Patients Who Were In Serious Comas Reveal What It Was Like Finally Waking Up
I get seriously confused when I wake up from a long nap, so I can't imagine what it would be like to come out of a coma. It's a strange experience, and different for everybody, but always fascinating to hear about.
Here, 13 people share true stories of the comas they were in and what it was like waking up from them to a different world
(1/13)
I was in a medically induced coma a few years back for around a month or so. There was no "waking up" phenomenon. One day I remember some flashes of light. Next day a few minutes. Etc. I was so beyond messed up on drugs they were giving me that I was hallucinating and had essentially no idea what was going on for at least a week. For example I was convinced the heart rate monitor was playing the Mario theme song and they had brought me Mario to play. The nurse wasn't happy after I kept asking to play.
(2/13)
I was in a coma, for a week after being in a serious car accident. I suffered 2 months memory loss from the day of the accident, multiple broken bones, fractured skull, broke my jaw and fractured most parts of my face. I woke up in ICU extremely confused and crying and thinking I was still dating my high school boyfriend and I couldn't understand why he wasn't with me.
But what I do remember from the coma was that I was standing in a white room, it felt like i was waiting for something, but I didn't know what. But the worst memory was when I was still in a coma and I could feel people hold my hand and I could feel the nurses bathing me, but I couldn't move or open my eyes, I just couldn't do anything and it was terrifying!
Epic_panda011
(3/13)
GiphyI had a car wreck in July and broke the C2 and C3 in my neck, hip, and clavicle. I was in a coma for 2 months, scored a 3 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. That's the lowest you can get, if I woke up they thought I'd be a vegetable or paralyzed for sure.
When I "woke up" from the 2 month coma I was scared. There was Happy Birthday banner on the wall of the hospital so the first thought that came to my mind was. "What happened to me?" The 2nd question I asked myself was, "How old am I?"
For some reason 60 years kept running through my head, like I was 60 years old. I could tell I was in the hospital because of the room and I had a neck brace on, so I tried to stand up to walk to a mirror and realized I couldn't walk. Then, my next brilliant idea was just to scream as loud as I could so someone would know I was awake. I tried to scream but no sound came out. (I later found out the 2nd intubation paralyzed a vocal cord.) I didn't know what to do or how to find out what happened so my third bright idea was to look at the back of my hands to see if they'd aged a lot.
The backs of my hands looked about the same so I thought at most it had probably been a few years. I knew there was nothing I could do and was tired, so I just decided to go back to sleep. Still, it felt like I just woke up in the morning and no time had passed. I was in neuro rehab up until January and asked everyone there who had been in a coma if they remembered anything and they all said no. They just remember being scared when they woke up.
It only happened a little over 7 months ago so it's not years or anything. I was originally in a wheelchair, then walker, cane and now I can walk unassisted. It took several months of rehab to get to that point though.
YouWerentTalkingToMe
(4/13)
When I was 6, I was in a house fire. I remember going to bed the night before, then I must have passed into a coma from the smoke inhalation because apparently the fire happened in the room I was sleeping in. My first memory of waking up I remember thinking everything was normal and I had no idea that I had missed anything. Then I found this huge box of get-well cards and pieced together that I must have been under for a while.
schlike
(5/13)
When I was 16 in 1998, I was in a coma for 3 days, I think. I'm from New York, but was spending 3 weeks on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Sometime during week 2, I got sick, and ended up having 2 seizures. I was helicoptered to a hospital in Flagstaff. When I woke up from my coma, I recall it being sort of like the scene from E.T.; I had tubes on/in me, I sat up in bed and started pulling them off of me. My parents, who had flown in, scared to death I'm sure, calmed me down, which wasn't too hard. I don't remember much of the next few days. Apparently I read the same newspaper 3 days in a row.
throwaway987123465
(6/13)
GiphyIt all started with some small headaches in the evenings throughout a week about a year ago. One day I woke up at my girlfriends house, took her to university on my motorbike and made the hour long trip home which I had done hundreds of times. Fortunately I arrived home safely when my head started to really hurt. As in the worst case of kick in the head ever! I took some painkillers my dad has which were extremely strong.
Time went past and eventually I tried to lay down and watch some TV, but the screen was far to bright and all I could do was lay on my back grasping my head in pain which was only getting worse.
From there I'm not really able to tell you much of what happened in reality because I started passing out, but I could type all day of what was going on in my head!
I was hallucinating for 5 days straight 24/7. During the day I was having loving and warm hallucinations while my family, close friends and loved ones were around me during visiting hours. But when they had to leave my visions because very dark and completely unbelievable however to me they were extremely convincing.
I'm not talking wavy shapes and fuzzy things. I'm talking genuinely convincing things that were happening to me. As a man of science I was constantly questioning them but It was just so real to me. To the point where I still question if maybe it genuinely did happen to me.
I woke up when I was ready after 5 days in ICU in the top ward in the south of England with a pump doing my heart for me, a tube forcing me to breath, a tube coming out of my manhood about twice the length of... well... you know! My whole family around me, doctors, nurses running around everywhere. I was awake at this point but still having hallucinations although less convincing than during the coma.
I went from being 13 stone to 9 1/2 stone in 5 days and then from 9 1/2 to 9 in the three days after that. Apparently when someone is in intensive care it usually takes 3-5 days in a regular ward for every day you were IN ICU to recover as it can cause PTSD and other damage to people. I was so determined to get back on my feet I was discharged in 3 days. According to the doctor, if he was less busy in the morning and could get round to me earlier I would have been broken records for recovery times.
While I was in the coma I died twice and yes I had the crazy white light experience however it wasn't really like they show you on TV. I also had out of body experiences. For weeks after I had awful dreams, really really graphic stuff and some very very emotive nightmares.
matt1519
(7/13)
I was in a coma post-very severe seizure for 6 days. I didn't suddenly come out of the coma, but instead had more and more time awake. Initially I was drowsy and things were "fuzzy" and didn't make sense. But then they made more sense and I slept less and was more fully awake. It probably took about 4 further days to become properly awake.
I am a nurse and now see that in patients that come out of comas it is always gradual. Most comas are induced by medicines (we do it for pain management, healing, to be still) and these are gradual, as well as patients that have been in self induced comas. It differs from normal sleep.
cannedbread1
(8/13)
I was in a medically induced coma in September 2012 for a few days. I had taken an accidental overdose of propranolol and stopped my heart. Apparently I then developed pneumonia (although of this I'm unsure of, as I wasn't really you know, there for any of it.)
For the first 24 hours they were sure I was going to die as they didn't know how long my brain had been deprived of oxygen when they found me and started working on me. When I woke up a few days later all my little memories blurred into one another, I just remember lots of faces all around me of worried people. I remember thinking how convenient this had happened when my mum was on a holiday so she could be there. She wasn't on a holiday.
When I came to I couldn't remember very much about myself or my life. And my memories for the month beforehand were just gone altogether.
As time passed I was slowly able to piece things together again but it was really weird, I would just be eating cereal and then suddenly: "Oh yeah I studied psychology for 2 years at university!" Then boom. A whole aspect of my life came back into my brain. This happened almost continuously for a couple of months.
I couldn't have caffeine, or anything that might stress out or change my heartbeat until I went for a follow up in December to confirm there weren't any permanent issues caused. Which luckily there were not! I'm fine now but I would say it was 4 months before I really felt like me again. And I never got those 2 weeks before the overdose back, I'm still not sure if it was accidental or on purpose. But there you go.
sweetandsalted
(9/13)
GiphyMy coma hallucinations were pretty bad, I kept trying to fight everyone, everyone (friends, family and doctors) was out to hurt or humiliate me to the point they strapped me to the bed so I wouldn't hurt anyone or myself. When I finally stopped hallucinating, I was so tired of running away, and fighting (think inception, or dreams, I felt I was in there for months), that I didn't even care much for the fact I had lost an arm, I was just glad it was over.
CyberClawX
(10/13)
I was in and out of a coma for about two weeks. I say about because I don't actually know how long, I was never told the exact amount of time. I had a life-threatening case of internal bleeding caused by clostridium difficile and sepsis. The first few days was a genuine coma, after that it was induced by the doctors with ketamine.
Waking up was kind of like emerging from deep waters. It took me a few days to actually be fully aware, I attribute that to the meds. Before that, it felt like time was skipping at random.
The last proper memory I had was being surrounded by doctors on a table with these insanely bright high-powered lights pointed at me. I was sweating from the heat of them but still felt like I was freezing, because of all the blood I'd lost.
After that I was out for at least a week, then I started to come round for a few moments at a time. I remember looking down and seeing two catheter lines in both my arms and two in my chest. They'd ran out of space so they even put one in my foot. As they slowly lowered the dosage of tranquilizers I woke up more and more, downside of that being that I could suddenly feel all the pain I'd been too doped up to register until then. That was fun.
TheDeadManWalks
(11/13)
Apparently I was unconscious for two days, but forgot almost the entire week. The following month is just a haze due to painkillers and multiple surgeries. It almost felt like going back in time. I had just started my first week of college and was staying in the dorms. Once I started having clear memories again I was living back at home, had no job, and spent my days doing nothing but wallowing in pain and depression. Like freshmen year of high school all over again, plus pain.
Elsrick
(12/13)
GiphyI was in a medically induced coma for 11 days when I was 19 (I'm 24 now). I went to sleep drunk, and while I was sleeping on my back I accidentally threw up. My lungs were filled with so much fluid that I was likely going to die. All I know is my mother was told to say her final goodbye to me, and my grandmother had me baptized. But then at the last minute, the doctor tried flipping me onto my stomach and it started to break up the stuff in my lungs, and it began to dissipate (this is my understanding). I was in the ICU for about 2 weeks due to aspiration pneumonia, and then was on the general medicine floor for about 2-3 weeks. I don't remember much about waking from the coma, except I had this weird inclination that I was given a vasectomy while I was under.
I remember a few things that actually happened around me while I was under, like the score to a football game that someone must have been watching on my TV, and I recognized a nurse when I woke up. I guess my main memory about waking up is I was just super confused. I didn't know why I was in the hospital, last thing I remembered it was before Halloween and I was going to bed, and I woke up and I'd missed election day.
usernameforatwork
(13/13)
I was in a medically induced coma for over a week. During that time I had four surgeries and severe sepsis. A couple of organ systems started shutting down. I had horrible hallucinations/nightmares. When I woke up I didn't know where I was, what city I was in, what day it was, and thought my parents were imposters. They would always ask me if I knew my name, the date, etc. and I was wondering how they expected me to know. I physically couldn't move to hit the nurse call button. I could barely speak and had no sense of time. I thought I was in some ground floor building, maybe an ER, and there was an entire community on the roof. I also thought I was being held captive by some cult and that I had had a baby (my stomach was really swollen and they kept asking me if I was pregnant before procedures). They had me sitting up in a chair relatively early in the "just of the breathing tube" process and I couldn't hold my head up, pick my feet up and down, or squeeze a foamy thing. I had no idea how to read a clock at that time and had a distorted passage of time. It felt like I had to sit in that chair forever and I never knew when it was going to end.
At the time I still didn't know where I was and why I was there. My parents kept showing me a video of my cats they had taken one day (they had been kicked out by my doctor to let me rest) and I kept wondering why they kept showing this horrible quality video! Apparently I would just look at them blankly or with puzzlement. They didn't know if I was all there.
All told I have a three week memory blank (a week while I was sick pre-coma, coma, and coming out of the coma). I slowly gained my senses back enough to recognize my parents and where I was.
After a month in ICU was taken to the normal unit. I had to take a swallow "test" at several points to see if I could eat. This consisted of me sitting up in a chair swallowing various viscosities of liquids. I still didn't have the strength to sit up well and basically leaned into a side board on the chair. I took the test a couple of times because I failed it at least once. I still couldn't move and someone had to feed me the liquid diet I was cleared for (slushies, clear soup). For awhile I had a call "button" (like an easy button) up by my head because I couldn't use a normal one. I remember watching my roommate walk to bathroom and complain how painful it was. I wanted to yell at them to suck it up, at least they could walk.
I finally gained a bit of movement back. I still couldn't talk very well. Psychiatrists came in to evaluate tremors I had. They had me write a sentence. Let me tell you that was so hard. I wrote "hello world" and they wanted something longer. They changed some medication and eventually I was able to grab my water cup to drink.
About every day physical therapy would come, make me sit up in bed (so hard), make me stand up with a walker and some belt assistance, and rotate over into a chair. I could measure time again and had to stay sitting for an hour. I would get dizzy rather easily though. After about a week they made me start upright physical therapy exercises. Standing for a few seconds, lifting my feet up and down (marching), kicking my feet out, and various other exercises. Eventually they had me stand and try and catch a ball that they bounced toward me or bounce the ball myself.
One day the physical therapist told me it was time to try and take a step. This was about seven weeks after I had been hospitalized total and a few after the medically induced coma. I've done many physical activities but that was about the hardest thing I've ever done. Sometimes around this time I began to put my history back together...what happened, the timeline, what was going to happen. My ability to speak and my relative intelligence returned.
Because of my extended hospital stay not moving, the length of time I didn't eat, and my illness my muscles had atrophied. I had no calf muscles. I was evaluated for "wasting" and eventually put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN)..aka IV feeding. I had a semi-port put into my chest that went straight to my heart in order to shuttle food in.
Eventually I was able to walk the length of the hallway. I was transferred to in-patient physical therapy. The gave me various speaking, eating, and cognitive evaluations which I fortunately passed. My sense of movement was messed up and I was constantly receiving messages from my eyes that I was moving ever so slightly (like a vibration). We worked on standing drills, focusing on different things to see if that would fix my issues. I was throwing up every other day, multiple times in a day, partially because of the motion (I later found out it was an infection but anyway...). Physical therapy worked with me on walking up stairs (that was terrifying and tough), walking a couple of hundred feet, walking over obstacles (like six inches off the floor), and getting in and out of a car. Occupational therapy worked with me on being able to stand to brush my teeth, changing my clothes, doing laundry, and manual dexterity. I was only in in-patient therapy for a week.
When I went home I had to climb one flight of stairs. My dad walked behind me as I walked one flight, having to pause several times. I did a lot of sleeping while home, still on TPN (for various reasons). Standing up to brush my teeth was still tough. As was making it from my bed to my couch. Whenever we went anywhere for an extended period of time I would be in a wheelchair. I also couldn't lay on my side in bed like I used too...I didn't have the strength. I spent the next six months getting strength back, moving a bit more and more every day. When the event happened my doctors told me it would take two years for me to recover from the incident and they were right. It was 1.5 years before I was able to work at all, and even that was very much limited working.
Now I live somewhat normally but with some chronic medical conditions. I get tired very easily. I still find out things about my stay that I didn't know before, even though it's been a few years. The hallucinations/dreams have stayed with me and I have some PTSD-like symptoms from not knowing where I was, not being able to move, and not being able to communicate.
But I'm getting better, little by little.
UCgirl
Important Lessons People Have Learned The Hard Way
Reddit user IndianaC0NES asked: 'What’s an important lesson you learned the hard way?'
We've all had to learn something the hard way or at a super inconvenient time.
But because we're always learning new things, of course there will have to be some things that we learn later, rather than sooner, no matter the consequences of learning it too late.
Redditor IndianaC0NES asked:
"What's an important lesson you learned the hard way?"
Money Management
"Do not spend like there’s no tomorrow. Tomorrow will come and it won’t be pretty."
- cpu5555
Permanent Partner
"Never have kids with someone you don’t want in your life forever."
- pntszrn74
Make It Official First
"Money doesn’t exist until the deposit hits your bank account, and business promises mean nothing until legal documents are signed."
- FriscoFrank98
Know Your Limits
"Learn when to stop drinking and call it a night."
- Gadrilor
Trust Your Gut
"If something feels wrong, it likely is."
- drzed47
"This is closely related to, 'If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.'"
- remag_nation
The Importance of Dental Health
"Dental care is expensive!! Never be lazy with oral hygiene."
- the_rice_life
"And dental problems are EXTREMELY PAINFUL."
- Next-Confection3261
Be Careful Who You Share It With
"Not everyone has the same heart as you do."
- Accomplished_Hat2770
Be Wary of Bullies
"Not everyone is a good person. Some people actually want to see you fail. Stop oversharing. These nasty people will use it against you."
- Ko_ogs72
"My brain still can't comprehend someone being a d**k for no reason."
- Arny520
Recognize the Red Flags
"Don't let love blind your eyes, red flags are real."
- Fxk07
"And: No one is worth sacrificing your self-respect for."
- Waltzing_Methusalah
"It sucks when you’re halfway to learning this lesson before you even realize it. It’s so important to know your boundaries and respect yourself with the diligence required to walk away from people creating toxic patterns in your life, even or ESPECIALLY before you have the full picture to work with."
"We all know it’s heading south long before these things have terrible consequences on oneself/life. At a certain point, it’s too late to escape unscathed. Self-respect and what amounts to the ‘sunken-cost dilemma’ NEVER go together in relationships."
- brashbabu
The Likelihood of Success
"It's possible to make no wrong moves and still lose."
- Tropicsenshi
Family Ties
"Your family doesn't always have your best interest at heart."
- OhMyGodBearIsDriving
"Sometimes, family are just a bunch of bad people who are biologically related to you."
- noorofmyeye24
Wear the Helmet
"WEAR A HELMET."
"It's an easy safety precaution you can take when rollerblading, biking, skateboarding, scootering, etc. And it can literally save your life."
"I went all through the 90s thinking helmets were lame... I Fell while rollerblading in my 30s and got a subdural hematoma. I wasn't going fast but the momentum from how I fell just slammed my head into the concrete."
"HELMETS SAVE LIVES."
- Shortiie5115
Proper Eye and Ear Care
"Here is my PSA about eye protection. You only have two eyes and many injuries are not repairable. I have a completely s**t vision in one eye because of an injury and I'm constantly paranoid about something happening to the good eye. Wear safety glasses folk, it's important."
- ipsok
"And ear protection. You do not want Tinnitus."
- farmerofstrawberries
Love Your Loved Ones
"Always take a chance to tell someone you love them. To give them a hug."
"Never end a conversation with a harsh word."
"Both for the same reason. You never know if you will get to see that person alive again."
"I learned both those lessons from each of my parents."
- Edgezg
Self Advocate
"Stand up for yourself. If you get in the habit of letting people walk all over you, it'll be extremely difficult to reverse. Even if you're not confident, just fake it till you make it!"
- MISTERDIEABETIC
As humans, we will never stop learning and taking in new information, but there are, of course, some things that we wish we could have learned sooner or through an easier path.
But at least now that we've learned these lessons, we can share them with others, so they might not have to take the same path we did.
From a young age, we've all had it drilled into us the importance of finding a good job that we can work at for the rest of our lives.
But sometimes those jobs don't work out for one reason or another, and sometimes all of the fault gets pinned on the employee.
Redditor DankGamer135 asked:
"What one mistake ended your career?"
A Scam Order
"While working at a builders’ merchant's, a customer called to place an order over the phone (not unusual) and wanted to give me the card details, there and then (red flag)."
"I initially refused, but another member of staff vouched for them as they were regulars. I put the order through, knowing that whoever came to collect would need to come into the office for their paperwork before loading, so we would have them on CCTV if it did turn out to be suspect…"
"Except the yard crew didn’t follow the process. When a van turned up for the goods, they loaded it all up and sent them away without asking for any kind of ID or manifest."
"The payment card was later reported as stolen, and the staff member who vouched for the customer denied even being in that day, which was a f**king lie as she never took time off. I got fired and everyone else got to keep their jobs."
- Shas_Erra
"That sounds like a setup. They should’ve been easily able to verify whether the person that vouched for them was working that day (check her clock in/out times, CCTV, etc)."
"At the very least, someone on the yard crew should’ve gotten fired too because they didn’t follow procedure either (and it’s even worse because if they had, it could’ve been stopped dead in the tracks)."
"I’m sorry, man."
- princessleyley
Lifting Wrong
"I lifted wrong. 14 years of arboriculture coming to an end now, and I'm not sure of the next job."
- Spaghettitrees
"14 years might be enough to move into a supervisory/managerial role if one exists in the field. It would allow you to still utilize your experience to some degree."
- srentiln
A Screaming Match
"I worked retail pharmacy for 10(ish) years. One day in the drive-thru, we had a belligerent patient. The guy's doctor sent his script to our other chain about 1.5 miles down the road. We were on the same street, and addresses get mixed up all the time. No biggie, give me 10 minutes and I'll have it ready..."
"But the dude just starts laying into me for no reason. Calls me an id**t. Calls me incompetent. Says he knows where his doctor sent it and I'm a lazy, lying piece of s**t. Etc, etc."
"After a few MINUTES going back and forth, with this guy yelling loud enough in my drive-thru that other staff inside the store can hear him, I tell him he needs to leave and find a new pharmacy."
"The guy lays into me again. Refuses to leave. I tell him, 'F**k off or I'm calling the police.'"
"Apparently, that was over the line for my company. No interview with HR. No discipline. No suspension. They just straight up fired my a** about three weeks later after an 'internal investigation.'"
- frithjofr
Physical Space
"One of the Directors wasn't happy with some work I'd done and started poking me hard with his finger to punctuate his comments."
"I punctuated back considerably more forcefully."
- jonnymars
The Angel of Death
"I called the HR lady the 'Angel of Death' to a coworker on chat. (HR was in a different state, so any time they came to town we all knew it was most likely to lay off people.)"
"The Angel of death came to get me shortly after, lol (laughing out loud)."
- michaudra2
"I once worked in a company as the help desk tech that would come collect tech while people were in with HR getting fired. I got the nickname Grim Reaper, because if I showed up with my cart and nobody in that department called, then one of their colleagues wouldn't be coming back from their meeting with HR."
- Houseplantkiller123
Home Sweet Home
"I built a castle out of Christmas chocolate biscuit boxes in the warehouse of a major retailer on a night shift and proceeded to fall asleep in it for a few hours."
- masontraining
The Wrong Recipient
"I sent a scathing email about my boss directly to my boss. It wasn't meant for him."
"To this day, I still have no idea what possessed me to put his name in the address bar. I noticed his name the exact moment I hit send."
"You have never felt that much panic."
- Happy1327
A Brand New Car
"I was a part-time intern making $9 an hour (USD) and my boss asked if I had any plans for the weekend."
"I had said I was going to buy a new car (very much old and used as that's what I could afford) and he asked if I was buying a brand new car. My response was that my budget isn't big enough for a new car."
"A couple of weeks later during my one-year review, my manager said they didn't have the work for me and that I was disrespectful for telling the boss I didn't make enough money."
"At the time I was living comfortably as a college student who just needed different transportation. I tried not to be disrespectful but apparently I was."
- Kulee43
Fired in Retaliation
"I got security responsibilities added to my duties as a sysadmin at a small university. I was asked by my boss' boss, the IT director, to do a security audit. He asked me to report on the audit at a department meeting."
"I asked if I could present my results to him privately instead and have him present at the meeting, but he insisted I could take care of it."
"My report showed major security holes, demonstrations of tests of said holes, and recommendations for patching said holes. Many of the patches were at the level of 'change the administrator password from 'password' to something less obvious.'"
"As my political acumen was near zero at the time, I didn't realize how the report on major security problems made the IT Director look completely incompetent in front of the entire department. He had built and configured the campus computer system pretty much on his own, at least in his mind, and was quite proud of his accomplishment."
"He suspended me on the spot, demoted me, and tried to convince the university to fire me and try to bring me up on criminal charges for hacking into the university's computer systems."
- firelock_ny
A Terrible Accident
"I had a workplace accident, a fall from an extreme height. I didn't get fired but broke enough bones that I'll never work in that industry again."
- Malromen
Out of Context
"I was opening my packages in the mailroom, using a pocket knife to slice open the packing tape. The secretary came in and chatted. We’re both Italian so we gesture a lot while talking."
"Sometime after the conversation, the Ops manager came down from his office and escorted me out of the building. I had forgotten the knife was in my hand while talking with the secretary, and she made an accusation that I had threatened her with it during our conversation."
"I was fired three days later."
"I had worked with this woman for almost a decade. I helped her children with their homework, etc."
"Years later, I learned corporate wanted to take down my boss and started the process by going after his biggest supporters. I was the third domino to fall. After I was railroaded, almost 40% of the branch’s staff left the company. I guess the secretary was in on it and leaped at any excuse to take me out."
"Shame. Really loved that job. And got fired when my first child was due in only four weeks. It was very demoralizing for quite a while."
- Bokuden101
Stolen Cigarettes
"This isn't about me, but a guy I worked with was caught stealing two cigarettes from a colleague's bag. He was on a six-figure salary. Not anymore!"
- Rude-Scholar-469
"How can anybody be so dumb? Especially as a smoker, he should be aware how other smokers are very likely to share their cigarettes with you if you just ask them."
- SherifGames
The Stolen Lunch
"This didn't happen to me, but I remember a coworker of mine getting fired because he put laxatives in his own lunch bag. Some d*ckhead kept stealing parts of our lunches. Turned out, it was our supervisor."
"I'm not too keen on the specifics since that coworker and I weren't exactly friends or anything. I just kind of had simple conversations during lunch and whatnot."
"Apparently, it is illegal to poison food with malicious intent. And some of my friends who worked there said he got into some legal trouble because of it. Nothing came of it from what I heard. But that's about all I know."
- DeicideandDivide
A Slanderous Date
"I went on a first date with a girl who turned out to be a horrible person 20 minutes in."
"I did what I could to get out of it because she was telling stories about crazy things she’d done and was proud of. I didn’t pull anything to get out of it, just dodged land mines and asked a ton of questions about her so I could get out of it sooner."
"Then I said I wasn’t feeling the connection and I wanted to be honest so we didn’t waste each other's time."
"I found out a week later that she contacted my previous employers, because she found my LinkedIn, told them all stories about how I talked a ton of s**t about them all. And now I can’t get a reference from my previous three jobs… and people I was on good terms with."
"All because I went on a date with a psychopath."
- FirstFlight
Taking Sides
"I sided with the peeps under me as their manager."
- ThunderClap449
"It's more important to have the back of the people you represent. In my experience, you get better production out of people who know you go to bat for them. Then your numbers and team performance look good and they figure, well, he must be doing something right."
- A_Vile_Person
While it is always terrible to lose a job, these stories make it clear that sometimes we lose jobs for reasons that really should be no fault of our own. From fraud to accidents to false charges, people have been fired for things they certainly shouldn't have been.
And for those who were fired for reasons that wholly were their fault, well, at least that was a learning experience.
Emotions are high at weddings, with the bride and groom going through various stages of anxiety and excitement.
During those stages, seeing how well a newly wedding couple interacts with each other as well as with other family members and friends under pressure can indicate how well they work together as a team.
If professional wedding photographers had years of experience capturing one of the most monumental milestones for couples, they would be able to identify if a couple can make it for the long haul.
Curious to hear from them, Redditor Arknight40 asked:
"Wedding photographers of Reddit, what was your 'they're not gonna last long' moment?"
Some marriages had problems before saying "I do".
The Last Session
"Bride looked visibly miserable the entire ceremony. While photographing the men’s 'getting ready' portion, the groom repeatedly kept joking about killing himself."
"During the toast, the bride ran off to the bathroom for about 30 minutes and came back wiping her tears with her eyes red and puffy. Neither of them had any chemistry at all, it made no sense why they were together to me. That was the last wedding I shot."
– Majestic_Storage_563
Groom's Wandering Eye
"I'm a videographer and the groom called me a couple days after the wedding. He wanted me to make sure I didn't include any footage of him checking out the women at the wedding."
– Tim0281
Party Bride
"One of those hotel venues that can run two weddings at the same time. Bride from our wedding is found in a hotel room with the groomsmen from the other wedding doing drugs before the first dance. End result was we got paid and were told no need to edit or deliver pics. Safe to say It didn't last the night."
– mysticsika
Red Flags Galore
"The engagement session."
"The couple was in from out of town because she had just taken the bar exam to become a lawyer. At the end of the session, I gave them a prompt to share with each other what they were proud of each other for. He couldn't think of a single thing."
"Somehow they still got married, complete with: the groom drinking 11 IPAs + several shots before the ceremony, mother of the bride so drunk for family photos she pretended to strip, and the groom and all the groomsmen wearing camo hats with neon orange letters that said 't*tties and beer.' For the entire wedding day. Including sunset couples photos where he refused to do anything I suggested, nearly spat chew right on my feet, kept farting on purpose, and loudly complained about how all he wanted was to go have sex."
– V-Savage
Demanding clients indicated how difficult they might be as a spouse.
Once More From The Top
"Wedding was on a golf course. Bride had a vision she wanted of her husband driving up on a golf cart to see her for a first look."
"He got one look at her from the top of the hill and vaulted the cart, ran down the hill, picked her up and twirled her around to tell her how gorgeous she was. We caught it all. It was the best first look ever."
"Once he set her down she straightened herself and looked back to us. 'Okay, I don’t want that. Let’s do the golf cart now.' And she sent him back up."
– Pancakes_Whisperer
More Photoshop Please
"I did a wedding for an acquaintance and her husband. Day goes great, I’m really happy with almost everything I took, everyone was feeling it and having fun. But, (and this is one of the reasons I quit photography) the bride sees some of the photos I had sent her, and immediately is calling me. 'I need you to do the editing magic and make me look skinny, John was saying I was going to look too fat in my dress and wanted me to lose weight but I knew you could just edit it, so haha I didn’t'. So I have to explain (this is like 2010) I can only photoshop so much, I.e. I can make you look a tad slimmer in certain photos without making it noticeable. But I can’t do it to all of them, and if I was to, the editing would be noticeable, and I will have to charge you a lot of money to edit you in all the photos. She tried to convince me to edit hundreds of photos for a couple hundred bux, and I have other jobs going and had given them a great deal already so explained I couldn’t. So she insist I do at least some of her main pics, I tell her when people see the rest of the pics they will see the difference, she didn’t care and insisted more. So I do, and a couple weeks later when I thought it was all done and history calls me and leaves me a voicemail of how I ruined her wedding, her new husband is upset at how she looks in the pics and keeps making remarks about her weight. So didn’t seem like they were in a great place from the get go."
– Jadedsatire
A Secret Arrangement
"While shooting video, I attached a microphone to the groom for audio and proceeded to prepare for the ceremony. Just as I was about to adjust my audio settings, the groom stepped into another room with a friend. As I put on my headphones, I overheard the groom confiding in his friend, describing the wedding as a 'wedding of convenience' and reassuring them not to be concerned about what would happen in their relationship."
– NoodleMaps
The best man shouldn't have too much to drink. They might overshare.
Cold, Hard Truth
"Went to a wedding during college to my friends that got married who graduated 2 years prior to me. They had a beautiful wedding on a boat off the Keys and as the best man gave his speech, he was really drunk by this point, just shouted out, 'You don't deserve her, you literally got a bj from a stripper no make that two strippers at your bachelor party. Peace out.' He dropped the mic and tried to do a dramatic exit but by this point we were all stuck on this boat in the middle of the ocean. It took an hour to get back to port, and it was the most awful and awkward hour of our lives for everyone on that boat."
– breakitupkid
A Harsh Roast
"in another life, i worked catering shifts. loads of saturday weddings. i'll never forget the best-man's toast of the groom. it was a shameless roast. he spoke openly about the groom's willingness to shag anything when he's drunk. he then went on and on about the groom's deadly gambling habit and his short fuse when he doesn't win. he asked the stone-faced groom 'how many thousands of dollars in golf clubs have you destroyed or lost in countless ponds?' nobody was laughing. the bride had tears in her eyes and the groom's parents sat in stunned silence."
– dys_p0tch
Some people aren't marriage material.
Disasterous
"This was 15 years ago or so, I left wedding photography a few months later."
"The reception was at their home, they didn't want photos at the ceremony, and didn't want wedding party/family photos between the ceremony and reception triggering the first raise of the eyebrow on my end. At the reception the groom didn't want his brother, the best man, in the photos. Other eyebrow goes up. The mothers of both the bride and groom both scolded me to let them be and told me to eat instead of take photos. The groom and the best man got unholy drunk and had a weird by play of brother making way too many toasts and the groom making grossly inappropriate speeches of what he's going to do to the bride on the honeymoon."
"As the newlyweds were making their grand departure the bride tosses the bouquet, everyone cheers. The groom shouts 'I knocked the b*tch up so hard she's got two babies in her c**chie"' Guest react in various ways of shock and happiness about the pregnancy test but the best man lunges at the groom shouting and swearing. Family holds the best man back as the couple runs out to a car. The groom flipped off the spectators, and pulled out of the driveway. Two houses down the car stops, the groom gets out and pukes on a neighbor's lawn, the bride gets in the driver's seat and takes off, leaving her husband yurking into a flower bed, and the best man ran down the street trying to flag down the car."
"Divorced four months later."
– OmicronPerseiNate
These are but a mere sampling of weddings gone wrong or couples that should never have gotten together in the first place.
Do you have any stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.
We've all found ourselves in a position where we simply couldn't contain ourselves and found ourselves putting someone in their place owing to something they said which was either wrong or just plain stupid.
When it comes to the latter category, though, it's often worth taking a minute to wonder if fighting that particular battle is even worth it.
As many people who are about to shoot down their current conversation partner might take a minute and really examine the person they're talking with before remembering the old saying: "Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Sadly, some people remember this conversation too late, and find themselves falling down a conversational rabbit hole from which they may never escape.
“'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'.” What's your best real life example of this?"
They Literally Won't be "Shut Down"
"When I tell people to just reboot your computer and it will fix all their problems and yet they won't because they said if you wait long enough it will shut down, when in reality it only goes to sleep."
"Then when I tell them they have to completely shut it down they look at me like I'm an idiot and say they did."
"I tell them it seems like it but it only went to sleep."
"They argue back."- niallaa
Some People Just Don't Get It...
"I used to argue a lot with my sister when we were kids."
"She would do this thing where she would say something, and then I would reference back to it literally a minute or two later to prove a point and she would say 'I never said that' or 'that’s not what I said'."
"Absolutely impossible to argue with someone who will just deny having said things that could hurt their argument."
"Also, trying to change the course of an argument if they feel like they are 'losing'."
"A coworker once called me an idiot for doing something 'incorrectly' when I was actually doing it the right way."
"When I politely explained to them that the way they suggested doing the task didn’t actually work, they started asking 'why are you getting so angry?? I was just trying to help' etc."
"So now we’re arguing about whether I’m angry or not instead of the right way to complete the task."- themightypianocat
Facts Are Facts...
"Arguing is pointless if you do not agree on a set of facts."- niallaa
Facts GIF by Judge JerryGiphyYou Can't Have It Both Ways...
"For a short while, I worked as a line cook at a Cracker Barrel, and there was a little saloon style door that led to the staff section (kitchen, bathroom, etc)."
"There was a staff only sign on the door, above the doors, and on the wall behind the doors at eye level."
"Usually if someone from the customer side comes in, they said, 'Coming in' before opening the door, so they didn't hit anyone, but of course customers didn't know that."
"So when this dude opened the door and hit a waitress carrying a ton of drinks, we were reasonably upset with him."
"He said, ;You should really put a sign up'."
"We showed him all the signs, and he goes, 'That seems a bit excessive'."- GreyFoxHound1
So Wrong.
"Had an employee sign an NDA about an upcoming art installation that had investors."
"He told everyone."
"He argued with me the NDA only meant he couldn’t disclose anything with the people in the company."- BosskHogg
He Knew What He Was Talking About
This was best said:
“'Never wrestle with pigs'."
"'You both get dirty and the pig likes it'.― George Bernard Shaw"- Zerowantuthri·
pigs GIFGiphySome Outdated Inventions Are Definitely Not Missed...
"I’m showing my age here but I used to work for an estate agency, and we had sales offices set up at the site of large new housing developments."
"Our primary method of communication was fax."
"One of the sales associates telephoned our office to say that the fax machine had run out of paper."
"No problem, I said, one of the guys is coming your way later for a house tour, I’ll give him a box of paper to give to you."
"We then had an almost 20 minute long argument when they kept insisting 'NO, YOU JUST SEND ME A BLANK FAX BECAUSE I NEED THE PAPER, IT WILL JUST COME OUT OF MY FAX MACHINE'.”
"It was like trying to nail jelly to a tree."
"Difficult, irritating, and it achieved nothing."- BettieKat
Very Few Hills Are Worth Dying On...
"I had a friend in university who was a world-class high school debater."
"Over meals, she liked to pick a ridiculous proposition and then talk circles around people until they had to concede to her point, no matter how absurd."
"When she tried it with me, I just stonewalled her."
"Met every point with a solid 'I don't think that's true'." or 'That doesn't make sense'."
"Eventually she gave up and never tried it with me again."
"It was the only time I've ever used the tactics of the stupid to win an argument."
"But, to be fair, if you're not arguing with me in good faith, I feel no obligation to respond in good faith."- kitskill
IS The Customer Always Right?...
"Working retail."
"Especially when I worked in the tech shop or a computer store."
" Trying to convince someone their $500 laptop is never going to be a gaming system no matter how many of the very few replaceable parts we throw at it can be exhausting."- MOS95B
happy episode 7 GIFGiphyEducation Only Matters If You Learned Something....
"Was arguing with this dude about something math-related."
"He didn’t know how to read a study that involved statistics. claimed he was in multiple AP math classes."
"Tried saying that I 'probably don’t even know basic integration'."
"Gave me a common integration problem."
"He wrote it but forgot the minus sign, making it unsolvable."
"I pointed it out and he edited the comment to make it correct."
"Told him that some people can see when you edit comments."
"He claimed that he just capitalized a letter. on and on and on."- SaturdayNightCity
Good Legal Counsel Might Be Worth The Splurge...
"I asked a representative from the Friend of the Court to explain something she said and she told me that I understood what she was saying."
"I replied that I wouldn't have asked her to explain if I had understood."
"She said if I was going to be difficult, she would hold me in contempt."
"My X chimed in that she didn't quite understand what she had said and was greeted with a smile and an explanation."
"From that point on I always disagreed with the Friend of the Court on EVERYTHING, so that I could be seen by the 'Actual Court' and a Judge."- PURPLEPEE
Season 4 Episode 21 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphySore Winners Are No More Attractive Than Sore Losers...
"Once worked with a guy who, by his own admission, got his rocks off by picking fights."
"He'd start an argument over the smallest thing."
"If you said it was white, he'd say it was black, just to try to start something."
"The one that always stood out for me was the weather app competition."
"One day he asked me what temperature it was, so I read it off my weather app."
"He got all offended, because his weather app said it was a couple degrees warmer."
"So he decides we're going to have a weather app competition."
"He was going to chart what our apps said the temperature was, and at the end of the week, whichever one was closest to that day's high would be the winner."
"And the loser would have to start using the winner's app."
"To which I said, "What is your f*cking problem?'"
"So, yeah."
"For the first few days, he'd make a big performance about marching into my office, recording the temperature off my app, jotting down some notes, and walking off."
"This started on a Monday."
"He gave up after Wednesday."
"Either because I was winning, or he was disappointed because, despite his best efforts, I just did not give a f*ck about weather apps."
"Or maybe the boss told him to stop because I filed a complaint that this was bordering on harassment."- originalchaosinabox
Im Always Right GIF by ZionGiphyIt should perhaps be said calling someone an idiot, or even thinking it, is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Even so, if you're tempted to do so when you're in the presence of a particular individual, probably best not to provoke them.
After all, if you're so determined to "win," does it really make you any better than them?