and not interested in reconciling.
She didn't get the hint. I asked her nicely many times, then not so nicely, then demanded that she screw off. She would, for a while, but then she'd show up tipsy and try and pick fights, insult me, and be sincerely hurtful. I eventually had enough, as you do. I told a couple of choice people in her school, which was different than mine, what she'd done.
I included all the gory details of her cheating—she got with her ex in his car. I thought she'd get dragged for it and that would be that. It caused a horrific domino effect. It turned out she was a witch in all other aspects of her life, too. Apparently, she was loathed at school, and people jumped on this news like starving beasts on fresh meat.
I had texts from people I didn't even know asking to confirm the news, which I ignored because I was really done with the whole situation by now. I eventually heard from other friends at that school that people had not let it drop and had even stuck posters around the school with pictures of her, announcing what she'd done, offering her um... services with her phone number, photoshopping stuff, etc.
It was brutal and she had to change schools in her final year. I did feel a bit bad. If I'd known it would go that far, I might have re-thought telling those people. At the same time, she hurt me badly, she refused to leave me alone despite months of chances, and the other students reacted so viciously because apparently she was a total jerk to everyone in the school, so...I don't know. I sure as heck didn't expect that, though.
40. French Connection
When I was dating my ex, I once took her to Paris for a romantic weekend getaway. I had the whole weekend planned out perfectly and everything went smoothly when we were there. We went to the Eiffel Tower at night, had a picnic, and basically did it all. She then dumped me right when we got back. I was shocked and wanted to know why. Her reason was infuriating.
She said it was because I "wasn't romantic enough" during our trip, and didn't tell her I loved her enough times while sightseeing. Okay then…
41. The Power Trip
The boss constantly whined and complained that we all (welders and millwrights) took lunch and breaks whenever we felt like it (actually just when we got the chance) and implemented a rule that if you didn’t take your break/lunch at the right time you didn’t get them. Myself and another welder got sent to do a repair that was about a two-hour drive from the shop first thing in the morning, boss said it was going to be a quick fix so we didn’t bring our lunches.
We needed the machine running ASAP because it was costing a quarter of a million an hour for downtime. It turns out his quick fix was a pretty major welding job, and required us to completely rebuild a motor mount. The operator knew this and had told the boss that was when needed to be done. Well, guess what boss man?
If you just let us take our lunches and breaks when we wanted or had at least told us what the actual job was, we wouldn’t have driven two hours to the job, done one hour of work, driven another two hours back to the shop, ate lunch at noon like we were supposed to, and then driven two hours back to the job to finish it. TLDR: Boss's power trip cost over $1,000,000 in a single day so that we could eat our lunches on time.
42. Blast from the Past
My new girlfriend asked me to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, so I literally whispered the words "sweet nothings" into her ear. In case anyone doesn’t know, "sweet nothings" is a saying or general term used to describe a set of compliments or words intended to flatter or woo a lady. I knew that, of course, but this was my attempt to be romantic in a humorous sense.
At the very least, I thought she would find it funny. I thought wrong, however. As it turned out, I was unaware that this exact joke was something that her not so nice ex-boyfriend used to say and do on the regular. Because of that, I did not come off sexy or romantic, but instead, I actually repulsed her since I reminded her of him at that moment.
43. Wasn’t Me
As a child, I noticed my sister was writing her name on the walls when she was drawing on them with crayon. Taking on the role of Helpful Big Sister, I informed her if she was going to graffiti things, she shouldn't write her name and give herself away. A few weeks later, she was carving patterns into the wooden desk in the study and carved my name into it instead.
44. Self-Scan Screw-up
I was running low on rubbers, so I decided to sneak a box in my basket under the groceries because the supermarket had self-checkout registers and I'm still freaking embarrassed to buy rubbers. Totally backfired. I scanned the box and threw it in the bag in a split second, this lady (I'm assuming the store manager) got suspicious and walked up to me and asked me if I'm sure I scanned everything, then mentioned "the yellow box".
I remained calm, pointed out the item on the screen, and all of a sudden all her professionalism went away and a stupid smirk appeared on her face. Then she just had to crack a joke in front of all other customers. She said, "Do you know how to use them?" and laughed while walking away. Jerk.
45. Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater
I stood by my best friend when she cried to me about her husband cheating on her. And he definitely was cheating on her. Thanks in large part to my help and support, they stayed married and eventually said they had worked through this challenge. Six months later, she started sleeping with my husband behind my back…
46. Freezing Him Out
My co-worker and I had a friendly prank competition spanning two years. Close to the end of our competition he "iced" my car. Icing involves taking the hose to the parking lot every half hour and spraying a light mist over your victim’s car when it's below zero out. I finished my 11-hour shift to find my car encased in two inches of ice.
My revenge was, I thought, both more inconvenient for him and less freezing for me. I decided to take a bed sheet, drape it over his car, and only took four or five trips out with the hose the next night. So the next morning, he finds his car with a quarter inch of ice freezing a sheet to his car. When he started peeling off the sheet, he pulled his windshield wipers, arms and all, off of his ratty Jeep.
I got a very angry phone call. I felt bad, since the unwritten rule was "embarrassing or inconvenient, but no damage". I paid for repairs…and he got his revenge. He planted a dozen pieces of smoked herring throughout my car. Took me six months to find the last piece. Hidden under the carpet under the back window of my car. I can still smell it.
47. Safety Second
I was working as a medical assistant at a private practice medical clinic. Our clinic manager wouldn’t allow the new receptionist to drive to the bank to deposit cash when we needed to. Instead, she made her walk, carrying the money bag so that she couldn’t "drive away with the money". Bizarre. I know. That went on for a few weeks.
Then the receptionist was mugged and over $1,000 in cash was taken. She was allowed to drive after that.
48. Ballsy Backfire
I was quite bored one day, so I took a large stick and began acting like it was a lightsaber—this was when I was like 12 years old. Basically, as I was playing around with it, my brother grabbed a stick and joined in. We were fighting with them for a bit when I decided to hit him in the balls because he kicked a ball into my face earlier in the week.
So I thrust the stick at his balls. There was a brick wall directly behind him, and I missed. The stick hit the wall and it jutted back and hit me in the balls.
49. Material Girl No-More
I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, and driving my brand-new graduation gift Mustang around town. I was cute and in great shape and perky...and I knew it. Dad sent me to the local hardware store, back when it was an ACE Hardware in a strip center, next to the grocery store, not the Home Depot-style warehouses of today.
I was supposed to get something for him and I was more than happy to oblige. I knew what I was doing. I pulled right up to the front of the store in my shiny red car, got out and could feel all the teenage boys who worked in the store watch me walk in. I sauntered to the counter and said, "I need a such-and-such. Can you help me find it?"
I was helped out by two or three boys who helped me find what I needed. I was followed by them all back to the counter at the front of the store to pay for it, where I smiled sweetly and said to them, "Thanks so much for your help!" I may or may not have batted my eyes a little. Then I turned around to leave the store...and walked smack into a plate-glass window.
Everyone in the store let out an audible, "OOOOOOOH!" and those sweet, helpful boys just laughed and laughed. I knew then and there that I would never be that kind of girl again. God was watching me, all full of myself, and said, "You need a little humility. Here. Let me show you". Lesson learned.
50. Bad Marketing
I once posted a futon up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and the first person who hit me up gave me a sad story about needing something for their kid to sleep on. I was only asking $20 for it, but they asked if they could get it for free. My wife and I felt bad and we agreed to give it away, so I took it to our meeting spot behind Home Depot.
Two days later, this guy posted the futon again in Marketplace, asking $50 for it. My wife and I Facebook stalked him and his wife and, every time they posted it, we would disrupt the listing by commenting and letting everyone know the story of how they got the futon. I don't give anything away anymore, no matter what kind of a story they try and give me.
51. After Hours
I used to frequently stay late at work for clients who showed up to the veterinary clinic last minute with a non-emergency problem and no appointment. Then, three times in a row, three different people were told up front about the after-hours fee, agreed to pay it instead of scheduling an appointment for the next day, and then called up and made a fuss to try and get out of paying it.
All of them claimed that they shouldn’t have been charged extra for keeping us 30-60 minutes past our scheduled hours and that we were terrible and trying to scam them by charging them for our time. This, even though we told them up front and offered them other options. It was exhausting and demoralizing to have this happen.
We did more than we had to for them after already working a full day, simply because our desire to help is why we’re all here in the first place. Yet they responded by saying that our time was worth nothing to them and that we suck. From that point on, the entire staff just said, "Screw that".
Now, unless it’s a literal life and death situation, if we can’t fit someone in before closing and they didn’t have an appointment, it’s a firm no. I’m in this profession to help others and I still work late for real emergencies when they happen or if an appointment runs longer than expected, but I’m done sacrificing my personal time for entitled people who don’t actually need it.
52. Sibling Rivalry
My older brother was always quite horrible to me as a child and my parents never really did much about it. He was also much bigger than me, so I couldn’t retaliate in a physical way, or else I would be swiftly tackled to the ground. One day, I had just had enough. My revenge? He had been playing a video game for a good six hours a day for about three weeks.
I started a new game and overwrote his save file. Never seen fury like it. I regretted it at the time because he was so angry, it scared me. Honestly, it made him dislike me even more, but now I praise my 13-year-old self for hitting him where it clearly hurt most. As for how our relationship is now, it’s okay. I moved away as soon as I hit 18, so I didn’t see much of the family for some years.
53. Tripping You Up
I don’t know what it was, but a lot of the boys in my sixth-grade class thought it was hilarious to try and trip people. They’d get you eventually no matter how careful you were. Well, I was pretty good at avoiding it, but when I was in gym class this kid named Joey got me hard. I was dribbling down the court and he nailed me. I face planted.
So I thought about how to get him, and I got him at lunch. He was holding a lunch tray, so his hands weren’t as useful. He nailed a table…and lost a tooth. I got suspended for 10 days, and a strict no tripping policy got implemented, immediate suspensions if caught. It totally sucked, and afterward, my dad spanked my behind raw. That did not go how I intended it to.
54. Driving Dirty
I was 14 at the time. I got involved in a school play because of this girl I really liked. So about a week or so before the play a whole bunch of us got together at a friend’s house for a quick rehearsal, and of course, she was there too. We got organized and stuff however a car was parked in the garage, where we wanted to rehearse, so the owner of the house asked if someone could back it up.
I wanted to impress the girl so I said I would do it, my friend tossed me the car keys, I catch them without even looking at them. I had my eyes fixed on the girl. From there, it all went downhill. I had never ever even started a car before in my life; as soon as I closed the door I panicked, but still thought to myself: screw it, I’m going to go through with this.
So I grab the headrest of the passenger side, turn my head toward the back of the car, start the car, hit the clutch and floor it, I didn’t even check to see the gear (it was a stick) when all of the sudden I’m jerked forward. About three seconds into it, I hit a tree, panic even more and press the accelerator even harder and hit the tree again, and again, until it somehow it finally stopped.
I got out of the car still trying to look like I had it all under control, that was, until I threw up. The BMW was dented and still in the same freaking place it was parked to begin with. Oh God, I started to sweat with every word I typed. Needless to say, I never got the girl.
55. Who Done It?
I made a huge plan to ask my crush out to prom. I made a bunch of very large signs and placed them outside of her house, asking her the big question. Unfortunately, I stupidly didn't put a name on the signs saying who did it. Well, it turned out that her next-door neighbor had a crush on her too. He took full advantage of the situation and acted like he was the one who had put the signs up to ask her out.
She said yes to him. Nobody believed me when I tried to tell them that I had actually been the one behind it. Oh, and on top of that? They're now married.
56. Avoiding Good Luck
This was when I was maybe 14/15 at school. Back then the school was well known for how at breaks the outside areas would be swarming with seagulls because everyone would throw their rubbish on the floor. There had been many times where people were pooped on by the birds, which made everyone scared when they flew above.
So anyway, it was our lunch break and it was coming towards the end so everyone was finishing their food, it was a hot day so most people ate outside. Like always the seagulls were swarming the place so a lot of people were very cautious because no one wanted to be pooped on. Me and a load of friends were all kind of just huddled together in a circle, having a bit of banter as the young teenagers do.
I kept looking up because of all the seagulls right and I see that one has taken a dump right above me, it was quite high up so I had time to react. I decided to get everyone's attention, and then took a step back and stood there looking all smug. The plan was to have the poop land in front of me directly where I was standing.
It backfired when the bird poop went all over my head, bag, and uniform while everyone was watching me.
57. Time To Go
I once met a guy who had hit a rough patch. We had great chemistry and he made me laugh. I know, my bar was so low back then. But he gave me a sad story of why he was getting kicked out of his communal house and I offered to let him stay with me because I lived alone and had my own place. HUGE MISTAKE! Turns out he hadn't hit a rough patch, he was the rough patch!
He barely paid for anything and would get sloshed while I was at work and be a total jerk when I got home. He got fired from his job, ate all the food I'd buy, and made endless excuses as to why he hadn't found another job yet. The absolute kicker was when I went home for my Nonna's funeral, he treated it like a mini-vacation in my place.
He invited friends over, played music so loud that the authorities got called, and when he was supposed to pick me up from the airport, he was too busy getting sloshed at someone's house at 8:00 in the morning. Never in my life have I felt better than I did the day I kicked him out. No more financial and emotional manipulation. I finally felt like my place was mine again.
I've learned an expensive lesson. Don't help people who won't help themselves. When nothing is their fault, there's a serious issue there. Run fast and far.
58. Cleanup On Aisle One
I was working at a fast-food place when I was a student. I usually did overtime to help everyone clean up and close the restaurant. Because we were so understaffed, this usually meant I was there until about 1:00 in the morning. I guess people got used to me staying late because, one night when I was supposed to finish at 11:00, I overheard a conversation between some of my colleagues.
They were the stereotypical mean girl types, and I heard them say how bad the clients had cluttered everything tonight and how it was going to be a mess to clean up. Then, they said "But hey, [me] is gonna stay late tonight again, let's leave it to her! She always does the cleaning anyway!" They followed that up by laughing and making some derogatory comments about me.
That night, I clocked out at 11:00 after doing all of my tasks at the counter. And I left. The girls stared at me in shock and, when I was outside, I saw one of them standing in the middle of the restaurant with her hand on her forehead, looking at the mess she would have to clean up before going home. Weirdly, after that day, they all started cleaning up earlier without waiting for me to do everything!
59. Making It Official
I was dating this girl who I was really into. I thought it would be romantic if I jumped the gun by sending her a surprise request to be "in a relationship" with me on Facebook. She then texted me telling me that she wasn't ready for that kind of commitment yet. Boy, was I embarrassed when I next looked at my Facebook and saw tons of notifications that people had "liked" my update and asked who the lucky girl was.
Needless to say, we never went on another date and I learned my lesson about taking things slow.
Public Domain Pictures
60. Haul Away
I wanted to pick up my new girlfriend for a romantic evening, but my car suddenly broke down. She was the girl of my dreams and I was very concerned that this would ruin our evening. Unfortunately, me being underage at the time, I couldn't rent a car. However, I soon discovered that I could rent a U-Haul truck! It would cost just 20 dollars a day plus a few extra dollars for the mileage. What could go wrong, right?
So, I rented a U-Haul and was on my way to her house to pick her up for what promised to be the most awkward date of her life; until I pulled up, that is. Once I arrived, I saw her family moving boxes from storage, and they had a lot of stuff. Like, a lot. As soon as they saw me pull up in that truck, they thought I was just the greatest help.
So, instead of the romantic evening I had planned, I had to spend the next few hours helping them move boxes. No date for me. But we're engaged now, so I guess I can’t complain!
61. Just Saved Your Life, No Big Deal
When I was in high school, I had a friend who was...troubled. We met when she moved into town to live with her mother, after being raised by her grandparents. Her mother turned out to be a substance user who treated her children like filth, including my friend, who eventually moved back in with her grandparents a couple of hours away.
We kept in touch, and I woke up at 3 am one day (the morning of my friend's birthday) to my mom handing me the phone, saying it was my friend. Friend had been getting progressively stranger, and that morning thought about taking their own life. She was determined to end her life at the same time she had been born. "It felt right that way," or some nonsense.
I spent the next four hours on the phone with her trying to calm her down and convince her to seek help. She finally gave her consent for me to speak to the counselor she saw at my school, which I did as soon as I arrived. At 6:00 that night I got a call from her at the hospital, saying they were admitting her to the psych ward.
The next morning, I get called out of class to take a call from her grandparents, who are crying and falling over themselves thanking me for saving their beautiful girl. While she was committed (for about three months) there was a contact list for people who could call, visit, and write to her. I don't know the specifics of who determined it, or why, but I assume it's because she was underage and her grandparents wanted to protect her from her mother.
I was the only person—aside from the grandparents—who was on that list. I called her regularly, wrote to her, and even made the three-hour drive to go visit her once. I had explained to the few other friends she had in my area that she was in the ward and no one was allowed to contact her, but I would be happy to pass along what I could, so she felt their support. It was the worst mistake of my life.
Naturally, when she was released she turned on me, blaming me for "three months of torment," which she gave no indication of during any of the contact/visits we had during that time. She told everyone she was admitted against her will, the "contact list" was bull, and I was trying to...keep the crazy all for myself, I guess.
Whatever. No one believed me. Over the course of the next couple of months, during which I was going through some serious medical stuff, I lost the few friends I had been able to make being a shy introvert, some I had been close to for four or five years at the time. After a couple of months, I connected with some new friends who treated me better than the old ones ever did anyway, and was (eventually) happier for it.
A year or two ago, she sent me a friend request on Facebook. It had been six or seven years, so I figured, "What the heck, I'm over it, and she seems to have grown up, too". Nope. The first thing I see on her wall is a conversation with one of the former friends talking smack about me.
62. Hit And Ruin
Some girl hit my car in a hit and run. There was a witness to it, the authorities were able to track her down. The damage wasn’t significant; there was a small dent and a large scratch. It was all cosmetic damage. My car is over 10 years old, and had some other scratches already. So really, I was way more upset that someone hit me and drove off than I was about the actual damage.
I wouldn’t have even bothered to get it fixed if the girl hadn’t driven off. So when I was asked if I wanted to press charges, I went for it. Turns out, she had no license or insurance. She kept trying to fight the charges, but wound up getting sued by my insurance, having to pay me restitution via the court system, and pay a bunch of fines. I regretted it once I learned the truth.
She was some 18-year-old single mom. I felt super bad by the end of it. My pursuing her and pressing charges was 100% fueled by revenge, and her life got pretty messed up from it. Yeah, what she did wasn’t right, but I can emphasize with her being a scared 18-year-old who made a bad choice while caught up in the moment.
Also, I’m not justifying her behavior because she had a kid, but it does make me feel bad for her. Being a single parent is a really expensive thing, and having a bunch of fees on top of that financial burden has got to suck.
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63. The Bad Neighbors
When I was around six or seven years old, my neighbors had tormented me on the bus on the way home. Like, they had harassed me with toy knives, which at the time I thought were real. They had also talked to me about really adult things and had basically been trying to take away my innocence even though at the time I had no idea what they were talking about.
I had had enough of it and I had told my mother, who then told their mother. Well, their mother told their father about their bad behavior, and he had beaten them quite badly. They left me alone for the remainder of my time being their neighbor, but I saw the cuts, scars, and bruises that had been left on their young bodies. After, their moods changed from bratty little kids to completely silent and somewhat oppressed.
64. Fighting Fire With Fire
In Las Vegas, the fire departments had a policy that if someone called out and you covered their shift, you get paid overtime. Eventually, every firefighter at every department was trading shifts so that they were always making overtime. It went on unnoticed for over a year. It was a HUGE scandal and the ones in charge who let it go on and effectively cost the city millions had the book thrown at them hard.
65. An Honest Mistake
This was in high school. Oh man, this poor kid I used to work with at Wendy's named Kevin. He was a juvenile delinquent, he was a few years older than me, a little bit bigger than me, had nasty tattoos on his neck, and supposedly was out from behind bars on a work release. He tried to be a tough guy and tormented me whenever we worked together.
Stuff like generally talking smack unprovoked, getting real, real close up in my face, and that stance where you puff out your chest and pull your arms back like you're gonna swing. The most irritating was when he would walk right up in my face, then flinch like he was gonna throw a punch at me, then just laugh and say some rude stuff to me.
I got along with just about everyone at work, and we did somewhat, but we just did not fit together. One day, the exchanges between us were so apparent and obviously stressed that everyone working was talking about me fighting him. I dispelled these rumors as I wanted to keep my job—but my destiny on this day said otherwise.
First was the backdoor incident. The store had a large back door with a peephole in it, and it could only be opened from the inside. There was a buzzer outside that employees would push if they wanted back in. Well, Kevin was locked outside and his patience while awaiting his re-entry had run out. Instead of tapping the buzzer, this guy was mashing it and holding it down while everyone inside went nuts.
We were all busy and I was running to the back to grab some heavy boxes. Holding these boxes, I was gonna open the back door while I walked past. I tried to push on the door but it wouldn’t open. I leaned into it but couldn't push much more because of the boxes I was holding. I was in a hurry so I yelled, "GET BACK IM GONNA KICK THE DOOR!"
He did not hear me over his loud, constant buzzing. I gave that door a swift THIS IS SPARTA kick and it opened about three inches then bounced closed again. What the heck? I kicked it again and it opened, revealing a bashed and somewhat upset Kevin. He had been trying to look in the peephole when I kicked the door. Well, I had just broken the heck out of his nose.
Like, the tip was almost touching his cheek, and it was bright red-purple, plus he had swollen eyes. He was so angry. Immediately, I started apologizing and backing away from him, but he came at me like a rabid monkey. Quickly, we were surrounded by employees and separated. I was told to go up front and manage the fries, and to not come into the back part of the store until Kevin left to the hospital.
Then the final event, less than 10 minutes later...I was working the fries, which entails grabbing a metal basket out of boiling hot oil and dumping the fresh fries into an adjacent tray. I was doing this and everyone around me was talking about how I just broke Kevin's face. On his way leaving our store for the hospital, he decided to come right up to me again and try to instigate a fight while I was dumping some fresh fries.
Kevin pulled his signature move of flinching at me like he was gonna throw a punch. I retaliated by returning my own flinch with the basket I was holding. I didn't actually hit him with an incredibly hot fry basket...but I forgot about the boiling hot oil still clinging to the basket. When I flinched at him and shook the basket, tiny flaming hot drops of grease splattered his face and neck.
I had just broken his nose on accident, then threw boiling hot oil on his face on accident. Instant fight. On the ground. I'm a wrestler, so his freshly broken and burned nose was just smashed and wiped across a dirty floor for a few seconds before the fight was broken up. He was an absolute mess. He left for the hospital, and I got sent home.
That was it. No charges. No questions from my managers after. No more being scheduled with Kevin. Not even any paperwork about two vicious assaults and fights in the same day. I felt really bad, but simultaneously kind of justified. Both incidents were honest accidents that could have easily been avoided if he weren't such a jerk.
66. Phone A Friend
I'm still mad at myself for this. When I was a young teen, my friend and I went to one of those day camps that picked us up in yellow school buses. One of the other kids on our bus was a younger boy I'll refer to as Eli. Eli was a freaking terror. He would scream and spit and hump things, make a mess, and be as annoying and insufferable as possible.
Riding the bus with him was a nightmare for everyone involved most of the time. So I came up with this idea. I found his family in the phone book, and called up pretending to be a camp counselor. I told his mom that he was misbehaving on the bus and that he would either be disciplined or kicked out of the camp if he didn't stop.
She bought it and said she would talk to him about it. I felt so smart. Until the next day, when a quiet, sullen Eli showed up with a black eye.
Unsplash
67. Jackpot
Not sure if this applies, but I worked at a restaurant that started doing Thursday Night Trivia in hopes of getting more customers. The prize for the winner was that their bill would get comped. One guy asked to have everyone in the restaurant's food put on his ticket... And then won. They stopped doing trivia night after that experience.
68. The Worst Regret
I was in an extremely weird and once-in-a-lifetime kind of car accident where I was supposed to be not at fault. I really don't want to go into detail, but another car hit me going twice the speed limit, sending us both rolling down into a ditch. I got out through the windshield since it was shattered and was able to cut the airbag.
The other car was in much worse shape and was on fire. I ran up to see if the driver was okay, and my blood ran cold. She was falling in and out of consciousness. Her car was upside down and the roof was caved in pressing her into the seat. The seatbelt was tight around her and her airbag wasn't deflating. I struggled with the door and was able to get her out as the fire spread onto her.
I remember passing out a little after I was able to put out the fire on her legs. I woke up in the ambulance with a broken leg and a concussion. The EMTs said I was only able to save her because of all the adrenaline coursing through my system. The officers that wrote the report found her at fault and said I was a hero, but no good deed goes unpunished.
She had first degree burns on her legs and face and had super cheap insurance. She ended up suing me and dragging me into a four-year judicial process that not only cost my insurance thousands but had me spending money on judicial fees and lost wages from constantly having to go to court. It was finally settled because somehow all she needed was to prove I was at least 1% at fault and my insurance folded.
She was awarded my full liability ($200,000.00) plus $25,000 that I'm on the hook for personally. I was barely able to get my totaled car paid off and whatever was left in my pocket for a new car had to go directly to her. It's been six years since the accident and I still owe about $12,000 but I’m trying to avoid paying that.
The last time I talked to my attorney after she was awarded damages he said something that I’ll always think back on and wish I could have changed my actions. He said if he was in my shoes and knew the outcome he would have left her in there to burn.
69. Home Is Where You Make It—And So Is The Office
This still makes me furious when I think about it. There was a guy on our team that was great, very good at his job, and very knowledgeable about the client. One day he was fired without warning. It turns out that he lived in Green Bay, but was working remotely for our Minneapolis office. Everyone knew this and didn't care, until HR found out. According to his boss, they should have known in the first place, but they don’t know what they’re doing.
They didn't like that he wasn't in the office with the rest of us, so they booted him for lying. Well, two months later, everyone was suddenly forced to work remotely. Now they're hiring left and right, including people from all over the country where we don't have offices. The irony wasn't lost on any of us.
70. Sticky Accident
When my youngest niece learned about calling 9-1-1, she made a false call, but the officers were pretty cool about it. They stormed in thinking it was serious much to the mortification of my sister-in-law, but soon the truth came out that it was a toddler who called them. They sat her down and had a long talk with her explaining to her that calling 9-1-1 should only be for an emergency like when people are hurt.
Once she seemed to understand, they gave her a sticker of a police badge and left. What a mistake. Her interpretation: Call 9-1-1, get a sticker.
71. Incommunicado
I work for a furniture store. They recently came out and said that everyone had to download a super invasive app and that it was 100% required. When they realized nobody was doing it, they said that's fine, but no cell phones allowed in the delivery vehicles. It's working great because if we can't find a place, "oh well," the furniture goes back, we're out and off work.
They can't call us and ask us where we're at because we don't have phones. They want to send us on a really long store trip? No clue where that is. They refuse to get us a GPS and send us out to the middle of who knows where.
72. Back into the Lion’s Den
I had been trying to break up with a psychotic girlfriend for weeks—she was a truly terrible person, but that's a different story. She talked me into staying with her a few times, but I agreed mostly because I felt guilty dropping her right before her finals of her senior year of college. After she graduated, I finally was ready to put my foot down.
We had neighboring apartments in a complex. The only thing left of mine in her apartment was a booklet of DVDs. I went over to get it, and she, predictably, tried to talk me into getting back with her. We ended up talking for a while, and she was crying about how she wouldn't want anybody ever again and how now she would never get married.
I knew that all of this was coming and was completely prepared. I gave her this glorious, elegant speech about why it just wouldn't work if we kept it going, about how we needed to move on, and told her that she would find somebody to love again someday. All of this was done without a twinge of regret or doubt. My thoughts and words flowed without a pause or stutter in a way that I couldn't recreate if I tried.
I ended with "Send me an invite to your wedding," as this was the classiest way to say, "I will never begin walking down the aisle with you," then turned around, and strutted out like a boss. It was a perfect, movie-style closing. Then I froze in the hallway as the smile crashed off of my face. In my efforts towards a glorious exit, I had forgotten why I went over in the first place.
I turned around and knocked on her door. "I forgot my DVDs," I said, somewhat sheepishly. She handed my DVD booklet to me and said, "So much for your dramatic exit," then slammed the door in my face. Boom, roasted.
73. Maintenance Free
My kids were begging for a pet. I don't want to take care of a pet and I told them that they don't clean up after themselves without me hassling them, so why would they clean up after a pet without me hassling them. I told them if they could keep their rooms clean for six months without me telling them, then they could get a pet.
My youngest child proceeds to clean his room, then move his clothes and a sleeping bag into the hallway, and then lock his door so his room can't get dirty as he sleeps in the hallway.
74. The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side
I once had a new neighbor ask if he could borrow our lawnmower. I said sure. Well, more or less every week from that point on, he would come and take it out of our garage, use it to cut his grass, and put it away without cleaning it or adding gas. In the fall, I casually "mentioned" to him that it might be a good time to get deals on a new mower. I thought I handled it well—but his reaction was truly awful. He never talked to us again.
75. Come Se Dice Pointless
I worked at a language teaching center where the lessons are pre-planned by the curriculum and on weekdays, we often only have 2-3 hours of classes sporadically spread out through the afternoon/evening. The management was pretty chill when I started, and people just planned their lessons in bulk—which basically entailed checking your schedule and printing out the required unit/session worksheets—and just showed up 10 minutes before to deliver the lesson.
On weekends we'd have full 10-hour workdays. Apart from that, we'd have the odd training session or faculty meeting but otherwise you could basically go home or go do whatever you wanted between lessons. All the provided apartments were within 10 minutes walking distance of the center, so this was pretty ideal. The nice managers left, and the new management were jerks who started scheduling mandatory "office hours" where we had to be in the center with absolutely nothing to do.
There'd be a noon staff meeting and my next lesson would be at 4-6pm, with three and a half 'office hours' in the middle. When we asked them what we should do, they said "think about your teaching methods". Basically, just to sound superior. A bunch of the other teachers starting watching movies on the projectors in the spare classrooms, I brought in my Switch, some people would just straight up go nap on the beanbags in the reading nook.
The thing was, there was literally no busywork they could generate and soon it was apparent to everyone—especially prospective new students and parents—how unprofessional and awful it made the center look. The managers embarrassingly just stopped scheduling and enforcing these office hours.
76. You Are What You Wear
For my entire high school career, I was goth. I was always wearing band tees and combat boots. I looked really grungy. It was just my style, and I liked it. Now, I happened to really like a guy who was friendly but didn't seem interested in me, so I decided that a nice gesture would be to come to school one day dressed "pretty," with pink lipstick, a skirt, and normal boots.
I thought for sure that he would see me as an ugly duckling turned swan. Sadly, that is not what happened. Everyone laughed at me the minute I walked in. I was teased all day about my makeup and the girls were all whispering about how dumb I looked for trying to dress like them. The guy I liked didn't even take notice, and worst of all?
He started dating another girl in my class a few days later.
77. Assistant To The Regional Manager, Private School Edition
The private school where I used to work hired a "Second Deputy Head," whose main function seemed to be creating rules and policies without stopping to consider whether they were really needed. Their piece de resistance was to give all the students little laminated cards advising them that if they were being picked on, they were supposed to tell their tormentor "I've had enough, I want you to stop doing/saying that".
The students, all in their mid to late teens, reacted predictably; most of the cards were soon spotted floating in the river that ran through the village where the school was located, and the phrase "I've had enough, I want you to stop doing/saying that" was used frequently—by students to whichever member of staff asked them to comb their hair/make their bed/settle down and work.
I do remember asking one of the school's star rugby players whether the phrase had ever been used the way it had been intended, and his response was, "Yes, but I kicked the guy in the nuts while I said it".
78. Sister Act
Although I was always nice and caring towards her growing up, my youngest sister used to swipe my stuff all the time growing up. Once in high school, I thought I had lost my iPod. Turned out she had been hiding it around the house for six months. She would often take my money, clothes, laptop, toiletries, etc. Later, she would even take my things and sell them for substance money.
I'll never forgive her for what she did one night. She tied our elderly family dog to a post overnight in near-freezing weather because she wanted to get high but couldn't be bothered to walk four blocks back home to drop off our dog. Less than three months later, we had to put our dog down because of health issues that developed from that night. The last straw was my first break, first year of university.
I bought a pair of sweatpants branded with my school's logo in my suitcase, but I couldn't find them the morning after my arrival. Later that day, I get in the car and that little witch is wearing my freaking sweatpants. She tried telling my parents that we just happened to both have the same pair. My university is pretty small and over 2,000 miles away from my parents’ home.
So everyone immediately knew she was lying. I know it's a small thing to be the last straw, but after that day she meant nothing to me. I would be cordial the few times I saw her after that, but I never try to contact her and have made it clear that I don't love her anymore because I know she doesn't give two hoots about anyone else in our family.
We haven't spoken in three years and I could not be more grateful for it.
79. Unwittingly Inspiring
When I was about 11, my parents sat me down and made me read this story that my mom had gotten from another mom she knew. It was about this tweenaged girl who began talking to a boy her age in a chat room only to find out he was a middle-aged creep. The story was obviously fictional and didn’t really get under my skin at all, but I can appreciate the idea that my parents were trying to get ahead of the curve on teaching me internet safety.
Internet-based chat rooms were pretty new at that point. We only had dial-up for a little while and I certainly wasn’t allowed to be on it by myself. So, I had no idea that talking to boys on the internet was even possible because it had seriously never occurred to me. But after they told me that story, I immediately started trying to do so.
80. Picky Cleaner
I told my children repeatedly that if I found any more mess and junk on their bedroom floor, I would be donating it to the thrift store. I told them they had 15 minutes to clean it up off the floor. I came back to find everything picked up. Phew, right? Well, when when I went back to the kitchen, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
They had gone into the kitchen cupboards and had put every food they didn't like in a nice neat pile right in the middle of the floor.
81. Not Hungry
I was walking home on the way back from the bank the day before Thanksgiving. I passed a homeless man with a sign saying something along the lines of "Hungry, anything helps". I walked over to him and asked if he was hungry. He said yes, and I offered to take him to the sandwich shop just up the road. He declined, instead asking for money.
I told him that I don't carry cash anymore, but that I would gladly buy him a footlong meal. He scoffed and ignored me. Okay then. I continued along my route home and encountered another homeless person, with another sign along the same lines. I asked her if she wanted food. She declined, once again asking for money instead.
I told her as well that I don't carry cash, but that I would be happy to take her inside the Burger King she was posted outside of and buy her whatever she wanted. This woman actually had the audacity to ask me to go to an ATM and withdraw money to give to her. I politely told her that I wasn't going to do that, and she became visibly upset, at which point I just walked away.
I'm not going to stop helping people when and where I can, but this experience really put a damper on my optimism.
82. Truck Stop
When I had a truck during college, everyone suddenly wanted me to help them move. Most of them were cool about it and gave me money or ordered pizza afterward. One time, however, some dude that I barely knew needed some help. I show up, and nothing is packed in his apartment. He had a giant fish tank and lived on the third floor with no elevator.
It was a total nightmare, and I never got so much as a dime nor food or even some beers. I never talked to him again after that.
83. Mall-icious Intent
My college roommate once publicly proposed to his girlfriend in our local mall. The bad part was that he really went way too over the top, and that kind of freaked out his girlfriend who was quite meek. As they stood there with all eyes on them, she quietly whispered into his ear that she was not ready for marriage, and then went home.
Believe it or not, my buddy just shrugged it off. He didn't seem phased by it at all. He knew that he wouldn't see any of those people from the mall again; and that, if he did, they probably wouldn't remember or recognize him. He was really level-headed about the situation. That was the weirdest part to me, to tell the truth…
84. Sound The Alarm
This kid in my class at school kept insulting my mother, so I said to him that if he insults her one more time that I'll get him after class. He replied with yet another insult. So after class, I waited for him outside and when he came out the classroom, I got him in a headlock. He forced his way up out of it…but it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He managed to crack the top of his head off a fire alarm, and gashed his head open. He was bleeding all down his face and had to go to the hospital. He was off school for two weeks after that, too. I felt terrible about it. After I watched him hit his head off the fire alarm, I didn't see any blood. I had walked off at that point, then when he walked past me two minutes later, his head was gushing and he was crying.
I felt so bad that I apologized to him while following him all the way to the nurse’s room, and I sat outside the room until the ambulance came. I didn't get in any trouble because he admitted it was his fault for goading me and I was genuinely remorseful. After that, our relationship was alright. He was happy that he got a few weeks off school, while I was glad to see him back at school.
He showed me his scar, we laughed about it. We both knew that it was an accident, and we moved on. We had mutual respect for each other after.
85. Getting Her Priorities Straight
We have helped out my sister-in-law a few times with money and bills. Never a lot, just $50 here or $100 there—usually for some bill or other, so they won’t have their services cut off. I’m usually the more heartfelt one in my marriage, but I ended up being the one to put my foot down. And that all started when we went over to her apartment once.
She had two big flat-screen TVs, a new couch, a new fridge, and a PlayStation for her kids. It was all bought on credit, but that was the end for me. I didn’t have any of those things myself, not to mention the incredibly bad financial decision those things were with their high-interest rates. Part of me felt like I was taking food out of her kids’ mouths, but realized that no, her poor decisions were doing that.
86. Pay It Backward
I was once donating baby and toddler clothes to a mom in need through one of those Facebook donating pages. She didn't have a car and I did. So I drove 30 minutes away to deliver the stuff to her, all for free. I got into a bad car accident less than five blocks away from her house. So I texted her to see if she could come get what she was able to, because my car had been totaled.
She wouldn't walk the four blocks, and then she reported me to the group and got me kicked out for "not following through". I ended up with a fractured sternum. Yeah, screw her. Never again.
87. This One Kills
I worked with this girl at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. For her birthday, we all went out for drinks. We were all friends and I think she knew that I liked her at the time, though I hadn’t made a move yet. She gave off this rocker vibe. She had tattoos and dyed hair. She loved 80s hair, metal, and rock music in general. So, for her birthday, I decided to burn her a CD of all of my favorite songs from the band "The Kills".
I chose that band because its lead singer, Alison Mosshart, kind of reminded me of her; and I thought that their music would be right up her alley. So, I burned the CD on my computer, decorated the CD cover with a sharpie, and made it look really cool. I wrapped it up with fancy wrapping paper and a bow and gave it to her at the end of the night.
I didn’t wait for her to unwrap it, partly because I was still nervous about her reaction to my gesture and partly because I didn’t want to put her on the spot while we were out amongst friends. I figured she would just let me know if she liked it at work the following week, and I would use that as an opportunity to ask her out.
Cut to next week. There was a day that I was off and she was working. A close buddy of mine from high school also happened to be working that day. I came in the following day for work and he immediately pulled me aside. He said, "Dude, you should just forget about her". He went on to tell me that she had basically just trash-talked and made fun of my gift behind my back.
Apparently, she had said to my friend, "I can’t believe he did that, I don’t even like the Kills!" My friend and I are really tight and he’s very outspoken. He proceeded to defend me, saying: "Are you kidding me? You should be so freaking lucky and thankful that anyone gives a darn about your birthday at all!"
As soon as I heard about that incident, it immediately doused any and all interest that I’d ever had in her. How can I possibly be attracted to someone who cares that little about other people’s feelings? She never even bothered to thank me for the CD at all. She just never mentioned it, so I decided to move on with my life and forget about her.
88. Pick On Somebody Your Own Size
At the age of 14, I was rolling up the hose in my backyard with a friend since my mother told me to. The two girls next door were playing in their backyard and came over to talk. One was 12 years old or so, while the other was around seven. The 12-year-old happened to be standing on the hose, and I asked her to move. She did not. That's when I decided to teach her a lesson.
I pulled the hose hard enough to make her fall over. It felt great—but her sister instantly made me regret it. She screamed and ran right at me, then bit me right on the stomach. She was not letting go, and I could see blood starting to stain my shirt. I grabbed her head and tried to pull her away, but nothing. So I just full-on punched her right in her eye.
I was not proud of this, but it had to be done. What was worse was that the house was owned by a local church where I happened to go to Boy Scouts. Everyone quickly knew I had punched a seven-year-old and given her a black eye. But no one cared why.
89. Tit For Tat
I had a big group of friends all throughout high school. Then when we were 17, one of them ran off with my girlfriend. To be fair, he legitimately knew we were going out, he got her drinking, and then he slept with her at a party. He also knew I'd find out. His response to all this was chilling. He said to my face that he didn't care: "Tough, mate".
It was her fault as well, of course. She'd been leading him on and was sober enough to consent, if tipsy enough to get over the social stigma of actually doing it. So from that point on, our group of friends just cut this guy out of our circle. We stopped inviting him to stuff, and if he tried to hang out, we told him to screw off.
People who had been friends with him since primary school just ignored him. Initially, I was super proud of this show of solidarity from my brothers. So, first summer back from university, we're all 19 or 20 years old. We see him in a local pub. I don't know what to do, decide to try and be cool about it, and go up to say hi. He tells me to screw off.
I guess he blames me for all his friends cutting him out of his life. I don't get the chance to explain that I in no way asked them to do that, they just did what they saw as the right thing. Two weeks later, we're in the same pub, and I see his younger sister. She's 17 years old now, and very, very attractive as it happens. I start a conversation with her about her brother, and how I feel bad about what we did.
She says that it did really hurt him, but he's got some new friends now and is still with my ex-girlfriend, despite it being a long-distance relationship. He won't talk to any of us old friends though, which I think is a genuine shame—he's known some of the guys since we were five. One drink leads to another with this girl, and I took it way too far. We end up back at her house.
Her parents are away, her brother is staying at my ex's apartment, so we have an empty house. We end up sleeping together. The next morning, her brother calls round just as I'm leaving. The look on his face as he works out what's happened. He goes from utter despair to absolutely mental in about half a second. Eventually, I just had to leave.
His sister finally managed to explain to him that it was nothing to do with "revenge" or anything, and that I was genuinely sorry for how we treated him. I don't know if she told him the whole conversation we had about how I'd feel bad as I didn't want to upset him anymore, and she convinced me to come back to hers by saying she was her own woman, could make her own decisions, and he wasn't due to be home at any time.
If he hadn't had randomly turned up, I hope he'd have never known. He still won't accept my Facebook friend request though.
90. The General Moron
The general manager did this when I worked at Best Buy. If you were late, he'd send you home. Even if it was only by five minutes. Nearly every department was understaffed on any given day because of it. Sometimes the schedules would be changed without the employee’s knowledge. The general manager would call the employee asking where they were, telling them to get to the store ASAP.
When they got there, he'd reprimand them in front of customers and send them home only seconds after walking into the store. One or two people quit on the spot when that happened to them. I specifically remember one employee taking off his nametag and throwing it in the general manager's face. That was special.
91. Paper, Plastic, Or Pointless?
The grocery store I work at is now required to charge five cents for plastic bags. Because of this, we have a lot of customers requesting paper bags. Since our paper bags are poor quality, we typically double bag so they don’t rip. Well, one day the store manager sees a cashier doubling paper bags and yells at them because paper bags are more expensive and we can’t afford to double bag them, so now we have a new rule you can’t double paper bags unless they’re really heavy.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and my bagger is using single paper bags. Right as the store manager walks by, the bagger picks up one of the bags that wasn’t even that heavy and it rips right open, right in front of the manager. We’re allowed to double bag them now.
92. Leaving The Client High And Dry
I worked as a carpet cleaner and we weren't allowed to clean anything with moisture already there. We had these moisture meters that were super sensitive—they would go off from the steam accumulated on the top of a pizza box or from touching your hand—so if we didn't want to do a job, we'd test the living heck out of their carpet.
Sometimes it'd go off and we could go off and do something else. But I heard stories of guys doing fake readings by touching the probes with their fingers as they poke the carpets to set them off. I never did that, but I completely understand the desire to.
93. Unfriended
When I was 16, my dad told me that I need to stop treating him and my mom like my friends because they're my parents. The very next day before I got home from school, I had friend requests from both of my parents on Facebook. I denied them both. When my dad got home from work, he asked me, "Did you see that your mom made a Facebook account?" I said, "Yes, I did," to which my dad asked, "Well, did you accept her friend request?"
When I said I didn’t, my dad asked me why not. So, I told him, "Because, just yesterday you told me you're my parents, not my friends. By the way, I also denied your friend request". I figured I was about to get in trouble for that. But my dad just looked at me, looked at my mom who was almost in shock over my response and said, "He's not wrong. I said that".
94. A Change of Plans
During my sophomore year of high school, I was pretty involved in my school's drama department. Yeah, I was a lame kid, I know. There was a girl who I had befriended the year before who was now a senior, and this was all back when I was naïve enough to think that grand and bold romantic gestures were a good idea.
So, I basically got most of my class in on the gig: asking her to be my date to the homecoming dance. I had two main ideas, the first being pulling a Top Gun and getting all the dudes to sing the Righteous Brothers’ classic "You Never Close Your Eyes Anymore" with me. Luckily, one of my friends in her year talked me out of that one.
Instead, I had the bright idea to have my friend hand her a parcel addressed to the "Most Beautiful Girl at (insert high school name here)" as she walked into class. I signed my name on the parcel and stood by waiting with a bouquet of roses for when she showed up. Inside said parcel was a hand-mirror with the word "Prom?" written on it.
Well, uh, that didn't work out quite as planned. I mean, she was nice about it. She pulled me aside and explained how she appreciated the gesture and how it was the most romantic gesture anyone had ever done for her. She then explained that she had already made plans to go solo with her best friends. And she did, and ended up dancing with me for most of the night anyway.
But, I mean, definitely was not the ideal outcome.
95. I Scream For Ice Cream, Gone Wrong
I just passed my exams in university, so I decided to treat myself to some Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I woke up the next morning to a nightmare. I was covered in hives, vomiting, and burning up. Apparently, I had an unknown allergy that the ice cream decided to make me very much aware of. It was the worst week of my life. And that wasn't all...
The actual worst part was that the allergist didn't find anything common that I was allergic to in the ice cream, so we still don’t know what ingredients caused it and need to be avoided in the future. This was more than a decade ago, and I've never had issues with allergies ever since. It may well have been a fluke or something else. But I'll never know...
96. Cruising Down The River
Not that long ago, I thought to myself one day: "You know what? I've never been on a cruise in my life. I want to go on a cruise right now!" So I booked a two-week Caribbean cruise, in a private suite, for just me and the wife. That's when it all unraveled. For some unknown reason, immediately upon arrival to said cruise, the wife decided that she didn't like me anymore.
And so, she spent the entire two weeks of the cruise avoiding me, meaning that I spent two weeks on my own on this bloody ship. We're divorced now.
97. Housing Crisis
I moved a friend of 22 years out of her house with a husband who beat her, placed her in a spare bedroom in my house, bought her clothes, got her a job, and gave her money to buy the things that she needed. I even took her to doctors' appointments or anywhere else that she needed to go. Then, I found out 4 months before my wedding that she had been having an affair with my fiance every day while I was at work.
I lost my house (which was in his name), along with the $10,000 I had put into re-modeling it, my jeep, and all the money that I had already spent on the wedding. They now live there together, and she doesn't even work. Hmmmm, I think I got the short end of that good deed…
98. Poo Patrol
A boss was worried we were "taking away time" by using the bathroom for too long. So, being the nutjob he is, he locked all the bathrooms in the building except the ones he could see from his office door, shut off water to them, put out of order signs on them, and would sit there with a stopwatch timing us between walking into the restroom and walking out, and then would call out the time.
This was ridiculous, over the top, and probably against the law, but he never made a policy officially restricting bathroom time...he just wanted to make everyone feel uncomfortable if they took too long. I discovered that with my height, it was really easy to go through the drop ceiling and over the half wall, and I was the only other person using the men’s room besides my boss, who is short. So, I came up with a devious plan.
I went in, locked it from the inside, did my business, and climbed out the ceiling, leaving the door locked so my boss could not get into the bathroom when he needed to go and was forced to use the ladies...which led to our female employees complaining that he was taking too long in their bathroom. To this day, I don't know if he ever figured out how I was doing that.
99. Oh, How The Tables Have Turned
I am the one who lives closest to work, so if the building alarm goes off overnight, I'm first on the list to get the call from the alarm company. It used to be that if we had good reason to believe the alarm was not an actual break in, we could tell them not to summon the authorities and ignore the alarm. I can access the building cameras from home.
The most common alarm was the cleaning crew who were always messing up the disarming. Then a sister site ignored an alarm that turned out to be an actual break-in, and the facilities director decided that no matter what, if there was an alarm we should have the alarm company summon the authorities, then go to the building, get the authorities all clear, and re-set the alarm.
This was a pain, but rare enough and I lived literally two minutes away. Then we contracted for the alarm company to come in and replace all of our panels and sensors. It was a nightmare process that ultimately ended up taking months, and the whole time there were phantom alarms, sometimes multiple times a night. It was a living nightmare.
Each time I had to go out in the middle of the night, I'd prepare the required report, send it to the facilities director, and request to go back to the old process. Each time he said no, we couldn't afford to miss a potential real break-in. Well, I got my revenge. After about three weeks of this nonsense, I was due for some time off. I was going out of town, and the protocol for that was for me to ignore calls from the alarm company so they moved to the next person on the list...which happened to be the facilities director.
In the five days I was off, I must have ignored at least four overnight calls that all would have gone to him next. Then suddenly, nothing. When I got back, I was informed that for the duration of the alarm update, we just weren't going to arm the building at all. So much for "can't afford to risk a break in!"
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