We all like to rant and rave about our workplace annoyances—but what about workers in medical professions?
These poor souls face terrifying, heartbreaking—and mostly just plain disgusting—experiences, and they have to attend to them STAT. These Reddit stories, however, come with a warning: only the brave, and those with stomachs of steel, should read on.
1. She Was Lying In Wait
woman in red shirt wearing blue gogglesPhoto by MedicAlert UK on UnsplashI got a fast bleep one night to a side room on the ward. A fast bleep means “drop everything you’re doing and attend to this emergency please.” When I entered the room, I found no patient in the bed. Not anywhere in the room. I was just about to leave the room and go back out to the nurses station, where there had been a bit of a hubbub when I’d dashed past the first time, when something caught my eye.
I looked up at the ceiling—and couldn’t stop myself from screaming. It was a face with wide, slightly wild “psych eyes” peering down at me. She was a lady waiting for a bed in the psych hospital who’d clearly thought the ceiling was the best place to hide from the people trying to poison her. Honestly, I can’t think of another occasion that I’ve been quite so terrified.
Worst thing was that I had to walk—well, dash—back out underneath her to get help from the nurses and security to get her down.
2. This Is Why We Have Two
While I was in training at an army hospital, the doctors would provide free medical attention to civilians that couldn’t afford it on their own. One story was about a woman in her seventies who came in complaining about a problem with her anus. And that’s not even the bizarre part. When the doctors went to roll her onto her side, one of the guys grabbed her arm, and it just flopped freely like it was just hanging on by skin.
They freaked out and asked her if she was okay and if her arm hurt. She said that it was no big deal, and that it was just her bad arm. As it turns out, when she was 16 years old, she fell down and completely dislocated her shoulder. They didn’t have access to medical attention, so she just lived with it like that for over 50 years.
She just conceded that she would never use that arm. He said that it could have been reset very easily without surgery, if they would have taken care of it when it happened. This story makes me so sad every time I think of it.
3. Right Angle? Wrong Angle
man riding on gray road bicycle during daytimePhoto by Beau Runsten on UnsplashOne of my students was a nurse. She was a really pretty girl, about 30 years old, and quite conservative. So when I asked her about horrible things she’d seen on the job, I thought she would share a pretty tame story—especially considering there were three other students in the class, two of them 22. I couldn’t have been more wrong. She started by telling me that a guy came into the hospital and he was “swollen” down there.
Was his scrotum inflamed, I asked? “No, no, not swollen,” she said. “My mistake. More like…” and here she made a hand gesture which I will never forget. First, the hand raised, perfectly straight, as if to initiate a karate chop. Next, the hand folded in the middle. 90-degree angle. At this moment I began making horrified expressions and the other students, all women, began laughing hysterically.
The best part? His mistress did it to him, not his wife. He ended up telling his wife that he had been riding a bicycle after work and had fallen off and done this horrible thing to himself. His wife, crying and agonized, pleaded with the doctors to save her poor man’s little man. However, he told the real story to the stone-faced doctors and nurses, who proceeded to inform the wife of the truth.
4. Location, Location, Location
I work at a hospital, and one day I got a script for a dewormer with a ridiculously high dose. Higher than I had ever seen before. I thought for sure it was a mistake, so I called the doctor just to be sure. He said that it was no mistake, and then told me what was up. I must say, this is the most disturbing thing I can remember in recent history.
It turned out the patient was someone with Cysticercosis, which is a tapeworm infection. While this isn’t that unusual, what was unusual was the location. The tapeworm infection was in her brain. The doctor and I both agreed there was very little chance of it working, but he said there were absolutely no other alternatives.
5. I’d Like To Lodge A Complaint
person in blue gloves and blue denim jeansPhoto by Clay Banks on UnsplashI’m a student psychiatric nurse. While on a ward for the elderly suffering from dementia, I had one experience I will never forget. I was helping a client eat, when I got a call from one of the rooms in the corridor. The client I was helping was pretty much done, so I went to investigate, hoping that it wasn’t a fall as the call was from a room belonging to a very unsteady lady. Oh god, how I wish it were just a fall.
The lady who called—let’s call her Betty—was in the corridor outside her room. The first thing I noticed were her hands. They were covered in what could only be excrement. I asked her if she’d had some trouble in the bathroom. Hey, it happens, sometimes when you’re older you may be a bit shaky or confused, and I’m not one to judge the unwell.
So, I move into her bedroom to help her clean up: that’s when the smell hits me. For a second I just stare and try to take in what has happened. What follows is how my brain tried to process what I saw. There were traces of excrement everywhere: on the walls, on the wardrobe, on her clean clothes, on her bed, on the door. I think: that’s okay, we can clean this. But there was something strange.
The thing is, I can’t see any major, er, “movement,” from which it would have come. Then I notice there’s something on the floor. As if someone had defecated on the floor and…picked it up? Yes, there’s slide marks from someone obviously moving…Oh my god. She has taken a dump on her dinner plate. I saw, on her bedside table, a plate piled high with excrement.
And I just stood there. I stared for what felt like an eternity—more like five seconds in reality. Eventually, I called someone to give me a hand. Perhaps it was a political statement about the state of the food in the hospital, I don’t know. Regardless, I now have the best dinner table story.
6. This Dora Over-Explored
I was seeing a three-year-old little boy in the clinic. His mom noted that for the past week she had noticed a foul smell around this kid’s face when she kissed him, brushed his teeth, or got anywhere near his mouth. I examined him a little closer and saw that his right nostril was clogged with something whitish, but obscured by mucus.
I pulled out the alligator forceps and recruited two nurses to hold this kid down—he was actually quite strong. I eventually pulled a wadded-up sticker out of his nose. It was soggy and coated in green slime, but the smell was the worst, just putrid. His mom then told us that she’d recently bought him a set of Dora the Explorer stickers at least a month ago and some were missing. Mystery solved.
7. I’m Still Standing
On a night shift in a psychiatric ward, a patient somehow got out his window and jumped from the second floor. We all ran out and were surprised to find him still standing on the lawn outside. It was an incredible miracle. Mind you, he was screaming his throat out, but he was still standing upright for some inexplicable reason.
As we got closer to him, we realized why he was standing. He’d snapped both his legs straight off in the fall. This caused his splintered shins to impale the soil. It was kind of like a couple of organic javelins. Even years later, I still shudder when thinking about the blood, the creaking of the bones, and the screaming.
8. He Was Missing A Head
man in red shirt driving carPhoto by Mat Napo on UnsplashEMTs got called to the scene of a bicyclist that got hit by a bus. Upon arrival they found him without vital signs at the scene. This was no surprise, as he’d been decapitated. The EMTs searched for his head, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Eventually, they gave up and took the body to the hospital. The doctors there X-rayed the guy and were shocked. The mystery of the missing head had been solved.
The head had been pushed straight into his chest cavity and was sitting where his lungs and heart were.
9. It Broke Her Heart
I’m in veterinary medicine, and kids are what get me the most. Don’t get me wrong, adults can be big babies too, but I guess I just feel terrible for the kids because I got to keep all my beloved childhood pets until I was at least well into my teens. The worst one was when I was a receptionist. We had a puppy with a parvo infection dropped off that was already in bad shape. In addition, the family was dirt poor.
It was a cute little lemon beagle. When the owner came in to pick the dog up and heard that even with the best, most expensive supportive care, this puppy might not make it, she opted to just take him home for the short time he had left. There was a little four or five-year-old girl waiting in the waiting room, and when mom came out with the beagle she lit up, ran over, smiling.
She thought the puppy was okay and she’d have it for a long time. The look that went over the mom’s face absolutely destroyed me. Horrible.
10. His T-Shirt Predicted It
man sitting on the motorcyclePhoto by Harley-Davidson on UnsplashI’m a respiratory therapist in a Level One Trauma Center. One time we had a man come in with an open leg fracture. There was a literal bone, the femur, pointing up and the rest of the leg hanging off and partially resting on the bed. He had been in a motorcycle accident with his wife, who had been riding on the back. The wife didn’t survive the accident.
The worst part of the story was that he was wearing one of those biker shirts that read: “If you can read this, the wife fell off”. Pretty horrible stuff.
11. They Just Fell Off
I’m a medical student. I was in the ER one shift and a rather obese man was brought in by his family, who said he’d been very confused lately. I went to go see the patients while the lab results from a standard blood count and chemistry were being processed by the lab. Being a medical student, I didn’t have a clue what was wrong with the guy.
After rapidly exhausting my line of questioning on an incoherent patient, I started doing a physical exam. As I removed his socks to check his pedal pulses and reflexes, I noticed that the sock I just pulled off felt like they had rocks in them. Big rocks. Curious, I emptied out the sock onto the bed, only to see that they were his toes. Three of them. It was the most disturbing sight I’ve ever seen.
The lab results came back, unsurprisingly, with a screamingly high blood glucose—totally off the charts. We figured out what happened. He’d had severe diabetic neuropathy and chronic, extreme hyperglycemia. Because of this, he couldn’t feel his toes become ischemic and was too confused to regularly check them, so they had just fallen off.
12. This Coffee Tastes Funny
StableDiffusionOne time, in the Intensive Care Unit, a patient was coughing up loads of sputum and, between changing the apparatus to catch it, the nurses caught some of it in the only thing they had handy: a Styrofoam cup. After a few moments, when the craziness was over and everyone went back to their day. One nurse, mistaking the cup of sputum for a cup of coffee, took a drink.
13. Teenagers Bad, Aunt Good
I’m currently a vet tech, but heading to nursing school soon. Once I had a 75 kg (160 lb) mastiff/St. Bernard mix brought in for a supposed tapeworm problem. One of the female techs lifts his tail to take his temperature and squeals then runs away. I look and see maggots around his tail. I start to shave and see that his skin is full—and I mean full—of little holes that maggots are crawling into and out of.
I keep shaving his very thick fur and reveal more and more skin that looks this way. I shave the entire dog up to his last rib before I found healthy skin. The maggots are everywhere. I have him on a grate above a bathtub so I can spray the maggots off. I spent four hours shaving and cleaning him and removed no less than two gallons of maggots from this dog’s skin. We know there were more because his entire gut was infected with them.
Later we found out what had happened. It turns out that the owners of the dog were in Europe on vacation, and their four teenage children were responsible for the dog. The wife’s sister was watching the children but was terrified of dogs, so she didn’t handle it directly. They were leaving this rather large dog with super-dense fur in the rain during a Charleston spring, which means it’s hot and muggy.
The dog probably got a small area of moist dermatitis that got infected and was left untreated and slowly spread through half the dog’s body. All four children were present when the veterinarian told them what happened and said that there wasn’t anything we could do but euthanize. Not one of them showed the slightest bit of remorse or acted as if they cared.
Only the aunt, who is terrified of dogs, remained with the dog as we gave the injection. She cradled the dog’s head in her lap and wept because of how the dog must have felt. He was so good during the entire ordeal and wanted nothing more than for someone to pet his head.
That is the only time I ever cried because of my job.
14. It Just Spilled Out
man in blue topPhoto by Payam Tahery on UnsplashPharmacy guy here, but I work with anesthesia during surgeries at night and the worst surprise I had was on a simple operation. An obese woman was having a boil on her arm lanced and drained…simple enough…but the minute the tiny incision began there was this popping sound. To our shock, the skin from elbow to shoulder split wide open. Black goo and puss then seeped out from where she had developed compartment syndrome. It was all over the table.
There’s just not enough peppermint gauze in the world to cover up someone’s necrotic flesh smell.
15. Thank You For Sharing
I’m not a doctor or a nurse, but I work in a pharmacy and have heard some pretty awful things. Some people have no shame. One morning, our pharmacist got a call from a long-time customer who wasn’t quite right in the head. She had gotten an upper gastrointestinal done and was prescribed pills to stimulate her bowels to get the radiation out of her body.
She proceeded to explain to our pharmacist loudly—the pharmacist put her on speakerphone so we could all enjoy—that she had been up all night on the toilet. And then it suddenly stopped, and it wouldn’t come out. And, she added, it hurt. So, out of all the things she could use, she grabbed a metal nail file and made “it” come out.
Well, at that point she was bleeding quite a bit, so she decided to stick a tampon up there and call it good. She was not seeking any medical advice, because—according to her—she was just fine. She just wanted to share this story.
16. There Was A Direct Link
A patient came in one day with a dire sore throat. Midway through the examination the patient started violently gagging, opened his mouth and vomited what seemed like every single pint of blood out of his body. It turns out that the patient had a condition in which the esophagus rubs against the nearby artery and, if left unchecked, the membrane will fuse together opening a direct link between mouth and heart.
17. It Went Nuts
A pleasant middle-aged lady was gardening one day when her dog went nuts and went for her in the yard. The ordeal apparently went on for quite some time until finally a neighbor heard, came over, and shot the dog to get it off her. I would have sworn no dog could do what that dog did, it looked like I would imagine a tiger attack.
The worst part was her arms and hands, which she had been using to ward off the dog. She lost both hands. It was, quite simply, horrific.
18. There Was A Boy There
A couple weeks ago an old man, around 90, was brought into the hospital by ambulance, which he’d called for himself. I was reading through his background notes and noticed that he lives alone as many older ones do. It turns out this guy had stopped taking his medication for his dementia because he forgot about it. He then also began to get dehydrated and confused as he also forgot to drink water or eat meals. But here’s where the story gets freaky.
The old man said there was a boy living with him that week, and he was staying in his room with him. He said he didn’t mind because he just sat there on the bed and didn’t say anything. After about the third day of this boy staying with him, the old man began to get worried because the boy had not eaten or had anything to drink. So, the man dialed for an ambulance saying he was afraid the boy was going to collapse.
The ambulance staff turned up and the guy toured them around the house for 20 minutes trying to find the boy. They see his meds are untouched and take him away to hospital for treatment. Poor guy, but his caring for his imaginary friend may have saved his life!
19. Zombie Pirate
I’m an activities director for an elderly home. One morning, I was delivering morning newspapers, when I heard a lady call from down the hall of resident apartments. She asked me, as sweet as could be, if any nurses were here yet. Before I looked up I said I wasn’t sure but I could take a peek for her. Then I looked up.
The woman was holding onto a support beam that we have on the walls like a ballet bar but sturdier. Her left foot is attached only by ligaments and is dragging behind her. She is literally walking on her exposed bone. I tried my darndest not to react and scare her. I gingerly helped her sit on the floor, before running for emergency services and my boss.
I guess at some point in the night she had fallen out of bed and didn’t think it was serious enough to bother a caregiver or someone about. She slept on the pad on the floor that is there in case anyone falls out of bed. Then, when morning came, and she heard me in the hall, she dragged herself up and asked for help.
I feel like a terrible person, but when I calmed down I had to admit for half a second I thought she was a zombie pirate.
20. A Living Anatomy Lesson
person in blue denim jeans with gray and black metal padlockPhoto by Ashkan Forouzani on UnsplashI was working in a hospital in Nepal for a month. A lot of people ride motorcycles there for transportation, and they also have minimal road laws and enforcement. As a result, they see motorcycle accidents at a much higher prevalence. Anyways, during one of my shifts in the ER a man was brought in with bloody sheets covering his whole lower half.
I gathered from the family that he had been in a motorcycle accident. I lifted the sheets up expecting to see a partial amputation or a crush wound, only to see what the doctors would later describe to me as a “degloving”. This is a fairly common injury in Kathmandu. Essentially his leg had got caught in a rotating tire. The torque of the tire and the friction it caused with his skin ripped his skin off and sent it hurling away. The rest of the leg was intact, just without the skin.
His leg was essentially a living anatomy lesson—till they amputated it.
21. She Couldn’t Speak
I’m a medical student and the most distressing thing I’ve seen is a lady who had multiple strokes within days. These strokes left her with many neurological deficits. She had the classic hemiplegic stroke leaving her unable to move her entire right side. She had lost all sensation in her arm as well. The lady was also in constant pain.
The worst part is, she then had another stroke which made her lose her voice. She couldn’t even tell anyone for two days that she was in so much pain.
22. Oh, That’s Where I Left It
man in white thobe standingPhoto by Sasun Bughdaryan on UnsplashAn obese lady came into the hospital and was complaining about a pain that she had in her lower stomach. We asked her where, and she gestured toward the area just above her crotch. We pulled up her shirt, and the pain was coming from below one of her folds of skin. When we started lifting the folds, we found a 20 cm (8 in) splinter stuck inside of one of the folds.
Not only was this piece of wood long, but it was wide too. The end was splintered on it, and that was the pain she was feeling. So, we carefully removed the thing and showed it to her. What she said next floored us. “Oh that’s my plank! I use my plank to hold up my stomach so my husband and I can make love. It must have broken.”
23. He Wasn’t Licking His Own Wounds
I’m a social care worker and care for people in the comfort of their own homes. I went to a job about a month ago and was told in the description that he had a few bed sores. When me and my colleague rolled the service user over, the sores were about double the size of a tennis ball. Also, you could see all the way into his hip bone each side.
The sores were really fresh and still weeping. All I could smell in the air was rotting flesh, not only all this, but I turned up a week later to do my shift again to find the dog had got on his bed and was licking his wound! Poor bloke couldn’t even move his arms. I blame the district nurses for neglecting him for so long.
24. Driving With The Top Off
red vehicle in timelapse photographyPhoto by camilo jimenez on UnsplashA man got in a freak accident driving a convertible. The top of his skull got completely cut off, exposing his somehow unharmed brain. When he arrived unconscious at the hospital, he was being treated by a mass of nurses and/or doctors. As he was lying on his back on the operation table, he started throwing up. Now, I’m sure all of you know how gravity works, but I’ll explain what happened just in case.
He was lying on his back: face up. His brain was exposed. He started throwing up. The vomit traveled in trajectory landing on his brain. In short, he was vomiting on his own brain.
25. I Heard Everything
A few years ago I was visiting a friend in the ER. He’d had some minor heart trouble and was resting in one of the rooms, which he shared with an elderly woman. Shortly after I got there, a nurse came in with a bedpan and pulled the curtain dividing the room in half. I wish the flimsy curtain had blocked out the sound of the old woman’s mostly liquid bowel movement, or at least the nurse’s comment.
“I know that feels like a bowel movement, but it’s mostly blood.”
26. Car Crash Changes Life
black steering wheel in carPhoto by Marek Piwnicki on UnsplashI’m neither a doctor or a nurse, but at one time I was aspiring to go to med school. I loved biology and anatomy and had received the Boy Scout first aid merit badge and CPR certification. I was convinced that my calling was to heal people, and I was leaning toward becoming a surgeon. This changed after I came across a car-car-truck-motorcycle collision on a highway.
The accident was a long ways away from the closest city, so no emergency services had gotten there yet. Bodies were littered everywhere. Mostly the bodies were still. Some, as I later found out from a newspaper article, were already deceased. One woman will haunt me more than the others. She was being held down by three other motorists.
She was screaming and struggling to get away from them and stand up, which wouldn’t have been too successful if they let her, as she was missing most of one of her legs. As much as I thought I was waiting for this kind of situation to prove my medical knowledge, I just couldn’t handle getting involved. Some people helped, some people did a U-turn to avoid the accident.
I did the latter while weeping in shame and frustration. As a result, I ended up majoring in computer science.
27. It Was The Size Of A Grapefruit
I’m not a doctor, but I worked at a hospital in the histology lab. I saw some slightly disgusting things (amputated leg of a morbidly obese person with clogged arteries, that the manager used as an anatomy lesson), but nothing rivaled the teratoma. Oh god, the teratoma. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s a type of malignant tumor that accumulates genetic material from many different parts of the body, leading to some pretty nasty surprises.
So, I was working, filing slides and whatnot, and in came an entire ovary with the teratoma. For reference, the teratoma was the size of a grapefruit. The ovaries gave the impression of a pale small stocking. So yes, it looked like someone had attached a small pale stocking to a pale grapefruit. That should have been a warning as to what would follow next.
My lab manager went up to operate on it, and as soon as he made a scalpel incision into the teratoma, it literally exploded. There was literally fluid everywhere. He had to change everything: the scalpel blade, the tabletop mat, even his gown. He later drained everything into the sink, which took a total of about five minutes.
After opening it up, we saw that it had to have been containing some sort of secretory gland, as there was this grayish stuff lining the inside of the teratoma—complete with strands of hair. He went further, and found a round bony core at the center of the teratoma. We had to bring out a bonesaw to cut through it, while my lab manager told me about the times he’s cut open teratomas and found fully developed eyeballs at the center.
Eventually, we cut through the dense core, and found a fully developed incisor tooth at the center. I was thoroughly disgusted by all that we had seen.
28. Maybe Someone Needs To Define “Lucky”
a person in a hospital bed with an ivPhoto by Olga Kononenko on UnsplashI worked at a hospital for a few years. One night there was a five-year-old kid who came into the emergency room who had apparently been playing with one of those yard marker flags. Well he was running and tripped, and the metal pin went into his mouth and punctured all the way through the back of his throat and out the back side of his neck.
When the kid came in, we had to literally tie his hand together, so he wouldn’t move the wire and possibly cause nerve damage. We ran all the tests and realized that this little kid was so lucky. You see, he had narrowly missed his spinal column. Basically, this meant that we were able to sedate him and just pull the wire out.
29. It Feels A Little Dry Down There
A girl comes to the hospital, and she’s complaining that she’s unusually smelly “down there”. The doctor takes a look, and sure enough there is something not right there. Upon further inspection, the doctor notices that there is an object deep inside her. The doctor asks her if she knows why there is something stuck inside her. And also if she knows what it might be.
The patient says that she knows what’s up there. It’s the cap to her deodorant. The doctor doesn’t even ask why the cap is up there, but just tells the woman that he’s going to take it out. It was her answer that shocked both the doctor and me. She said: “No please don’t touch that. I’m keeping it there as a contraceptive”.
30. I Had To Pick Them Up
yellow round fruit on pink surfacePhoto by Allec Gomes on UnsplashI’m a nuclear medicine technician and last week I was performing a Lung V/Q scan on a man who had congestive heart failure. Due to the buildup of fluid caused by congestive heart failure, each testicle was literally the size of a grapefruit. The reason I know this is because I had to pick them up and set them on a pillow—because them sitting on the table was too painful.
31. He Was Big But Also Small
I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, but I worked as a patient transporter for almost five years. One of the responsibilities of the job was taking deceased patients down to the morgue. One evening, I was called to the ER to take an expired patient to the morgue. Another transporter and I entered the room to find something very strange.
The patient was extremely obese, yet also extremely short. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would guess he was about 120 cm (4 ft) tall and 155 kilograms (350 lbs) which left him almost as wide as he was tall. There were pockets of air under his skin. I am guessing his tiny lungs collapsed under all the weight.
We couldn’t fit him onto our morgue cart, so we ended up having to cover the body under blankets and take his bed all the way to the morgue, escorted by security. The problem was that the weight distribution/balance on the bed was so different that we had a hard time steering in the hallways.
32. He Couldn’t Control Himself
I once did a wet-to-dry dressing, then placed a wound vac on a man that got flesh-eating disease on his thigh. In an emergency surgery he had received a fasciotomy from just above his knee to his hip and groin. It was rough at first but kinda like the body world exhibit so fairly manageable. I was able to dehumanize this portion of his leg.
That was when he lifted his leg up, so I could get to the underside. To my horror I saw that the thigh meat hung like an old person’s tricep. At about the same time, the man was overcome with uncontrollable gas. So what had previously been more like an exhibit in Vegas, had just become a man who has been skinned from balls to knee and is now farting all over me.
If you’re having trouble imagining this, look down at your thigh and just imagine no skin. No fat. Just muscle, tendon, and a light layer of blood. No, it’s not disgusting like some of the stuff I have read about, but there was just no way to compartmentalize that thigh. I was sweating profusely as I made my way through the long process. I kept my voice together and chatted with the guy, who was way cool, and got the job done.
Based on my limited experiences that was the worst thing I have seen yet on the job.
33. He Kept A Chunk
person in blue long sleeve shirt holding black and white trayPhoto by Quang Tri NGUYEN on UnsplashSo, my dad’s a dentist, and one night we get a call at home from the local ER asking if my father is willing to come in and deal with a patient because…well…they have no idea what to do with this woman. My dad is a rather stand-up guy, so he goes and opens his practice to treat this woman. I go along with him and help set up the room.
An ambulance pulls up and wheels this elderly woman into the clinic. From the get-go, the first thing that hits us is the smell. Her face is bandaged up pretty well, and we can see blood seeping through the gauze and all down her shirt. We both put on the double gloves, and double masks and my dad dives in. He discovers that she has something penetrating her lip. It’s mustard yellow, and has the consistency of rock candy.
My dad plays with it a little bit, and a large chunk breaks off. What’s attached is four of this woman’s teeth or rather, the decayed remains of her teeth. Apparently, this 78-year-old woman had never brushed her teeth a day in her life. What had penetrated her lip was an obelisk of plaque. My dad continued to clean away what he could, but the plaque buildup was so massive that she had literally rotten away all of her teeth and most of her gums. One spot was abscessed clear down to her jawbone.
To this day dad keeps the chunk in a jar in his office, and scares little children into brushing their teeth everyday.
34. He Can’t Forget
I’m an MD here. While in residency I was rotating through two months in general/vascular surgery, where amputations were very common. I was assisting with a bilateral below-knee amputation on a poorly controlled type 1 diabetic. Basically we were severing both legs a little below the knee. The patient had terrible circulation and hardly bled during the procedure.
The staff surgeon commented that we’d likely have to perform another amputation higher up in the future as the poor circulation would not allow healing. After the surgery, the patient promptly had a massive heart attack and was sent for stenting and a trip to the ICU. Several days later we were following up as the wounds were not healing well as predicted.
In an attempt to examine the amputation sites, myself and the surgeon began to unwrap each bandage. As we lifted the upper leg to make this easier, the 10 cm (4 in) of lower limb below the knee on each leg clearly began to separate from the leg above it as each side was mostly gangrenous, lifeless tissue. I’ll never forget the sound and smell.
35. Scouring Pads Are For The Kitchen Only
a room filled with lots of shelves filled with boxes and boxesPhoto by Árpád Czapp on UnsplashI work in a community pharmacy, so I don’t see the most disgusting stuff, but I do see the general public’s stupidity now and then. A regular came in one day. He had been complaining of anal itch, a bit of blood in his stool, and painful defecation—all of which had lasted for a long time. I told him it was likely hemorrhoids that were bad enough he shouldn’t self-treat it, but should have it looked at ASAP.
I guess he didn’t listen to my advice. He came back a week later and was asking for 90 or 99% isopropyl alcohol. I decided to ask why he needed it. It turned out, to deal with his anal itch/hemorrhoids, he was using a wire scouring pad to his entire anus. He was worried it might be infected so he wanted to kill off the germs with 90% isopropyl. I just pray I kept the horror off my face.
He then went on to say that the Crown Royal he was using was too painful and not working, so he needed stronger stuff. I told him NOPE!! NOPE!! As he walked away, I noticed the back of his sweat pants were stained with what looked like blood/pus/excrement. I called him back and told him to wait while I called an ambulance.
I later found out he had the beginnings of cellulitis, which is an early form of a bad skin infection that can progress to flesh-eating disease, on his anus/bum skin and a bacterial infection of the blood was beginning.
36. There Were Two Snakes On That Picnic
There was a couple who were having a romantic picnic out in a field and things got a little…hot and heavy. So, while they were occupied, they failed to notice a large red-belly black snake (rarely fatal, but intimidating-looking thing) coming closer. Well, this snake isn’t without a sense of humor and decides to go for a strike. But wait! Where do you think it bit him?
Yep, right on the poor guy’s shaft. So the guy and his girlfriend run all the way into the emergency ward. He’s got his junk in his hand, and both of them are naturally freaking out. The nurses treated him quickly and, thankfully, all was fine. I’ll tell you one thing: there wasn’t a straight face in the whole hospital for a week after.
37. He Was The Creepiest Creep
I won’t say it’s the worst thing I have ever seen on the job, but when I was a medical assistant, I assisted my boss, a doctor, in an autopsy. He was looking for the cause of a patient’s passing because another doctor made a diagnosis my boss wasn’t comfortable with. The entire procedure was quite a shocker at first seeing the woman I had known as a patient lying there completely opened up.
To start with, there wasn’t any blood, because she had already been drained. Also, she was morbidly obese and the amount of fat under her skin was amazing to see. When my boss began exploring her intestines, he tied off the ends. You can imagine what it would have smelled like if he hadn’t. He took samples and placed them in plastic containers.
I think the worst part for me was having to look at the mortician who was there working on other people. I swear, he was the creepiest dude I’d ever seen in person. He was very nice, but he reminded me of leather face from that horror movie. He had very bad acne scars, dark, dark eyes, dark hair, and was wearing a thick, white rubber apron with blood all over it. Gawd!!!!
Another thing that freaked me out was when I asked him who the person was covered up close by and he told me. It was my dentist! I didn’t even know he was deceased!
38. It Was Moving
a black and white photo of various mri imagesPhoto by National Cancer Institute on UnsplashThis story is creepy: about a dude I saw on neurology when I was an intern. He was from Southeast Asia with altered mental status and abdominal pain, and altered liver function tests. The pictures of his belly on plain films, CT scan, and MRI showed a mass, but the mass kept looking blurry and like it was changing shape and size.
We sent him for an ultrasound and the tech nearly had a heart attack, because the “tumor” was moving. Turns out the guy had picked up some nasty parasite on his last trip back to visit the family. We finally saw the 8 cm (3 in) worm moving and swimming around inside its little ball of goo on the recording of the exam. The whole team almost blew chunks that morning.
39. Tires Would Have Saved Him
I’m not a doctor, but I’m a firefighter so I see my fair share of trauma. About a year ago, we responded to a call that went out as an “individual who had a car fall on his face”. He was hotboxing in his garage while working underneath his car that was supported by scissor jacks. Something to note, the car didn’t have any tires on the front end where he was working.
One of the scissor jacks had slipped out from underneath the car, and the whole weight of the car landed directly onto the side of his head with no tires to stop the fall. We got our rubber airbags out, lifted the car, pulled him out, and got him onto a stretcher. After taking over a thousand kg (2,500 lbs) of weight to the head, he somehow got out of it with only a fractured orbital and a laceration on his cheek.
40. He Couldn’t Stop It
red round fruits on white and blue surfacePhoto by National Cancer Institute on UnsplashThe first year of my core surgical training, I was on call in a very small rural hospital. This hospital only had two doctors on at night, me and a medical trainee, and no emergency doctors.
It was about 11 pm and this guy, about 26 years old, came in after being in a fight. Blood was pumping from his nose, which was clearly fractured.
I suspected he probably had other facial fractures underneath, but he was awake and talking to me. Otherwise he seemed fine. I spent about 45 minutes trying to stop the blood, using all sorts of nose packs, pressure, and even tried a catheter balloon to try and tamponade it. Nothing was working, and he was starting to go into shock. I was getting really scared at this point.
Based on his vitals I’d estimated he’d lost almost 1.5 liters (50 oz) of blood so far. The nearest proper surgical hospital was 45 minutes away, and my consultant was at home, which was 25 minutes from the hospital. Eventually, I got four bags of O neg from the lab (the lab tech happened to be in, which was very lucky), put this guy in the back of an ambulance, still bleeding, and sent him blue lighting to the surgical center in the city.
I got a phone call about three hours later from a surgeon at the other hospital, saying he had brought the patient to the theater and was able to control the situation. He was probably 15 minutes from dying. If you come into that kind of small hospital with that much bleeding, all stats say you’re in trouble. The guy was very lucky his friends got him in so quickly.
41. He Carried Him In
I was a junior doc on the trauma team. One day the doors to the emergency ward fly open to reveal a man carrying a second blood-soaked man in his arms. We get him onto a stretcher and it is clear he has been shot in his chest and has gone into cardiac arrest. Chest compressions start, and within minutes the senior doctor is cutting into the guy’s chest in order to start cardiac massage.
Cardiothoracics join us quickly and get to work on the heart, where a hole in the right ventricle is identified and plugged with a Foley catheter. All the while, bag after bag of O Neg is being pushed into the patient in an attempt to replace everything that had pumped out of his heart and into his chest cavity.
After 15-20 minutes of this the impossible happens: the heart starts beating on its own. The patient is taken directly to the theater, where the hole is definitively repaired and bilateral chest drains are inserted to drain the blood filling his lungs. Somehow his heart continued beating and after a couple weeks on ITU, the patient is returned to the trauma ward awake and alert.
Several weeks, some mild hypoxic brain injury, and a gnarly chest scar later, and he walks off the ward with his dad, the man who carried him in.
42. They Used Her As A Case Study
black car headrestPhoto by Alexandria Gilliott on UnsplashI’m a researcher rather than a doctor, but during my undergrad my anatomy tutor told us of an interesting case study. A woman in the same department had been in a car accident going at a considerable speed. The seat belt failed to lock, and her face flew into the steering wheel. Her mouth, nose, cheekbones and forehead were shattered, yet she suffered no brain damage.
Apparently, the front of her face acted as a crumple zone, and the fact that her skull shattered meant the cranial swelling didn’t cause any damage because the brain had more space to swell into. Of course, she needed significant reconstructive surgery, but a year later she and my tutor teamed up in a research project.
They used her case as the basis for looking into new ways to treat severe head injuries and developed new treatment protocols depending on where the skull had taken damage. They basically found out that, if you’re going to have a head injury, try and get hit in the face and not the temples because you’re much more likely to survive.
43. He Just Had To Squeeze By
I worked in the kitchen, so I was the lowly peon delivering food trays. I delivered to one guy who had a horrendously infected foot. Most of the toes were necrotic and black, and the rest of the foot wasn’t doing much better. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was waiting for an amputation. His dietary requirements were diabetic, so it was likely. The room smelled awful.
Anyway, these rooms are small, with typically two beds in them. Because of the smell from his infection, the other bed is empty. I still have to squeeze by the foot of his bed, and as I’m paying attention to the tray, so I don’t knock it into equipment, I accidentally brush my leg against his infected foot that he has sticking out of the covers and hanging off the bed.
To my horror, his big toenail—with bonus flesh—comes off onto my leg. It’s just stuck to my leg. We look at each other in horror. I clear my throat, ask my usual questions, clear and adjust his table, give him his tray and wish him a good day. I leave calmly, and then run to the nurse’s station and ask for help getting this dude’s entire necrotic toenail off my leg.
The nurse who got it off soaked that portion of my pant leg in some disinfectant liquid that smelled like it could take the paint off a car.
44. Don’t Be A Baby
woman in red dress holding white penPhoto by Nylos on UnsplashA woman came into the emergency room with complaints of abdominal pain. She wouldn’t stop screaming: “My baby’s gone! My baby’s gone!” There was one really weird thing though: her record showed absolutely nothing about even being pregnant. After having her change into a gown, the most ungodly stench filled the room.
My doctor began a pelvic exam, with me as a standby. I will never forget his face as he removed a pinkish-brown clotted mass: it was a huge chicken leg. It turns out that what she was calling her ‘baby’ was actually an uncooked chicken she had chopped up and inserted into her hoo-ha. She may not have lost a baby, but she did gain a chicken.
45. Our Jaded Jaws Dropped
I was working at an emergency room in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. This is a resort area, with pristine white beaches, sport fishing—you know the drill. I was taking a body down to the morgue with another medic, and the shift supervisor, who had the drawer assignment and paperwork responsibility. We pulled open the huge metal drawer, expecting there to be nothing—or maybe a body—and saw something that made our very jaded jaws drop.
Inside the drawer, there was a monstrously large sailfish. This thing was so huge that it could hardly fit without its body curved and sail pushed down. We stood there in surprise wondering what our procedure should be. We had no idea. The NCO said, “It would be a very good idea not to remember this. I’ll deal with it in the morning.” He then moved on to the next drawer.
Later it was rumored it belonged to one of the senior surgeons.
46. It Was The Size Of A Bagel
person wearing gold wedding bandPhoto by National Cancer Institute on UnsplashAbout thirteen years ago, when I was in medical school, I saw a lady who had flown in from South America to have US doctors help with her breast cancer. She was pretty well off but apparently her family had been picky and choosy about her treatment. By the time they got her to the states, the situation had turned horrific.
So what we discovered was that she had a metastatic tumor on her arm that was the size of a bagel. Also it smelled of necrotic tissue. Even worse was the fact that her chest wall was replaced by a tumor. In fact, you could actually see her rib cage. Her family got mad that we couldn’t just cut the tumor off her arm. The whole ER smelled like rotten flesh.
47. Get Back In There
There was a primary care physician, PCP, who went to some part of Africa—I don’t remember where specifically—for the Peace Corps. When he came back, he found he was always more tired than he was when he left for Africa. The cause was straight out of a nightmare. One day he felt a pulsation in his eye and went to the ER. Once there, the doctor found a small worm wriggling around in his eye.
Apparently, this kind of worm normally lives near the brain, but had somehow made its way out from there and into his eye. The emergency room doctor hadn’t seen anything like it, and so he called in another doctor to come and look at it. By the time the other doctor got there, the worm had made its way back out of the eye.
Cut to about a month later and the PCP feels the pulsation again, but instead of returning to the hospital, he decides to take care of it himself. He takes a needle and heats it up using the stove. He then puts it into his own eye in order to remove the parasite. Over the course of the next year or two, he removes—if I remember correctly—around five of the worms this way before feeling better.
48. Not Your Ordinary Blackhead
person in white and black stethoscopePhoto by Ashkan Forouzani on UnsplashI was working at an old folks center near our house, and I was with this one older gentleman. On his hip, was a blackhead the size of a dime, on top of a decent-sized lump, about 5 cm (2 in) long. So, I threw on some gloves, made sure I had the permission of the man of course, and squeezed the black head. To my shock, out popped this roll of gauze that was left over from his hip surgery 10 years prior that he never bothered to get removed.
The smell was horrid and I will never forget it.
49. A Repeat Offender
So there is a homeless guy that comes to my emergency room regularly. Apparently this guy had a major surgery in the last 10 years where they removed something from his stomach, or that general area. After the surgery, he woke up and just left the hospital without letting himself heal. He proceeded with his drug habit, and his body was never able to heal properly.
The guy comes to the ER about once every week to get his intestines re-bandaged. The nurses have to rinse and sanitize the intestines and re-bandage him up every time he comes in. They simply take a large bandage and wrap it around his midsection. He has been seen many times outside the hospital holding his intestines with a plastic bag pressed to his stomach—having a smoke.
50. This Experiment Went Very Wrong
person wearing orange and white silicone bandPhoto by Jon Tyson on UnsplashA kid, about 13 years old, and his mom came into the emergency room. The mom had dragged the kid in because he was complaining of real bad ‘digestive’ problems. The kid had convinced her he was fine, until he couldn’t hide the bleeding coming from his rear end. We take him in for X-rays—but never in a million years was I prepared for what we found. There on the X-ray, clear as day, is a 14-inch black rubber phallus.
Of course, we didn’t know it was black then, but we found out later, obviously. This thing had wedged itself up far—most likely due to his efforts to remove it. It was pushing on the walls of his intestine and had three days’ worth of excrement piled on top of it. We take him into a private room and ask if there is anything he wants to tell us before they discuss specifics with his mother.
The kid didn’t want to say anything, so we told him that whatever is up there had to be removed surgically. The kid said no, and that he just felt sick. We then asked him again, what could possibly be in his lower intestine. His response almost made me laugh out loud. He said he may have sat on a marker.
People Share Their Iconic "We'll Never Speak Of This Again" Moments
The one thing that happened of which never speak again. There are so many. They never stop, either. Who knows when you'll walk in on your dad naked and chugging milk, or farting so loudly your grandmother's funeral is ruined?
dannyjayes1 asked Reddit: What is your "we will never speak of this again" moment?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
40. Daddy and auntie being naughty.
My Divorced dad was playing horseshoes in a league with my Aunt (moms sister). They went together one night when I was about 16. I went to a friends house to sleepover and didn't think any more of it.
Until I got home the next morning and her car was still in the driveway. Innocent and stupid me went into the house expecting my aunt to maybe be crashed on the couch or something.
Then I heard the shower running and thought, weird, maybe she's taking a shower before she leaves.
Then I heard my dads laugh coming from the bathroom with my aunt laughing too. I tip toed out of the house and went right back to my friends house completely flabbergasted by what I just walked in on.
39. This is a marriage made to last.
I had internal bleeding and really low blood pressure. I was in the hospital and instructed to not try to stand or walk since I'd faint. I didn't obey that.
I went to take a piss and my girlfriend saw and chased after me. She caught up just in time to throw herself between me and the floor to prevent me from cracking my head open as I fell back unconscious, peeing all over everything on the way down.
I awoke with her sandwiched between me and the tile floors, lying in a pool of my pee.
And that's actually the moment I realized I should marry that girl.
I did.
But that's not the story I tell when someone asked, "when did you know she was the one?"
Not gonna lie that's the perfect story for I knew she was the one!
Yeah that's a story for the wedding if ever I've heard one.
38. Don't whizz in the fireplace. Or on the electric fence.
I was about 15. Definitely old enough to know better.
I was putting spiders and ice cubes on the super hot wood stove because the Leidenfrost effect was interesting.
I thought it would be funny to do it with piss. It was not funny to do it with piss.
For the uninitiated, what happens is the piss vaporizes and depending on the volume of your bladder, produces a thick and clearly visible dark brown cloud.
If you can imagine the smog line in LA, it looks like that. That cloud hugs the ceiling and hangs down about a foot. It doesn't really move because it's water vapor and it leaves a film on everything it touches.
It smells like....well...like burnt piss, and you can also taste it. The cloud absolutely does not dissipate before your mother gets home from work.
Eating a Hot Pocket with your bits exposed sounds a bit too dangerous for me.
I was sort of a naughty kid anyhow, so she thought I had started a fire with something. In order to avoid a worse punishment I had to take dumbsponsibility. That was the only time I can remember her looking at me with actual hatred.
MrdrBrgrYou just made me burst out laughing.
I don't recall ever learning about the Leidenfrost effect, so I just looked that up and its really cool. Totally explains why you would play with ice cubes on a wood stove.
But what's up with the spiders?spiders and ice cubes
Right, right, classic combo.
37. Scarred.
One faithful night when I was around 12, I woke up and for some reason I was sure I was hella late for school. I threw on some clothes and walked into the kitchen, still half asleep.
What I saw in the kitchen was utterly confusing. My dad was standing there, naked, chugging milk straight from the carton like a madman. I looked at him, but was too tired to be shocked, he on the other hand looked like he had been cought chugging milk by the ghost of Hitler. Then I looked up at the clock.
It was 4 AM. I really didn't understand anything except that I could sleep more at this point, so without a word I just turned around slowly and went back to bed.
The look on his face still haunts me
Edit: I forgot to mention that he never put the carton down. He just stared at me in shock, milk to mouth, until I left. For all I know he stood there chugging milk with all night
I meant fateful, but at this point I'm just going with it
36. Never tell anyone - except Reddit.
When my uncle died we were going through his house to clear it. We found 5-6 cameras and checked them to see if there were any photos of him for his mother as she didn't have many.
Turns out he was into domination and had a large variety of porn quality pictures of himself partaking in his fetish. 60 year old man being dominated by similarly aged males and females. They are seared into my soul.
Myself and my father were checking together and made a pact not to tell anyone else or speak of it again.
I have this fear for when I die. Especially if I die unexpectedly... just burn all my sh*t. Just burn it.
Give me a key to your house and I'll make sure that nobody finds your body
Edit: Porn, that nobody finds your porn
Darn auto-correct
35. Pics or it didn't happen.
A friend accidentally sent me a pic of his junk on Snapchat that was clearly meant for someone else. He excused himself a hundred times.
"Accidentally" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I accidently sent a snap of myself holding my hand over my junk to my then girlfriends best friend... I immediately called my gf and told her what just happend while writing SORRY THAT WAS NOT FOR YOU to the friend. We all laughed about it and i thought we agreed on not talking about it... I was wrong. All her friends know about it.
34. Username leaves me with questions.
I follow a bunch of weird blogs/tags on tumblr and was scrolling through my feed. I would usually alt/tab in 0.1 seconds if I was fapping or whatever but since I wasn't looking at any porn, I didn't bother to hide what I was doing, kept scrolling, then turned round (whilst still scrolling) to see my mum come in my room to put some laundry on a cabinet.
Unbeknownst to me, right as she came in the room, on my screen was a huge picture of an erect horse penis. I have no idea why it was on the blog and I did not intentionally look for it, but it was right there. In the middle of the screen.
33. Oh no, a joint?!
This is my friend's story.
She smoked weed a bit in high school but obviously hid it from her parents. This one time she came downstairs in the morning to find a joint sitting on the kitchen counter.
She knew for sure it wasn't hers and that she wouldn't be stupid enough to leave one out like that. Her mother soon after walked downstairs and started cleaning up around the kitchen.
When she ran into the joint, she paused, locked eyes for a bit with my friend, said "oh uh" and quickly brushed it into her hand and got rid of it. They both pretended it never happened.
She thinks her mom was covering for her dad. Later on she once found a bong in his closet. She always wanted to smoke with him after that but didnt know how to bring it up. Hence the never talked about it again.
32. We've all been there...
Well me and the wife were out on the lake fishing. When all of a sudden I felt the rumbling in my gut. I was about to sh*t my pants. I looked around and noticed we were no where near a dock and there was nobody else on the water.
So I looked my wife in the eye and told her I was sorry and loved her very much. I then proceeded to hang my ass over the side of the boat and had the Hershey squirts.
It was over quite quickly thankfully. My wife passed me a few old receipts from her purse so I could wipe. She told me she still loved me and we kept on fishing.
Edit: I'd like to clarify that we did indeed move to a different part of the lake when I finished. What kind of sicko do you take me for?
Edit the second: my most upvoted comment is about me having diarrhea on a lake. Wtf is wrong with you reddit? Also my wife is insisting that I point out that we'd been married less than a year at that point.
Thats a keeper.
31. Awkward.
Matched with my cousin on Tinder.
I was like "wow she is ho.... O my god that's my cousin!" while swiping. It all happened so fast. Same thing must have happened to her because we matched.
I just messaged her and said we never speak of this, agreed? And she said agreed. And we've never spoken about it. Things are weird around the holidays.
We just kinda make eye contact and then one of us finds a reason to leave the room immediatly to go and talk to other family members who we have not matched with on Tinder.
30. Forgetting this is probably for the best.
I came home from a week at Girl Scout camp at 13, and discovered a tick the size of a thumbtack, attached to a very private place. I had to go to my Mom and get her to help detach it.
When she finished, she told me we didn't ever have to talk about this again if I didn't want to. Her tone made it clear that she certainly didn't want to.
29. I'mma let you finish but...
Not to hijack the camp story but one time at camp there was this really high rope climb activity that we received daily merits for and I was naturally good.
My group was fairly large as I was quite younger and one day while climbing I almost hit the top but ran out of energy. I squirmed my legs up and down grasping at rope when a glorious burst of happy nectar flooded my grub worm for the first time.
It never came to a pinnacle because it was as if that was the baseline experience. I did this everyday until climbing the rope was the least of my worries.
One teacher thought the behavior was odd and asked me why I stopped at the top every time and squirmed around. I said it feels really good. I was instructed to not do that and to not tell anyone. A couple years later I discovered a pool jet..
Wait until you figure out how to use your hands.
28. And now for an innocent mistake.
In middle school my crush's mom and my mom drove the exact same SUV with similar license plates. After school one day I ran up hopped in my mom's car and started talking when she didn't talk back and hadn't left the pick-up line I looked at her.
She was not my mom. I look to my right and my crush is standing outside the car looking at me like I was crazy. I sheepishly got out and ran a few cars back to my real mom.
A few years later I had moved back to the area and was a cashier at a local store. My crush came through the line and recognized me and started to say weren't you that girl who...where I just interrupted with a "yes" handed him his change and quickly started the next customer.
27. People are nasty.
I put my head in my friends horse mask, only to realize it was where he left all of his used 'alone time' tissues. It was a bonding moment. I took 3 showers.
What's wrong with the trash can?
Seriously, I had never heard of keeping soaked tissues/rags/socks just lying around the room in random places before I discovered Reddit and it seems like everyone does it. It's just so nasty.
26. How embarrassing.
Had to stay with a work friend one night as we had a conference in his home town the next day. It was weird enough staying in his spare room, but to top things off he had a fancy modern bathroom with a square toilet... which of course, I blocked in the morning with a turd the size of Mt Fuji.
After 30 mins of fruitless searching for a plunger while the situation went from bad to worse, he knocked on the door and asked if I was okay.
I had to tell him not to come in but to just hand me a plunger and some bleach. Apparently his gf did the same thing the first night she stayed at his place, so at least I'm not alone. To this day I cannot look him in the eye at work.
Edit: ouch my inbox. I get it, everybody poops.
25. Well-played.
When i was 17 a huge photo radar ticket came in for my truck. something like 40km over the speed limit. My mom was furious at me. HOW DARE YOU DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC I RAISED YOU BETTER and all that.
But It turns out I wasn't the driver that day, dad had borrowed it to pick something up. I asked him how much it was worth to him for me to take the fall knowing she'd turn on him with the fury of a angry mama bear. And that's I got myself a new HDTV that year.
I have a really similar story to this haha. My dad took my car to work one day because his car was in the shop getting fixed.
About a month later a red light camera ticket comes in the mail and my dad opens it and sees its my car and starts blaming me for it.
I look at the picture on the ticket and realize it was on a road near where my dad works so i'm like this isn't even me driving thats you going to work and my dad was just like "oh.... welll sh*t"
24. Uh okay weird.
My mum heard me talking to my best friend about the new edition of International club porn magazine that had Geri Halliwell naked in it. I got back from school one day and there was a brown paper bag on the sofa which my mum edged towards me and walked off. 14 year old me was forever grateful. You're the best mum!
23. Raise your hand if you miss middle school.
I was at a pool party in 8th grade, I think I may have been swimming around or sitting weirdly, but I remember a friend of mine told me "Dude I just saw your peen."
Me: "No you didn't"
22. That's love right there.
One time I was taking a poop and feeling very faint. I started getting cold sweats, feeling dizzy and light headed. In a panic I shouted for my wife to come help me.
As she entered the room I proceeded to faint and fall off the toilet and roll my body to side to prevent injury. Mid fall a solid turd torpedoed out of my butt across the floor leaving a trail of poop smear.
When I came to, my wife was standing there in shock, I got up grabbed some toilet paper and picked up my shame and we never spoke of it again.
21. War, man.
Not me but my father's story.
During WWII, my father was a photographer for the 9th Army Air Corps. Most of the time it was ground-based, but occasionally he flew.
During the lead-up to D-Day, he flew multiple missions in a bomber converted to a stereoscopic camera (3D imagery) platform (the bomb bay had been gutted and the camera installed there).
They would overfly France and take pictures until they either ran out of film or the Luftwaffe showed up. To minimize detection they flew alone with the escort fighters circling out over the Channel.
In event of an attack, they'd drop until they were skimming the waves and run for England, passing under the fighters who'd engage the Germans while they fled.
This, of course, didn't have its risks and on more than one occasion they'd be caught too deep into France or the German fighters would get the drop on them and they'd have to man the guns. Crew size meant even the photographers had to man a gun.
So with all that, here's the "let's never speak of this again" moment. They were still at a high altitude One of the guns jammed and the gunner took off his glove and ended up freezing his hand to the metal of the gun.
He's yelling for help and my dad goes over and says, "There's two ways to get your hand off. Either we yank it off and take the skin off your palm, or we use warm liquid. I know of only one source of that..."
"Never tell anybody about this," was said. Dad didn't keep his word, and thus was born the often told story of how my father pissed on a crewmate's hand and the guy thanked him for it.
20. Hot Pockets. Worth the pain.
I got up one night to get some water, and found that my teenage son was in the kitchen getting food. He was behind the kitchen counter, so I could only see him from the waist up.
When he came around the counter into the hall, two things happened simultaneously: He noticed me, and his eyes grew wide in horror; and I saw that he was butt-naked except for a pair of socks.
He starts trying to panic-run backwards on the tile floor (imagine Scooby Doo trying to run but getting stuck in place in a flurry of limbs), but ended up slipping and taking a hard seat on the tile. Worst of all, he dropped his Hot Pocket. I made sure he was ok, then went back to bed and laughed my @ss off.
Years later, we were driving and reminiscing about funny memories. I said, "Do you remember that night--" and he cut me off with, "Yes." I didn't even have to specify which night. We knew, and we were silent.
19. When ya can't even sneak...
In my early teens I used to choke the chicken on the bed all the time. My bed had a loose board on the headboard that would kind of make this clacking sound.
As a naive child, I assumed nobody could hear it. Turns out everybody - my older sisters, my mom, dad, and even my aunt who stayed with us a lot - heard me ALL THE TIME and knew exactly what was going on.
I learned this about 4 years after moving out when we all got together and got drunk one night, and on my way up to the bedroom my drunk-ass mom goes "We don't want to hear that headboard clanking tonight or you're going to be washing those sheets!" Everyone laughed.
I was like "wut" and then thought about it all night. Nobody acknowledged it at breakfast. Good GOD that was awful.
18. Oh the days of magazines...
My father and I had a porn cold war. There has been a tacit agreement never to speak of it, and we haven't.
When I was a teenager, my mother found my porn stash. Both parents confronted me with it when I got home from school. And of course confiscated it. And of course threw it in the bin.
Or so I thought.
Months later, I happened upon my collection, hidden at the bottom of my dad's wardrobe. Hidden. From my mother, clearly.
So I took it back and hid it in my bedroom. What's he going to do? Tell my mother I'd taken the porn he'd hidden from her that he was supposed to have thrown out?
And he found it again. And took it back. And hid it.
This went on for years. And it's never been mentioned.
And it never will be.
17. When you gotta go you gotta go.
My husband and I work at the same small office. We were the first ones in that morning and other employees usually don't show up for another hour or so. There's only one bathroom on our floor as it's a small business.
Anyway, I had just had some habanero spicy thing the day before and I was in for some punishment on this particular morning.
I'm talking doubled over, clutching your stomach, your farts are fire-punishment. I hear a knock on the bathroom door and I assume it's my husband.
"Hang on I'm having the habanero squirts. I'll be out as soon as I can," I groan out between awful spirting sounds. I hear a female voice awkwardly reply, "Oh...okay."
Sorry Stacy for pulling you into my terrible morning...
16. If it had hit someone...
My wife and I were at my cousin's apartment in a big city. They have a balcony on the 40th something floor. We were all outside on the balcony drinking some beers and getting a little drunk.
My wife rests her beer can (thank god it was a can and not a bottle or glass) on the railing of the balcony. I scold her and go to move it when my half drunk and clumsy self knocks it off and we watch in horror as it falls in slow motion 40 stories and hits the ground like a bullet next to a crowd of people. We never mentioned it to anyone.
14. Poor Donny.
When my best friend died, we figured he would have liked a 'sky burial' kind of.
So at the height of the funeral party we released his ashes into heavens with a giant balloon.
After a few meters of flight the string has snapped, and his remains covered the mourning crowd.
Everyone made their best efforts to get very drunk as soon as possible.
We will never speak of this ever.
13. If that snot love, I dunno what is.
The smoking hot guy I met the prior weekend asked me out and, naturally, I said yes. Because I'd just met him, I asked if I could drive, and he said no problem.
On the way to get some grub, we're cruising along with the perfect tunes playing in the car, windows down, on an absolutely beautiful night. He looks over, I look over.... we're both just sparkling, you know? It was one of those "moments" where you want to take a mental snapshot.
Aaaaannnd THEN...... I guess we must have driven through an area of something he was allergic to? Because he sneezed a couple small ones, then with one MASSIVE blow, HONKED a HUUUUUGE wad of SNOT aaaaaallllll over my windshield and dashboard!
But, unbelievably, that's NOT the worst part. Nooooo. He pretended like it DIDN'T HAPPEN, and went about talking, and scooping it up with his HANDS and smearing it ONTO HIS PANTS!
I. Was. BEYOND. Mortified. I was throwing up in my mouth, my eyes were watering, and he didn't want me to pull over to get it cleaned up? We had to go to dinner like that, with SNOTTY PANTS!!
Sigh...... I ended up marrying him. We have NEVER, EVER spoken of it again, not even 40 years later.
Edit: Holy SNOT balls Batman, THIS has blown up! Thanks for all the excellent karma! Wish I could show the hubster the post but.... ya know.... IT'S IN THE VAULT!!!
12. "Just a cramp."
After a house party when I was a teenager me and my friend both passed out on my bed. About 2/3 hours later I woke up with horrendous cramp in my leg so I've sat on the edge of the bed massaging it trying to get rid of it.
My friend woke up and thought I was rubbing one out but got too awkward to ask wtf was going on. He never said anything until the next morning when he was giving me a weird look.
I'd prefer we never speak of it again...he loves twisting the story to any girls on nights out.
11. Gross.
We were at a friends hanging out. He invited a few girls over and one of the guys knew where his "nut rag" was kept. Someone went to the kitchen and used tongs to grab it and show off. The girls asked what it was and we began to just silently sit there thinking of something.
When I was a teenager I got really stoned one day and when I got home I went for a shower. It was only me and my sister in the house. While still incredibly high I got shampoo in my eyes.
In a little panic I slipped and ripped the shower curtain down.. Fell out the bath.. Hit head on radiator and landed with my arm down the toilet.
My sister burst in to see what had made a huge crashing sound, there's me.. naked, wrapped up in a shower curtain on the floor with my arm down the toilet.
12 years later and it's never been brought up.
10. "Wait, you're robbing me?"
My parents had to help me get home after an unfortunate event with a dominatrix in Lithuania where I got robbed while strapped down naked on the bed, she took off and I had to be "rescued" by the Lithuanian police.
9. He wasn't wrong.
15 years old, I wander into the living room in my boxers, hand down the front, enjoying being home alone. President George W. Bush is on TV talking about cloning. With little understanding of what he is talking about, I yell at the top of my lungs, "WE'RE F*CKED!"
When I was home alone and a teenager, I liked to get wacky like this, probably just an outlet of excess energy and my general facade of being a decent kid. Dance around, yell random things, basically if you saw me in private at any point in these years you would have thought I was mentally ill (hell, maybe I am, who can say?)
Unfortunately for me I was not home alone and my mom was in the living room watching this unfold. She yelled at me in shock at my behavior, it was probably top 10 most embarrassed I've ever been in my life, and it was never discussed again.
8. Fail.
Some years ago, the toilet in my kids' bathroom got really clogged. Like impossibly clogged. Nothing, not even one of those toilet snake thingies could unclog it.
It was so bad that I literally took the the toilet bowl apart and removed it from the mounting, determined to see just what the hell clogging it. Finally, after some poking and prodding around, I dislodged a small canister of hairspray - you know those like travel-size versions, about 5 inches high and maybe 1.5 inches in circumference.
Confused ,I asked my son if he knew how that could have gotten in there. He had a horrified look on his face, as if I had dug something up out of a grave. He was about 13 or 14 at the time, so suddenly I had an idea of what was going on. He tried to explain it away as "Oh I was just fooling around and trying to see what I could flush down the toilet, haha," but I knew his @ss was lying.
I totally knew he was trying to stick that thing up his butt and that it fell in. I gave him a look as if to say "I know they truth but I'm not gonna push the matter," and we never spoke of it again. I covered for him when I spoke to my wife and just told her that I think the kids were just fooling around and it fell in.
7. Sibling shenanigans.
I got into a car accident for the first time in my life when my younger brother was visiting me. I wasn't paying attention (dumb) to the car in front of me and I rear-ended them pretty hard.
Luckily no one was hurt, we exchanged information, took pictures, but there was no noticeable damage so we left it at that.
I looked at my brother and we both agreed never to bring it up again. I gave him that car when he turned 18.
6. Awful lotta fuss over a pill...
At school, this kid and I found a pill on the counter, and we chucked it into a urinal full of piss for whatever reason. About an hour later a teacher pulls me out of class asking what I had found in the bathroom.
Apparently this kid told the school I had found a pill, and the school wanted it. I was taken to the office and they were demanding this pill from me, which I just didn't have.
I lied and said I threw it away, and they demanded that I go search the trash for it. I was silently freaking out knowing that if I didn't come back with this pill, I could probably get in serious trouble.
They sent this kid and I to go search the trash, and while in the bathroom we looked at each other and knew what had to be done. I reached into this piss hole, grabbed the partially -dissolved pill, and dried it off with a paper towel.
We told each other that this piss grab will never be spoken about under any circumstance. We gave the pill to the school and they asked why it was kind of dissolved. We told them it was wrapped in a wet paper towel when we threw it away and they believed it.
5. Alleyoops.
When I scored on the wrong hoop in a basketball game when I was 8. My sister unfortunately never signed the non disclosure agreement.
4. No divine intervention.
Many many years ago I went to this Jesus Woodstock festival. Basically a 3 day Christian music fest. We got there after dark. Set up our tents.
I use a wad of tp, toss it into the hole, but it's strangely floating. I realize I fucking pissed on the brand new portapotty with the toilet lid still closed. I felt immediate shame. I had to release my guilt and confided in my bff later that night. She did the same exact f*cking thing.
Had to use the bathroom and ran to the portapotty without flashlights cuz we were 17 and beyond dumb. I pop a squat and am getting a TON of splash back- idk how it's so filled, it's the first night.
3. Good thing it wasn't actual brain surgery.
I was working IT for a hospital and a neurosurgeon had ordered a new lamp for his microscope. It came in through IT instead of engineering for some reason, so it fell to me to drop it off to him. When I did, he asked me to fit it as well. Medical equipment isn't my field, but the instructions were right there on the box, so I did.
Okay, cool. New lamp fitted, I can see it shining through the housing. So why wasn't the PC capturing any image from the microscope? The surgeon didn't know either, it had been like this for weeks. I didn't know microscopes, but I did my best to troubleshoot. Lamp on, check. Comms cord plugged in and seated tightly, check. The PC is receiving a signal, but for some reason it's a completely blank signal.
Neither one of us could figure out the problem, so we called up a medical engineer who took one long look at the microscope from across the room and announced that the lens cap was on. The brain surgeon and me shared a single humiliated glance and silently promised each other never to talk about this moment. A promise I've broken for your enjoyment.
2. A Thanksgiving memory for the ages.
My husband and I were going to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of some of my dad's family that I only kind of knew. We got there, knocked, and a woman I didn't recognize let us in.
We went into the home and there wasn't anyone there, there was no dinner, etc. So we're making small talk with this lady and I ask when everyone is coming. She asks what I mean.
Turns out we were at the wrong house. The woman just thought we were friends of her husband, because he would randomly bring people home, and that we had simply arrived before he did.
1. Same, can't.
Trying to teach my new at the time girlfriend how to drive my manual car. She told me she had done it a few times and knew what she was doing.Fast forward ten minutes and I no longer have a front bumper.
She continues with "I cant believe I did this! You're friends and family are gonna think I'm an idiot!" I just replied with "I did this" and we havnt spoke of it since. Everyone thinks im the idiot
Nurses Share Their "I Can't Believe I Have To Explain This" Stories
Nurses are heroes! They are never appreciated enough and underpaid. And just because they don't get enough respect from the higher-ups, or all the knowledge they have to be sure of but mostly because they have to deal with the front lines and the worst and sometimes stupidest of humanity. Granted we're all scared as patients and have questions but Lord... get it together people!
Redditor u/Caged_Tiger wanted the nurses out there to express themselves by asking.... Nurses of Reddit. What is your most "I can't believe I have to explain this" moment?
40. Neck it out!
Was giving a grown patient IV Benadryl for a rash and itching on the upper body. The IV was in the right arm so I started to give the medication into the right arm.
The patient panicked when I said I was done. "What do you mean you're done? You only put it in my right arm my left is itching too!"
I calmly explained that putting medication in the IV sends it to the whole body. She exclaimed "you mean it even goes to my neck?" I said yes and she said wow.
39. I love bread!
Spent WAY too long having to explain to a celiac patient that white bread was still made out of wheat and that's why she was still sick. Nutritionist had already been over it several times and then called me in to try to convince her. Teammaj
38. Please stop Breeding!
24 y/o female pt with frequent UTIs, I explained that peeing after sex can help prevent them.
She says she always pees after sex, she doesn't want to get pregnant! Had to give her a brief rundown on sex ed and her own body (Her parents made her get bc shots). zorasrequiem
37. Shocked!!
Had to explain to a patient, and his family, multiple times that although he does have a defibrillator now he still needs to take his heart medicine.... a real headache of a conversation. attractiveepidermis
Just shock me alive boys. Bobblefighterman
36. Just NOOO!!!
Got a phone call in the ER from a diabetic who said her sugar was reading "high" (that typically means over 400 or 500) and I told her she should come to the ER asap, and she asked "Should I drink some sweet tea until then?" Um... NO!!
That sounds like a reasonable solution to low blood sugar, does she actually not know the difference? Pulsar_the_Spacenerd
35. Punked!
Got a call from a discharged patient.
"So I'm wearing these depends..."
"...okay."
"Do I need to change them everyday?"
"Uhh yeah... or when they're soiled."
"Okay and should I clean myself up after that?"
"Yes. Yes, please."
We thought we were being punked.
34. Alfredo or Marinara?
Working at ob/gyn clinic. Had to explain to a concerned husband that his pregnant wife will not strangle the fetus if she eats spaghetti. That's a completely different system of organs.
Did you then have to explain that, ideally, his wife would have to chew the spaghetti first anyway? Skin_Bank
33. Just Nod....
Painkilling suppositories come in individual foil packets.
After my c-section, the nurse handed me one and said "Don't forget to take the foil off." I looked at her and went "... nooooooooo! Somebody did that?" She gave me this really tired look and nodded. Ouch.
32. Where was your mom?
I, a male nurse, had to explain to a 25 year old female what her period was. She came to the ED and was concerned she had cramping and vaginal bleeding monthly.
Thought for sure I was being pranked by co-workers. Nope. HerpieMcDerpie
31. Men are Useless....
Did labor and delivery for awhile. We typically inserted catheters after the epidural.
A lot of women would ask how they could push the baby out if something was in that hole... had to explain to many ADULT women the urethra and vagina are, in fact, not the same hole.
30. Can I get an "A?!"
Not a nurse, but have kind of a funny related story. It was one of those "you know what you call someone who gets all C's in nursing school? A nurse." moments.
Was in the ER with a family member who was basically dying of old age. They had to put a catheter in and asked us to step out.
It took for damn ever. Like way longer than I know it takes usually. When we came back in they had forgotten to close the web browser on the computer. It was opened to a google search of "female urethra."
29. It's just Chicken!
Having to explain to a patient family that they should NOT be bringing fried chicken and French fries to a patient only a day out from a stroke definitely ranks up there. Archturus
28. Not just for Employees...
It ia weird to me to explain women (I work in gynecology) that I escort to toilet, that they have to wash their hands after they pee. You would not believe how many of them does not wash. bojslo
27. No sex please!
Paramedic here. Got a couple great ones.
Woman had a fluid retention issue which caused her legs and feet to swell up with all the extra fluid.
Her response to this was... I kid you not... to alternate soaking her feet in boiling water then in rubbing alcohol because it, "made the skin feel tighter." As you can probably imagine the skin had basically rotted off of her feet.
This guy called because of a hard painful lump on his rectum. I take a look. Sure enough it's just a hemorrhoid. Start giving him some basic advice, get some cream, don't strain when you poop, take a stool softener, etc.
As an afterthought I throw in and no intercourse in the rear. And he goes, "what? Really?" Well yes. Putting anything up there will aggravate it.
He sighs dramatically and says, "well I guess no sex for me then!" And stomps away. I can probably come up with a few more but those are the most obvious.
26. Not always a happy ending!
I had a DNR/AND patient who was clearly going into the second phase of septic shock. Despite explaining that the man is actively dying the wife, who is a nursing instructor herself, made me call the doctor.
The doctor proceeds to order 2 Liter bolus of normal saline and blood cultures. We essentially drowned his veins with fluids and his blood pressure didn't come back up, not to mention causing him unnecessary pain pricking him with needles.
The patient died before the culture results came back. NottheArkhamKnight
25. Wrong End....
A patient came into a&e and said that the tablets given to him where giving him a lot of stomach pain and not helping him. He was prescribed suppositories. The patient was swallowing them... bobyd
24. Take the Shot!
I'm not a nurse, but I worked at the front desk of a family practice clinic for two years. I received a call on day from a patient swearing up and down that he need a Syphilis shot.
That is an STI and I told him that he needed to speak with his Doc before we could do any kind of shot, but he insisted. I went to to Immunizations Tech to confirm our protocol, and he said the same thing.
I picked up the phone again and repeated the protocol, but they refused to listen. I went to Immunizations Tech and asked if he would be willing to speak to the patient as he wasn't listening to me (some patients like to think that you're just a dumb front desk clerk), and he said he would.
After speaking with the patient for about then minute the Immunizations Tech came to the front desk and explained that the patient actually needed the Japanese Encephalitis shot. I couldn't stop laughing. Deadamisa911
23. Once More with Feeling....
Used to work in an ER in Chicago. We treated a kid with the flu that had a fever. Gave him some Tylenol, fever came down, sent him home.
Three hours later the family returned complaining that the fever came back. His nurse had to go explain that you had to give the tylenol AGAIN, and one dose doesn't just magically fix the flu. Organtrafficjam31
22. Not the Poop!
My wife is a Medical Assistant at a pediatrics office.
She had a parent of a boy who was probably 6 or 7 say, in the most calm and nonchalant tone, "My son really likes to eat his own poop. Is this normal? Is this healthy?"
My wife's jaw dropped and had to tell this mom just how unhealthy it is and how abnormal eating YOUR OWN POOP is. crawlnstall
21. Who doesn't know wine?!
Not in the hospital but while I was in nursing school my prof had to explain to a peer of mine that wine was an alcoholic beverage.
The student went on to pass nursing school even though we lost almost half of the students we started with. sllaBwithhairontheB
20. Obviously, right?
I had to explain TO a nurse while tattooing her that sticking her finger IN her fresh, bloody tattoo was cross contamination...
19. You ARE the mother.
Not a nurse but I was the idiot. After having my daughter via c section I was out of it completely and then very disoriented.
Nurse comes over to check on us and I asked if I was allowed to pick my baby up. I have never seen a look of alarm like it! She just said "well... Yes...she's YOUR baby."
This isn't a stupid question. I know you haven't given us all the context but there are plenty of reasonable reasons to want to check with someone first.
18. Peekapoo.
I've had to educate patients not to use their stoma (a piece of intestine) to have sex.
17. Potassium overdose?
Literally last week we had a guy come into the ICU with a K of 8.8.
Apparently he had had low K when he went to his PCP the week before so they gave him a supplement and he started popping them like candy.
Although it was clearly stated on the bottle not to exceed the recommended dose, he thought he might have a lawsuit on his hands for no one explaining it to him clearly. Cue face palm.
16. Really though...
Fun story: My Doctor once had to explain the word 'fat' to me.
I'm a Brit, she was from NZ and I thought she was saying 'fet' and didn't know what that was.
I imagine your doctor saying "you know..." puffing up her cheeks and pantomiming a large belly.
I love it when this happens. I'm from NZ, and I mentioned to my friends in the US that I had been working outside on my deck.
The "e" sound in a kiwi accent sounds like an "i" sound in an American accent.
15. No fun allowed.
Mental health nurse- Having to explain to a patient why he can't have his adult toys while on the ward. Also super fun time searching his property when he arrived on the ward.
This is what happens if you keep prescribing CBT.
I got mercilessly teased when I was doing a belongings search and found ben-wa balls. I was like 22 and had no clue what they were.
I was christened "Perl Wa" and even had a sign on my locker with my new name. Mental health staff are nothing if not fun!
14. Good fat bad fat.
So I have a real issue with sticking with a career so am both a nurse and was formerly a private chef. I'm well rounded I guess.
At a family gathering an aunt asked me about healthy diet options. I touted avocados as an excellent source of healthy fat.
Cue shrill, mocking laughter from my now estranged SIL. Sil had maxed out at the high school diploma but told everyone she had gone to culinary school because she took a few elective cooking classes.
"Healthy fat? There is no such thing as healthy fats. Fat is fat. God, you're funny." Total mocking condescension.
I stared at her blankly and said "I'm surprised they didn't touch on diet at all in CULINARY SCHOOL." And then resumed my other conversation.
"Yeah and AS A NURSE I'd think you'd know about diet."
I stared blankly again. "Yes, I do. Google it"
Pure_Pace13. Help, but from afar.
My best were all from tele-nursing, covering for an OB office.
I had to explain to a grandmother....that it was NOT normal for the cord to be hanging out of her very pregnant granddaughter.
I had to explain to a girl that her unborn child doesn't "eat when she eats" and that it's ok if she missed a meal.
Another lady was concerned that her unborn child may catch the stomach bug that was going around.
12. Ouch.
For me I hated trying to explain that it's dangerous to reuse your insulin needles. However I use to feel for the low income patients and try to remind them if they just come in we could put some together for them. Broke my heart.
11. ...yet.
One of my clients was being treated for a pretty serious abscess on her foot. He doctor wrote nursing orders for wound care, which is pretty standard.
The RN shows up on the first day and the client was utterly confused. The client thought the safest way to treat a wound was to bandage it and to leave the bandages in place until the wound completely healed.
She had never before changed dressings or cleaned a wound while it was healing. And she was very resistant to having her bandage changed. She kept saying, "it doesn't even smell yet!".
10. Oh boy.
That there are people of various ethnicity that would be taking care of them and that "that Muslim doctor" would in fact be just as good as "a white doctor." Patient was not particularly old or even confused.
9. Oof, really?
I had a labor patient that had just received her epidural. When I went to place a urinary catheter to keep her bladder drained, her husband said "If you put that in, how's the baby going to come out?"
I've learned over the years that LOTS of guys don't know their female anatomy.
8. To think, these people are out there.
Worked at a veterinary ER practice in college.. had a couple bring in their sick puppy.As we were gathering info about what happened, the wife started giving "raspberries" (blowing with her mouth on the dogs tummy)... but on his "bellybutton." Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
7. Correct.
Urine is not stored in your scrotum and I would be very concerned if it was.
I mean...they're called "peanuts" because pee is stored in the nuts. That's just science.
6. VA-GI-NA.
My wife had a patient that said she was having problems with her 'pink lady.'
My wife didn't know what she was talking about, so she asked a fellow nurse, who replied 'she's talking about her snatch, Angie!"
Wife asks other nurse, "what's a snatch?" She was 35 at the time.
Why can't people just say vagina? I mean, come on.
5. So. Many. Questions.
I'm a pharmacist. I had to explain to a woman how to wipe herself after using the bathroom.
4. Wait for it...
A woman that came in with a broken tib/fib on the orthopedic surgery ward who was on strict non-weight bearing orders to her broken limb was hell bent on getting herself downstairs so she could have a cigarette.
It took two of us nurses to kindly explain to her that she would permanently f*** up her leg if she did so.
Another favorite is the patients who answer "no" when you ask them on admission if they have high blood pressure. Their pre-admission medication list shows they are on Norvasc, Cozaar, etc.
"What are you on this medication for?" "Oh, that's my blood pressure pill. My blood pressure used to be high but not anymore."
Facepalm.
Edit: Just remembered a patient with an infected leg ulcer that we found a raw chickpea inside. The family said it was "holistic medicine." I'm all for people using alternative approaches if they believe it helps unless it is causing actual harm.
3. Stupid is as stupid does.
My girlfriend works in healthcare - though not a nurse- and the number of people that simply refuse to hear an unwelcome message is unreal.
Example she told me: person has lung cancer. Is told this is most probably from smoking. "Most probably?" Asks the patient.
I then explained that of course there is hardly ever a single thing that can be pinpointed to the development of cancer, but that 86% (might have the incorrect number) of the lung cancers is attributed to smoking and that it is rare to see lung cancer in someone who has never smoked.
Patient walks to family waiting outside and my girlfriend hears the patient literally say "doctor said it's not from smoking."
2. Uhhh...
Super late but my aunt was giving a malnourished 1-month-old an infusion (idk what for) the child was mostly healthy but the mom had HIV. The father asked if the infusion is going to "help him speak" because he "didn't speak yet".
1. Sensing a theme here.
I work in burns, and any burn/trauma nurse can tell you a good portion of their patients are just admitted because of poor life decisions. Here are some conversations I've had.
Don't put accelerants on a campfire/bonfire. (Gas/kerosine/diesel).
Don't go back into a burning house/vehicle/airplane.
Don't put accelerants on bonfires. This includes aerosol cans of stuff. Those blow up.
Don't make meth unless you have an advanced degree in the field.
Don't put accelerants on bonfires. Even if it "Just won't light."
Don't let your pot handles hang over the edge of the stove where your kid can reach.
Don't put accelerants on bonfires, even if you've "been doing it for years."
Don't pick up containers of flaming grease and oil.
Don't put accelerants on bonfires. Diesel is an accelerant.
Don't keep electric cigarettes in your pocket.
If you wear oxygen, don't smoke with it on/in your lap.
Don't burn trash. You don't know what the f's in there. Probably accelerants.
Don't dispose of excess gunpowder by lighting it on fire.
DON'T. PUT. ACCELERANTS. ON. YOUR. GADDAM. FIRE. 🔥🔥🔥🔥
DeLaNopeThere are plenty of stories floating around the internet about horrible landlords, and they most certainly exist. The flip side is also definitely true, though. Some of these things horrible tenants have done to rental properties will blow your mind.
Reddit user u/TheChuckie asked:
"Landlords of Reddit, who was your worst tenant?"
40.
My mother owns a house on the coast she inherited from her aunt and rents it out to people now that she's moved. Makes great money considering it's a decent sized town and the house is close to the beach.
She doesn't allow animals due to the old wool carpets that are not easily replaceable. But she legally can not keep children out.
I didn't see it for myself, but after several attempts to contact the tenants, she drove down there herself and let herself in. Place was a pigsty. Diapers, vomit, baby food everywhere, literal sh-t smeared on the wall and flung onto the ceilings; carpets were soaked and stained. Tenants were no where to be found. She talked to the neighbor and they'd apparently been gone for a month. Had to get the police to track them down.
39.
I wasn't old enough to remember this, but my dad tells me the story once in a while. We rented our second floor to this older lady who always was behind on her bills and tried every excuse in the book to postpone or not pay them. Well one day, my dad and her got to the house at the same time so he was able to confront her about some payments that were very late, and she was like "Oh I have the money upstairs. Just follow me".
While they were heading upstairs, she dialed 911, unbeknownst to my dad, and when they got upstairs she was stalling pretending to look for the money until a cop car came. When she heard the car, she started screaming and pushing my dad.
Fortunately for us, the lady was keeping a secret roommate without my parents knowledge, and she happened to be in one of the rooms and heard the whole thing. She came out of the room while the officer was starting to apprehend my dad and explained to the officer what actually happened
38.
Son of a landlord.
I was sent to clean out a garage unit for a few extra bucks. brought a guy with me because it was a lot. Turns out the lady who'd been renting the unit had been secretly living in the garage for months. We threw out family photos, one particularly odd couch that we had to break into pieces just to lift it out of there, and the piece de resistance....
four five gallon buckets full of human waste. We didn't know it was human waste until the last bucket was on the truck and the lid popped off and splashed a little bit.
I have never smelled anything so foul.
37.
Rented to a couple with iffy credit. Met them and both seemed ok. Guy was a truck driver and Lady worked in retail. Confirmed employment and decided to give them a chance.
Rent was paid on time for 3 months or so. Then it started to be late. Then one month is stopped. Always some excuse why they couldn't at least pay SOMETHING towards the rent. So, I started the eviction process which turned out to be a very lengthy process where I live. Went a little something like this
File eviction paperwork with court
Wait
Get court date
wait
Show up on court date. Tenants do not. Instead of granting the eviction, court date was rescheduled.
Wait
2nd court date. They show up. Judge wants us to talk to each other to work something out before he makes his judgement. Yelling ensues and I'm granted the eviction because I have meticulous records and Guy is a douche. They know they have to leave though and I thought they'd go fairly quietly. However, I still had to file with the Sheriff to come physically evict them. I'm hoping that isn't necessary because that means more time. But, alas, tenants never leave.
Wait
Wait
Wait
6 more weeks later Sheriff deputies come to evict them and the house is trashed. Holes in drywall, stains on the carpet, doors ripped off cabinets.
Spend about $10,000 fixing their mess plus 8 months of lost rent from the time they stopped paying until they were physically evicted. I learned a very expensive lesson to only rent to people with good credit with solid employment history. I have a strict set of criteria and I always stick to it. No chances given based on a good feeling on prospective tenants. If they don't meet the criteria, they don't rent the house.
36.
A family of hippies. And I mean full-on, flowers-in-their-hair, guitar-playing, kumbaya-singing, smelled-like hippies. I used to manage a complex of town houses, and they moved into one of our houses.
After four days, they threw a huge fit about how they'd had to take their daughter to the ER due to "radiation" from a nearby cell tower. They told us they were moving out immediately and demanded an on-the-spot refund of their deposit.
Of course, I said no and went to check the town house. It was completely destroyed. There were black marks and baseball-sized holes all over the walls. The carpet had been torn up and the entire place smelled of urine and feces (we later found animal feces under the carpet). It was just absolutely disgusting. Quite frankly, I was astonished that anyone could do that much damage in just 4 days.
...somehow I don't think the cell tower was what made their daughter sick. And needless to say, they didn't get their deposit back.
35.
Lady was chronically late on the rent, wasn't paying the water bill, never mowed the back yard. The lease prohibited pets but she had I think 8 ferrets running loose in the basement (I don't know if you can litterbox train a ferret but these weren't) which smelled about as good as you could possibly expect.
My dad's friend owned a house and his tenant stopped paying rent. Dad's friend went over and the guy wouldn't open the door but shouted at him that he was done paying rent and would have to be evicted.
The tenant said that in that city he could expect an eviction to take x number of weeks/months and would cost x dollars in legal fees, apparently having had experience with this before. Tenant also said that if dad's friend slipped that amount of cash through the mail slot he would clean the house and be gone by the next day.
Dad's friend went to a lawyer who told him that the time and expense was about right.
Dad's friend put the cash in an envelope and slipped it through the mail slot. The next day the house was clean and empty.
34.
enter patrick
patrick never paid his rent. patrick kept making excuses. patrick got evicted. patrick trashed the house and left his dog. patrick later went to jail because he tried to ROB A BANK
33.
My dad rented out our old house. He thought he had a good tenant. Tenant even asked to repaint the interior if we deducted one months rent. Sounded good.
Then when they wanted to move out we got a look at the place. When they painted they used the cheapest paint, painted door knobs and outlets and left big paint strokes. Looked way worse than what it must have looked unpainted. And there were large holes torn in the carpet.
And none of the toilets worked, they just ran constantly. And they must have hung wet clothes on the bathroom faucets because none of those worked and were rusted beyond repair. My childhood home looked terrible and we had to repair.
Oh, the reason we thought he'd be a good tenant? He was an executive hire to run the local hospital. Seems him and his family must have just lived like pigs in that filth.
32.
Two Apple engineers. They were a couple. They were taking a camera around and taking photos of every little thing they saw on the move-in inspection. This isn't necessarily unusual, but it is when you're snapping closeups of every square inch of the property.
3 months into their 3-year lease, they wanted out. It was "too expensive", despite the fact that my rent on a house is cheaper than most 1BR apartments here in Silicon Valley.
I refused. By CA law, they had the option of just leaving and forcing me to find a new tenant, but they chose instead to just damage everything.
- Drag parties. 200+-pound men dancing in stilettos are not kind to wood floors. $14000.
- Deliberately spilling onto carpets, also required replacing subfloor. $8000.
- Breaking outdoor tiles with a sledgehammer. $9000.
- Severe water damage in the bathroom from flooding the bathtub. So much damage that I had to repair the foundation. $180,000.
I evicted them and kept their security deposit. They sued me for it. I countersued for damages.
They broke into the property after repairs were completed and before I had new tenants, taking "moveout" photos to prove the house was in better condition when they left than when they moved in. They changed the date on their camera as "proof". The jury didn't believe me when I pointed this out.
The lawsuit took eight years. The court ultimately sided with me; I was awarded my damages, but not attorneys fees, which were more expensive than the $200+k it cost me to restore the property.
31.
Moves into a house with five kids and just turns the place into a nightmare filled house of horrors, a church to her hoarding addiction. No pets allowed? OK make room for my 117 cats. Water damage, holes in the walls, broken windows. You name it, she'll destroy it. She never paid rent on time.
She asks the landlord what to do with garbage when moving out. He says put it on the curb. She doesn't clarify that she'll be putting 500 bags of hoarded garage. Giant piles of garbage bags attract possums, rats, wild animals galore and get us on the front of the newspaper, which is sitting on my desk when I come to school on Monday. House gets condemned and knocked down.
Move to the next house, same thing. 9 years go by. Condemned and knocked down. Next house, same thing. Condemned and knocked down.
Don't let my hoarder mother move into your property.
30.
My friend's a landlord. He once evicted tenants in January after they had failed to pay rent for several months, even though he had tried to be patient with them. He owns several properties and didn't get over to that apartment for about a week. Turns out they had turned the heat all the way up, opened all the windows, and walked out. Cost him a fortune. He tried suing and lost.
29.
My last tenant gave me the one month notice that I asked for, she waited until her lease was up so it was fine. One week into her last month and I get a phone call, she said she's moving that weekend so she's only going to pay one weeks worth of rent. "It's only fair". I said that is not how a lease works and I still have to pay the mortgage on the damn place!
She sends me a cheque for 1/4 of the rent and I just cashed and played dumb until she moved out. Took good care of the place and had no issues during the walk though when she moved out. Once I got the keys in my hand, I hand her the damage deposit minus 3 weeks worth of rent. She was furious, then I closed the door and locked her out.
28.
One day a cable guy came to hook up my cable and through conversation learned my coworker is his landlord.
He went on a rant about how much of a d!ck my coworker is for charging him rent when "I wasn't even living there, I just had my stuff there." I feel bad for anyone who has him as a tenant.
27.
Previous Leasing Agent here. This tenant is the Facebook Anarchist.
- Came in every day and requested that we fax documents. This person did this around three times a day. They didn't have a job. They just tried to sue people all day. That is all they did. They were unemployed and on rental assistance. It was easier for us to just fax the documents than to argue with them.
Posts on Facebook approximately 30-50 times a day. Personally, this is my favorite part. This person's grasp of spelling, grammar, and general sentence structure is such that reading their posts verbatim is gut wrenchingly funny. This person has, like, two people who comment on their posts. Most of the comments made on this person's posts are just them commenting on their own post. The content of the posts themselves are also incredible. They include, but are not limited to:
- Anti-government conspiracies
- Anti-women posts
- how they are "worth 100s of millions of dollars"
- How they are a hall of famer
- videos about politics
- videos about aliens
- videos about the conspiracies of political figureheads hiding aliens
- One time this person tried to organize a "business leaders of the world" conference at the shared pool. They invited stars and famous people such as The Rock. Nobody came. So they just requested that I take pictures of them by the hot tub. They posted them on Facebook.
- They once posted 72 pictures of themselves on Facebook on a single day. The only difference between the each picture was slightly different posture.
- We had a business center for tenants to use computers. This person used them most days for extended periods of time. I once walked by when they were playing very loud alien sounds and they had both index fingers touching the screen of the computer. I asked them to stop.
- We had roofers replace the roof on their building. We got several e-mails asking if the roofers could fix a problem on their balcony. I had to explain several times that they were contracted for a specific job and that the job they were doing was fixing the roof and not fixing their balcony.
- The issue of the balcony was regarding a panel they claimed was loose. There were no panels on the balcony. We sent maintenance over on more than one occasion and there was no panel. When questioned about the panel they usually tried changing the subject.
- US marshals contacted us and requested that if any gun shaped packages were shipped to this tenant to give them a call.
- This tenant tried to sue us on several occasions. They even used our own fax machine to fax the documents they were using to sue us. They faxed the documents to us. They used our own fax machine to send a document approximately 8 feet.
- Sent several lewd e-mails to one of the leasing agents. They were convinced that the leasing agent was trying to have sex with them. The e-mails are still in their file. Any time I needed a laugh I would read them.
- Makes poorly rendered Photoshop art mostly pertaining to Cleopatra.
- Calls themselves "director" because they make videos where they showcase their Cleopatra art paired with alien music.
There are probably more stories but I can't remember them right now.
26.
My current tenant just moved out. I have (read: had) a beautiful home 3 years ago, 3 bedroom, fully solar, updated everything, nice bamboo floors. Enter my tenant.
Red flags were not immediate, she had a great history with prior residences, a couple of exceptions were made (she wanted to pay 100 less than I had listed, asking if she could plant things in the garden, etc).
Fast forward 6 months or so, rent starts being late. Not only late, but she would not let me know until the day rent was due that she needed to pay 3-4 days later.
When I could come by to collect the rent, she would tell me things were broken (disposal, sink clogged, etc). Which is all fine, but she would tell me it has been broken for 3 weeks and just now decided to tell me. We talk and text frequently about rent and other things, yet she could never inform me when stuff was broken until I dropped by.
This all came to a head when she got rats in the house. I go over to collect rent after 2 months not being there and holy hell. A fan globe was broken and the glass was all over the kitchen...for multiple days they told me (she had a 4 year old in the house too). The bathroom has roaches all in it, trash along the side of the house spilling out of cans, holes in the drywall (small, but there), blinds (nice wooden ones) strings broken, and the house smells awful like rat piss.
She tells me there have been rats there for a few weeks. Well I wonder if it has anything to do with all the trash outside and open food dishes in the sink that reek? I never in my life thought I would have to tell a grown woman with kids that yes, you need to put garbage in the garbage can. No, you cannot leave food out until it rots otherwise you get these lovely pests.
Anyway, even though it is in her lease to deal with rodent/pest control issues, I do it myself. I hire a company under contract to handle the whole thing for 1 year guarantee for like $1k. All she has to do is call the number I give her whenever she sees/hears a rat or anything.
Well guess what she does NOT do? She would occasionally text me saying she saw a rat. I saw call pest control to come take care of it, then nothing. This went on for 6 months, all the while rats chewed my stove wires (now not under warranty since they don't cover pest issues), clogged the dishwasher, wrecked my cabinets, etc.
They just moved out last week. Holes in the doors now, looks like they tried to crowbar the INTERIOR doors open for some reason, split jams, garbage left all over the yard front and back, my floors have this inexplicable grease all over and sticky things, her child drew in crayon all over the doors. It's a mess.
If you ever rent a place you care about, first stop caring about it and second BE CHOOSY and take the few months unrented to get someone you are SURE about.
25.
Steven. He and his girlfriend moved in. They led us to believe he was employed full time and she was a student. Soon after we were dealing with him cooking/eating/using common areas at like 2-4am in the morning constantly, strong smells of like car battery in the early AM (probably tweaking). His attempts at cleaning consisted of trying to "mop" the walls/surfaces instead of wiping them down or just using the mop on the floor.. cringes.
Kept a puppy in the house/room at times when he thought no one was around, which was definitely a NONO. Late with rent on his second month, became hostile with all other housemates with almost any interaction or when asked to clean up his messes. Tried to pick fights with housemates to bait them to hit him or overreact, luckily we didn't..dude was a psycho...Ended up giving him his 30 days notice before he had been here his second month.
All the while his poor girlfriend who we all thought was in school, was actually pregnant with his kid and that's why she was always home, and they had been running from/avoiding her family, she was a nice girl, but you could tell she had no control in the relationship. Apparently it also came to light that maybe their relationship started when she was like 14-15, and he was probably 20 at the time, grooming her it seemed.
He threatened us with all kinds of legal action, actually did have to get a lawyer and make sure we were in the clear.
Worst 3 months with a tenant/housemate. We actually threw a party when they left, I can only imagine that poor girl's life, or the kids! Only have bad wishes for Steven since he was such a scumbag douchcanoe.
24.
I have a friend who has always been a perpetual roommate (prolly to hold onto more of his paycheck living in the Bay Area). 5 houses ago he explained to me the the place he lived in was completely redone in part because the previous tenant spread kitty litter all over the carpet in one of the rooms. She then let her 6 cats sh!t all over that room like a giant litter box.
But I've heard that this is not as rare as it should be.
23.
Kyle was a tweaker who believed that I was Satan incarnate. Kyle also likes to steal everyone's mail and break into random apartments. Kyle would go on a meth bender and trash his apartment and the commons areas until he did enough damage for the police to finally put him in jail for 1 night.
Kyle would get out and stalk me and my friends, showing up in restaurants where we were eating or at art galleries where we were touring, where he would follow us around and make threats. The police would tell Kyle "Don't do that, it's not nice" and then leave me to deal until his "lays a hand on you, then we can do something."
Kyle was why I started carrying a gun. Kyle was finally arrested for 17 counts of felony mail theft and drug possession, but Kyle got ror'd and came back to an eviction notice. Kyle then sh!t, pissed, bled all over his apartment and left needles in strange places, requiring us to replace all the appliances and flooring along with 12 ft window.
22.
I do not have a tenant but my friend here, who doesn't have reddit, is telling me about a current tenant.
This couple, nicknamed dumb and dumber, are helpless. She overloaded the bathroom outlet and flipped the outlet switch. She didn't know all she had to do what push the button back in and she would have electricity again, so she calls an electrician who warns her it will be a minimum of $150 for him to drive out there and fix this. He walks in and spends less than a second pushing the button in.
She then sends the landlord the bill, which the landlord refused to pay. Calls asking who will clean their bathroom, mow their grass, can they come out to flip the breaker box for them, I don't like this fridge...buy us a new one, why is it a big deal if we are late with rent, our washing machine we moved in with isn't working well isn't it your job to buy us a new one, what is an air filter and why do I have to change it, I need someone to hold our mail while we go on vacation can you contact the post office? Two absolutely helpless adults with kids.
Oh, and I had to add this in. The air conditioner fails. She lets them know at maybe 9pm at night. They contact an HVAC repair company who will be out there in the AM. Instead of waiting less than 12 hours, she goes to the store in the middle of the night and buys multiple window units to install at 2am.
Which she cannot do, because outlets are too hard for her. She then tells the landlord they are responsible for repaying her for the multiple window AC units. HVAC guy had the AC repaired in less than an hour that morning. The tenant is still out $400 because legally the landlord doesn't have to pay her for that.
21.
Worked for a property management company, and dog owners were the worst. We had several that didn't let their dogs outside. They just let them pee and poop inside. The most frustrating thing was dealing with them when they moved out, and they would get angry at not getting their deposit back.
20.
One of my clients had the tenants from hell: things were going great for a year until they burned the house pretty severely from attempting to make hemp oil. Obviously, after this happened they attempted to kick them out. They refused to leave and even wouldn't let the contractors in to work on the property damages.
Finally, MONTHS pass and they get approval to have law enforcement force them out after not paying rent. Then they could finally work on getting the house fixed up again to rent out again. Once the house was fixed up, the old tenants broke into the home in revenge, poured cement down the drains, and turned on the faucets, thus flooding the entire house. So then comes the second property damage claim on their hands.
They do have new (and great) tenants now, and I know they have gotten the law involved at this point, but it's crazy how some people are so inconsiderate and entitled these days.
19.
Tenant paid deposit and first month's rent. I'm guessing somebody got laid off real soon after, because they didn't move much in. After not paying second month, and not answering phone calls, it was time for eviction (which goes on record). Tenant makes up a story about police saying they couldn't come back after the shooting.
I have no idea what shooting they're talking about, but if they can produce a police report, we can cancel the eviction. Tenant goes to perfectly decent house and shoots up the back door. Eviction process continued and I had to get a new door installed.
18.
Not a landlord, but I worked as a handyman one summer and we had to repair a house that was rented out by college students. We get inside and the place is absolutely trashed. There holes in the walls, in the doors, the windows were broken, cabinets ripped off and to top it all off, the entire place reeked of pee because the previous tenants locked their dog in a small room while they went home on vacation. We put an absurd amount of work into the house over a three-day span. I've never seen a house in that condition before.
But one day we were talking to the landlord and she makes the comment "These were the second-worst tenants we've ever had." My coworker and I look at each other and ask what the worst tenants were, because, like I said, it looked like a war was fought inside this house. She tells us that one time, the house had pretty similar damage, except before the tenants left, they filled hundreds of condoms with water and pinned them to the ceiling. I don't repair houses anymore.
17.
The Dog Ladies.
Around 1993 friends of my father's friends bought a neighboring farm which came with a beautifully maintained classic country style 3 bedroom house. Having taken out a massive bank loan to buy the new farm they decided to rent out the house to help with payments.
A couple showed up, wanting to live their dream of country life with their 2 German Shepherd dogs. They were charming ladies and it sounded like a great match.
Fast forward 2 years:
They are almost 6 months delinquent on rent. The farmers are getting desperate, the ladies said if the landlords came on their property they would have them arrested. There is clearly WAY more than 2 dogs here! The ladies are not even living inside the house, only dogs are in the house... humans are living in a shabby old camper van now parked out front. Nothing has been maintained, the house is clearly falling apart, the lawn is just weeds, the stench can be detected well before you get near the house.
This has to end.
One blessed day... it did end. The ladies up and moved their camper van and they were gone.... but the dogs were still there. 1st call- SPCA. Now, this predates the internet carrying stories about massive animal hoards, but this would have been a major headline at the time: over 60 dogs were seized from inside the house, plus there were several decaying dead dogs found as well.
The dogs had chewed and eaten away all of the original woodwork, walls, a lot of the flooring, anything they could, even each other.
The urine and feces had caused everything to rot through, not one square inch of the home was salvageable.
It was heartbreaking when the demolition came. The original family had worked so hard to meticulously maintain this gorgeous country home, and it was all plowed under only 2 years later. It was a total loss. I was too young to know what happened with insurance companies, but I do know they did not rebuild.
16.
My super told me this story about a guy who was getting evicted in our building a few years back. Apparently he was a real piece of work and hadn't paid rent in months. Anyway, he put off packing until the day before his eviction and left a bunch of trash and had slashed all his leather furniture and left it behind, and glued tinfoil on all the windows for some reason.
The unit was in a real state so they completely renovated it; new tile, new hardwood, new bathroom, the works...but they couldn't get rid of "the smell". A pungent fishy trash odor, made worse by it being summertime, which just permeated the entire unit. Even though it had been cleaned top to bottom, it wouldn't go away.
You know that spot under your kitchen sink cabinet, that flat baseboard-like piece that covers the empty space from the base of the cabinet to the floor? You guessed it, the evicted guy had apparently pried it open, stuffed it with raw fish-garbage and sealed that baby back up as his last 'f--- you' for being evicted. I don't know what sparked them to check, but it had been a couple weeks before they found it.
15.
Son of a Landlord here. Parents own a four flat where I was born and raised at living on the top floor. About 10 years ago they had these two tenants living in the unit below them, I called them dumb and dumber, both males. I was around 25 at the time and just moved back in with my parents to save up some money to buy my first house. D & D were around the same age.
My parents ALWAYS stressed the importance to new tenants about the building being a quiet building, as stated in the lease: no parties, no loud music after 9 pm, just be respectful to your neighbors. Well D & D liked to party and have lots of late night company at least 5 nights a week. One night about 1 in the morning they were having a party. I was just getting back to the house finishing my smoke outside when I heard my mom knocking on D&D's door.
I heard her say knock off the party and keep it down as other tenants had already called to complain. As my mom got back to her apartment I finished my smoke and started walking up. As I walked past their door I heard one of them say "she's lucky I didn't answer the door, I would've snapped on her."
O HELL NO!! I'm a pretty big guy 6'5 240 lbs. so I had no problem knocking on their door. When I did the whole place went silent. One answers the door and I say"so who's gonna snap on who now?!?" They denied ever saying it, and apologized for the loudness yada yada yada.
I told them next time I'll just call the cops and if they want to party to move and find a different place to live and read the lease more carefully. I think I scared the sh!t out of them cause we didn't hear much from their apartment after. Other than that my parents have been kinda lucky with tenants.
14.
I had a tenant that turned out to be my real estate agent (using someone else's credentials), and then stole my identity, bought an Audi and a Yamaha motorcycle and left me with the bill.... oh, and he put holes in all the walls and didn't pay rent. It's a longer story than that, but he was caught, and now he is housed in prison.
13.
obligatory not a landlord but I did work at a property management company for about a year.
There was a couple that seemed super nice. they were polite and young, literally no red flags. we helped them fill out the application, the landlord told them all the rules (no pets without deposit, don't break stuff, the usual)
after 4 months of their year long lease, they just left. when one of my coworkers went to check up on them, she found that the house was TRASHED. there was shit covering the walls, duct tape over all the windows, needles scattered. there was even a bunch of blood stains in one of the bedrooms. oh and they punched a few holes in the walls and ceilings, and clogged all 3 toilets.
they were apparently heroin addicts, and let their friends use their place as well to do other heroin addict activities.
took a long time to get that place livable again.
12.
Not mine but my Mother's. She rented an apartment unit to a guy who wanted us to replace the normal toilet with a bidet. As the toilet worked perfectly fine and to rip it out and replace it with a bidet was unnecessarily expensive, she refused. The guy didn't contest it so we thought everything was fine. Fast forward to a year later and the downstairs neighbour complains of leakage.
We check the unit and it turns out the guy replaced the toilet with a bidet himself, only he did a bad job of installing it properly so it constantly leaked. Instead of fixing it, he had let the water accumulate and never bothered to mop it up so the bathroom was filled with stale water, had mold growing in patches, and the water had leaked through the tiles and ruined the floor. He didn't get his deposit back.
11.
My dad rents out houses. He does it for a good price (1000+ a month for 3 bedrooms or 4). One day he had to evict someone since they hadn't paid anything to him for months (my dad is the type to work things out with you if you come to him and describe the problem or whatever).
This lady had like 2 kids but when she "moved out" she left her car in the garage and she made sure to trash the place. Completely. Floors over filling with trash,walls with holes punched in with every room. At the time my family helped in cleaning the place so in middle school for one weekend I was there picking up some grown women's trash and cleaning the garage and trying to help the best I could.
10.
These kids weren't the worst tenants I've ever had but didn't pay rent and left the place trashed when they were evicted. The girl calls one day and asks if she can have a hamster. I said "no, you can't have a hamster and if you have money for a hamster then I'd recommend paying your rent that's 2 months late." She says "its my birthday money". She learned the hard way that when you're about to be evicted 'birthday money' doesn't exist anymore. Spoiler: she bought the hamster.
9.
More of a "Worse situation involving a tenant" situation. I was managing a high rise unit block a couple of years back. Got a call from another tenant complaining of an ungodly smell in the corridor. Went to check it out and sourced the smell from a particular unit on that floor where I knew an elderly lady lived.
Knocked on the door a couple times with no answer so used my master key to enter. The poor lady had fallen and died, about a month prior. With the summer heat her body had pretty much liquified. To this day I can still remember the smell. I threw up almost instantly and couldn't sleep for days.
A lot of people dump their elderly family members into condos and forget about them when they should be placed in assisted living facilities. Very sad.
8.
My Dad and I bought a 4 plex, well he bought it and I was living there and was the manager. I was nervous being only 22 and not having any experience managing a property. This was a couple months in and we were in the backyard when a girl comes out with a puppy. She was not someone we recognized so we started talking to her. She proceeded to tell us the following:
1. Hi, I just moved in apartment 1 (not on lease with our knowledge) 2. My puppy (dogs weren't allowed especially puppies) 3. has worms (diarrhea everywhere). 4. Oh, can you wait to cash my rent check, I don't think I have enough in my account (late rent/possible bounced check).
It's not that it was that bad of a situation but being new to the job we were speechless. She ended up moving out because we didn't allow dogs.
7.
I bought a nice ranch home in my early 20's and after about 10 years I decided to move closer to my work at the time and rent the house out.
First tenants were great.
Second tenants had a solid work and rent history. First month went smooth, then no payment at all. Never got another dime from them for almost two years while I was trying to evict them. Went to court several times, the judge kept letting it drag out. Husband was a drunk and blew all the money on beer.
I got rid of the house after that. I did get lucky as it wasn't trashed or torn up.
6.
The hoarders. I can't sort them from worst to...less worse, but I'll tell you I've seen 5 that have used their bathroom as storage to the point that they can no longer use that bathroom. The thing about toilets is that wax rings will eventually dry out and crack if you don't keep them moist with occasional flushes. Once they crack, they leak into the unit below and I have to be an ahole and barge into your unit, empty the bathroom, and stop the leak.
It was always super gross and I always took a shower once I got home because plumbers refuse to do the empty-crap-out-of-the-bathroom job. Understandably.
Flush the toilet you don't use regularly, people!
5.
I had a tenet that I evicted recently. They were constantly late on rent. Never paid the water bill. But the icing on the cake was they said they had no pets, but actually had a dog and a cat. That would have been fine if they told me and paid the additional deposit and pet rent.
The dog chewed up all of the baseboards and tore up and through carpet all over the house.
I went through their Facebook to investigate when pets started living in my unit. It was literally from day 1. I asked the tenet about the pets and they said"no we don't have any". I asked why there was a post with a leash on it going under the back door. They had no answer. So I sent them a bill for all of the back pet rent and pet deposit along with paying all the late fees owed and water bill.
They moved out without telling me. I secured the property after they didn't pay for 2 months. All of the damage was shocking. I'm still trying to collect, but they are doing everything they can to not pay.
4.
This woman who never paid rent on time (if at all), left a metric ton of garbage everywhere, and destroyed almost every surface to some extent. Then after we evict her she has the audacity to not pay us the, like, $25k+ she owes us and changes credit companies and moves to another state to avoid paying it.
3.
One of my current lodgers. Never pays on time, says that I knew he couldn't pay on time so I was unfair in renting to him, doesn't do dishes, plugs his own Ethernet into the modem because the house wired internet is "too slow"(all cat6a btw), took care of my dogs one time and just covered their pee and poo with paper towels because he forgot to let them out. His lease is up in a few weeks.
2.
Had two 'artists' that lived in a unit and had put in several hundred drywall plugs into the ceiling. Why? So they could suspend mannequin parts from the ceiling. They were also dealing meth out of the apartment, and their place had a substantial infestation. We were moving to evict, but cops came and arrested them. Aside from the drugs and the fake body parts that were everywhere, the cops also found a cachet of weapons. When the cops came to arrest the guy, he was in bed with a hooker, and they made him put on pants.
1.
I once had to rent a u-haul to haul off trash from a one bedroom apartment because there was so much. I stopped counting trash bags after the 3rd box of 30 trash bags was used. I had to repaint the walls and install new flooring throughout because of the smell. The roaches took 3 weeks to die. The apartment still has a faint odor that I can't get rid of.
Savvy Professionals Share Why They Decided Not To Take The Job During The Interview
As someone looking for a job, you should know that you are interviewing the prospective employer just as much as they are interviewing you. These people reveal what made them steer clear of these potential jobs.
u/geographygenius asks:
What happened during a job interview that made you not want the job?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
50. Contracts are important
GiphyEnglish teacher looking for a position. Second interview went well, interviewers said they wanted me to be on their team and that they would set up an appointment to sign the contract by the following Monday. I called to check in on Wednesday and was told that I would receive a call by Friday. Called on Friday afternoon and was told that the person responsible would be calling me back that afternoon.
The following morning, received a phone call from the principal checking in on whether or not HR had been in touch. He promised to "light a fire under them." I started interviewing elsewhere as back up. After three weeks of this kind of back and forth I let them know I had accepted a different position, one which had passed me a contract to sign ten minutes after the interview.
49. When there is nothing to hide
Shady dude was the only person there in literally an empty storefront (job was for computer repair). We actually sort of hit it off, got into a long discussion about music production and he actually burned me a couple of cds of pirated software for my studio. Then he explained that the job was really crap and I should find something else. Found out later that the whole business was a scam and he embezzled a bunch of money and ran off without paying his employees. Dude must have genuinely liked me so he didn't hire me.
47. When everyone is quitting
Did an on the job interview with a security/ locksmith company. Interviewer got a phone call from his boss and they got into a huge argument and he quit right in the middle of the job/interview. I just kinda went home and pretended it never happened.
46. When the ad doesn't match the job
Was interviewing for a management position, they said that I first had to work an "amount of time" as a rep. On a rather low pay.
Yeah ... don't advertise a management position if it's basically a ploy to get cheap reps.
45. How tacky!
When the interviewer double booked and insist she interview us together, then proceeded to compare our answers in real time, in front of the other candidate. When she called me three weeks later, outside of work hours, to offer me the job she seemed genuinely surprised at my refusal!
44. Is this job even open?
GiphyInterviewing for a position as an advisor for a financial firm. The manager then gave me the floor for questions:
Me: "Is this a new role or am I replacing someone?"
Interviewer: "Well we had three advisors in this department and I laid off two of them, because I felt we were overstaffed. You would be the replacement"
Me, thinking in my head: "Ok I think we're done here"
43. Bye Felicia
When we got to salary negotiations, and they literally wanted to give me HALF of what I was expecting.
42. When you have connections
My interviewer turned out to be a former co-worker from a previous job. Great dude, we always got along. Ten minutes into the interview he leans forward and quietly says, "the job's yours if you want it, but you don't want it. Trust me." I did trust him. I thanked him and left..
41. When the interview makes you feel gross
I discovered I was being pitched a job as a life insurance salesman for the purpose of taking old people's money.
I felt gross just being there.
40. When you get the job but never start
GiphyThey called me to tell me they were going to offer me the job, but I needed to talk to HR. Then I got bounced around for a couple of months, where HR, the department hiring me, and the finance department kept giving me a start date and then pushing it back.
39. Red flags
"I suppose, if you put it that way, we are getting our initial site data by violating several US anti-hacking laws."
38. When you aren't really sure
I walked into the interview with no real idea what the job actually was. I walked out of the interview with no real idea what the job actually was.
To this day, I still don't know what that job was.
37. When overtime is not paid
GiphyThem: How much overtime are you willing to work?
Me: As much as you're willing to pay me for.
Them: Well, we don't pay for overtime.
Me: You are legally obligated to compensate me for overtime.
Them: Well, it won't be much, but, are you willing to put in extra hours? What kind of compensation would you be looking for.
Me: Cash. And for you to have this system worked out already. I'm out.
36. Way to sell the job...
Engineer '09 grad, applied to work as an engineer for a coal mine. They took us for a underground tour, essentially making sure nobody freaked out. One of the guys who had been there a long time was leading us... with a bad limp i might add and said "its not if you will be hurt, but when and how bad" this wasn't very long after a safety meeting talking about a guy crushed himself operating heavy equipment at another site a few days before.
35. Sometimes the signs are clear
I always get a few questions in myself, and I always ask the person who would be my boss, "What do you like about your job?" One time, my future boss said "I don't really like my job" and went on to explain why he didn't like being a manager in the company. That was the end of me wanting to be his employee.
34. When they don't tell the truth
GiphyI've had multiple places blatantly lie about their compensation and benefits up until the actual interview. Last time I was job searching I think I walked out on three places.
33. Wow...
They told me that I couldn't use the bathroom whenever I wanted and most people end up with incontinence.
32. What happens behind closed doors...
The boss passed by, came in to say hi and shake my hand, which left a good impression on me. Not even 30 seconds later I could hear him screaming and chewing out one of the employees in another room and slam a door.
It immediately reminded me of this old SNL sketch.
31. Hiding something?
They made a big reassurement that what they did in the business wasn't illegal
30. Back in September....
I'm in college so I was looking for a job while I was home for this summer, and I applied at Target. They called me and asked a few questions, one of them was when I was going back to school. I told them the last week of August, and they said they couldn't hire me because I couldn't work through the first week of September, which is really busy for them. I was somewhat upset but it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I moved on and applied to a few other places. A few weeks later they called me and said they looked at my application again and they changed their mind and invited me in for an interview. I was excited and I was glad that I had a second chance. I go in and everything in the interview was going well.
They finally asked when I was going back to school, which was weird to me because they already asked me that before. I told them the first week of August. Then the interviewer said that they couldn't hire me because I wouldn't be there for the first week of September. I asked why they even called me in and I explained what happened. The interviewer said that she had no idea that they called me before.
I was very upset that they wasted my time like that. natethegreat34
29. Duck and Cover....
I'm an accountant. I walked into this company for a job interview and knew something was off. It was on the 40th floor in downtown San Francisco. Had like 6 offices. Had 2 corner offices. Had A section of the office had 10 cubicles. Had a boardroom that can seat 14.
Unfortunately had no employees. Just like 4. The "president" was an expert in his field. At one time. Now he's old and should have been in a nursing home. He had 3 "secretaries." These people were supposed to be servicing over 300 clients money. How ? Something was fishy as hell.
Turned out later I learn from someone that he was stealing money to finance his lifestyle. Which at one point was extravagant but he was at the tail end of his scam. He was borrowing money to keep it up. He was being investigated by the IRS (someone blew the whistle) but IRS never followed up until someone reported him because he was essentially running a money management firm without a license.
Then it all came down. By then, he was so old he couldn't stand trail. His secretaries pleaded "we didn't know" and been bleeding him dry by making him sign random stuff. He died one day. It was sad. He got away with everything. Stealing from people who most likely were stealing money from someone, may it be shady sources of money to ripping off the taxpayer.
I did dodge a bullet. Reddit
28. Telemarketing Biblically....
After college, I was desperate for a job and threw my resume everywhere.I got a call for a company and I thought it was a graphic design position (I majored in history but had a knack for graphic design, so I was amazed I got a call.)
Well, I got there and was immediately told it was a Christian telemarketing company and I'd be a telemarketer making commission. I said the position was clearly for graphic design and the woman told me it was to "draw potentially talented candidates in." They showed me a list of all the charities they telemarket for and I recognized none of them. They weren't religious either. They wouldn't let me take home anything that said charity names on them, but I memorized a few and couldn't find anything about these "charities" when I looked them up at home.
I tried to be as polite as possible through the 2 hour ordeal which had me shadowing a telemarketer, who told me that elderly people were the best to get money out of.
I have absolutely no idea why they kept pitching they were a Christian company when what they were doing was so un-Biblical, but I digress.
It's been 5 years since I interviewed there. I happened to go by the building a few months ago and it's now a medical center. I wonder what happened.... ArtByKC
27. I'm Desperate....
I prepared for an interview a few weeks ago, worked on what to say for a couple of days and as usual got pretty worked up and nervous beforehand. I go to the interview where the guy sits me down and tells me this is nothing more than just a quick informal chat (and here's me in a full suit sweating my butt off having prepared 100 questions/answers in my head)
He then proceeds to say that I'm not suitable for the job I have applied for, he thinks I'm overqualified, but he is thinking about creating a different position in the company I can fill. I ask what the position is, he rambles for a good 20 minutes straight (no joke) about me filling a new job but the job doesn't yet have a training scheme or any kind of official description/documentation. He wants me, as part of the job, to create the job's training scheme for the job I'm literally learning to do.
I'm sat there confused as hell, he hasn't got any notes with him and is just improvising this entire 'job description' where I, as a fresh graduate, am in charge of 38 people's IT systems on my own with no proper experience. I ask what the pay and hours are, "oh, I haven't even thought about that yet."
So I went for an interview that wasn't even a proper interview or related to the job I'd applied for. Such a waste of time. Toby95
26. Sorry Ron....
GiphyApplied for a job in Clearwater, FL. In-person interview was normal enough got passed through to a secondary interview. At the start of the secondary was asked to take some tests. I think no big deal, been there done that with other jobs. They hand me a book sized stack of papers with hundreds of questions. I look down at the bottom of the sheet and in small print it stated that this test was created based on the concepts of L. Ron Hubbard and printed by The Church of Scientology..... I stood up... put the stack back on the ladies desk and noped the heck right out of there. elusivegroove
25. Out I go!
You've had a lot of jobs. Yes. They were temp jobs. But why so many. They were with the same agency. But why do you leave them after a short time? Because they were temporary assignments? I don't understand. How do I know you won't leave here? Because I won't be working here.. goodbye. Thick as s**t. Reddit
24. Just Hang Up!
I had a phone interview with a company that bragged about having an on-site doctor. To me that meant 1 of two things.
- it was so stressful to work there they had a doctor on site for liability.
- if I needed a sick day I would be expected to see that doctor instead of my own.
I ended the interview right there. click_baiter
23. Life Ain't Free....
"Oh, we won't be paying you during your probation, which is about 3 months."
And this was an entry level job. rolling_inthederp
Oh ok no problem, i wont be working during my probation. Rationalbacon
22. Being Hunted isn't the best!
Being headhunted from my then current job as a manager in a small but busy and successful café to work for this large, posh hotel.
They phoned me and said that they had found my stored CV online (which I hadn't removed since finding employment) and that one of their board members had been impressed with me as a customer in the café. They offered me an interview and a job with potential to move up etc and that I'd be starting as the restaurant manager on great pay, benefits etc.
It sounded great and being quite pleased that I had just been headhunted for the first time, I went along to the interview which was within the restaurant I'd potentially be working. I turn up in my best suit and this guy comes to interview me wearing jeans and a polo shirt.
Very shortly into the suspiciously informal interview, the guy says to me "look the job is yours, I can get you a uniform and you can start whenever suits." At this point I'm like what do you mean uniform and he points out the waiters and waitresses walking about in pinstripe shirts with huge long aprons. I asked what he meant I was asked to come here because of my managerial experience etc. Guy replies yes potentially in the near future but you'd have to start out on the floor first.
I thanked him and went home. Told my boss about it and he gave me a raise. When I left that job around a year later, he put an extra £250 cash in with my wages and threw a leaving party in the café for me. Told me to invite all my friends and family and it was a free bar all day and night. Best boss ever. So glad to have worked for him. GrumpyBake
21. Out before it's too late....
I applied for the job because someone told me the manager was awesome, during the interview she mentioned that moving to the south was hard on her husband's health (humid air and bad lungs) and that they really missed home.
I had a feeling I'd be getting a new boss as soon as I started, and that's almost always a bad thing. I was right, she left 3 months later, and I heard the new boss was heinous. Spikito1
20. Frankly my Dear....
The guy interviewing me kept calling me Frank and he wouldn't stop. -brightlights-
If you didn't say "well, to be frank, I don't want this job anymore!" before you left, frankly, you missed out.legitimatelynonrobot
19. Cheers...
Interviewed for a faculty position at a prestigious university on the east coast and was supposed to interview with the Department Chair. I had to wait outside his office because my interview was delayed by 15 minutes while he ripped apart this other professor over some billing issues.
When I finally walked in, he asked who I was and then why I wanted a job in his department. I should have stood up and walked out at that point, but figured I'd be polite and finish up the afternoon. Went out that night and had a nice dinner and got drunk by myself on their tab. I ultimately got the job offer but turned it down. contraphd
18. ok... byeeeeee
Was out of work, this was during a phone screen:
Me: "I'm sorry that salary is significantly less than what I was making previously."
Her: laughing"Well, it is more than you are making now, so..."FakeNewsfortheWin
17. STRIIIIKE!!!
GiphyApplied to a bartending position at a new club, the guy's second club.
Strike one: when he said it was an unpaid position, just whatever tips were made.
Strike two: he told me that the bartenders at his other club had done the dance from coyote ugly to earn the bar more money. He asked me what lengths I was willing to go to to drive sales.
A third strike was unnecessary. LaSwanduh
16. Goes Both Ways!
Just happened yesterday.
"We want someone who can be committed to this job for a year or longer. It is part-time and you will get hours as we have demand. You can eventually get full time. We just had someone who has been here for three years become full time."
WTF? You want me to commit to you but you will not commit to me? I was also told they are in dire need to fill this position. I should be receiving an offer today. Christiphis
15. No Kids!
All went well until the male interviewer turned around and asked Me- "kinda hoping kids aren't on the cards for you, I'm sick of you girls pulling maternity crap!" PotatoPixie90210
14. Pack my tools....
In welding jobs, you do a job interview, then take a welding skills test. I was taking the test and current employees came up periodically, introduced themselves to me talked to me a little. They all said pretty much the same thing. It's a s**t show in there. I was skeptical at first but I witnessed a father and son get into a super heated argument during my test. I packed up my tools and thanked the owner for the opportunity, and explained why I was declining the job and left.LasagnaFarts92
13. A Strong Woman Wins!
I went to an interview for a machinist position. In a machine shop. I am a journeyman machinist. The guy didn't expect a lady machinist as someone else had called me to come and interview. He asked if I'd like to sell dietary supplements with his wife instead. Wtf? Ummm noooooo. Reddit
12. Panera for the Win!
GiphyFirst job interview out of college and it was for an account manager job that clearly said it was an office job where you make some cold calls, keep customer happy, etc. Show up in a suit and tie and as I'm sitting in the lobby another guy shows up interviewing for the job as well. The lady then decided to take us to Panera and interviews both of us at the same time. She then starts going on about the job saying it's best to wear shorts and comfortable shoes since we will be going door to door 6 days a week, 8am-8pm trying to get people to switch their gas and electric provider.
After she said that I kind of tuned out and stopped caring what she said. As soon as we got back to the office parking lot she wanted us to come in and explain how after all this work we can end up being district managers making 80k and all this other bull crap. I instead said no thank you, went to my car and drove off depressed that I fell for that scam. MrHimp1990
11. You Better WERK!
It was doing a corporate, behind-the-scenes kind of role for a shoe company. I wore their shoes (I had some in the back of my closet) and a corporate looking simple black black dress and black jacket. This is important to note for later - I didn't look offensive, I looked respectable for the role I was applying to, and the outfit showed their shoes.
So I get into my interview, it's with a brother and a sister who control the brand since their granddad passed it down to them. We go through the normal questions, I pull up some numbers and campaigns they've run and discuss it with them as well as a vision for their future.
Then out of nowhere, the brother says, "but you're not a FASHIONISTA!" He practically spits out the last word. I'm really taken aback, because I don't need to be in the role I applied for. "You don't have a fashion blog, how can you understand fashion?" and then he goes on a mini rant about how can I possibly understand their brand.
I knew it had tanked at this point, and it wasn't an industry I normally work in so I took a risk and decided to burn future bridges. I took one of my pumps off and waved it in there. "What is this thing?!" I said dramatically. "Does it belong on my feet? I don't understand, is it feet clothes?"
His sister tried deescalating the situation at that point but it was done.
I have never, ever done anything like that. Lots of other interviews have passed me where we both knew it wasn't the right fit but we've always gone through the motions. I checked in a few months later. They promoted one of their shoe designers to the role. The brand is not doing well. AOLchatparty1999
10. Not Three Pennies More....
Graduated college with a teaching degree and a bunch of video production experience (shot college events, cut them into presentations and posterity videos, ran the college television station, etc.).
Interviewed with my state teachers union association. They posted an ad in the paper looking for someone to cover their events; drive to the capital, film the event, interview attendees, bring the footage back, cut it into three different videos: one for internal use, one for TV and one for the website. Also write articles for the website about said event. 3-5 days a week job, 7 hours a day, most weekends. Oh, and the capital is at least an hour and a half drive from here.
This interview goes on for an hour. Finally it's question time. I asked if there would be benefits. She laughed. I asked about salary. She stifles a laugh. Then she says, "We were thinking three hundred."
That number rolls around my head. There's no way she said three hundred.
Three hundred?
"That's right."
A week?
That triggered the laugh.
"No! No, maybe three hundred a month?"
Will you cover expenses? Driving, hotels, editing equipment, filming equipment?
"We figured you'd bring that stuff from home."
I stood up, looked her dead in the face and said, "You have wasted an hour of my time."
I walked out to the sounds of her hemming and hawing about maybe bumping it up to three-fifty. ComicSal
9. 18 & Up?
When a few years ago, the interviewer asked repeatedly when exactly I was going to turn 18. Really sealed the deal when 20 minutes after I left he called again, just to confirm, exactly when I would turn 18. budapestgirl
8. School Scam...
GiphyWent in for what I thought was a low level IT job with some on the job training. Turned out to be an overpriced A+ Certification Course that essentially gave you a one week paid internship at the end so they could justify calling it a "Job" and advertise on job sites. DONT_PM_ME_BREASTS
7. Family First....
Now I grew up in a small town in nowhere Montana, so I was prepared for the reality. The job I was applying for was in an extremely isolated area I had never been to before. The interviewer told me straight up it would take years to be accepted into the town. He also asked about what church we would be interested in seeing on the tour. That was when reality set in about what I was stepping into. The job itself was great, but I couldn't put my family into that situation. DarrenEdwards
6. Don't Ask....
Not me, but a friend.
I guess this won't translate well for many people, so the background is: We live in a country where you are not allowed to ask about family planning during a hiring process, as this is considered discriminatory. Family planning is not supposed to be taken into account when hiring (the same way as you cannot chose to hire someone based on religion, sexuality etc.)
My friend was asked if she was planning on having a baby. Even though she needed a job she didn't want to work for them after that. (Ironically this was an auditing firm which exists to ensure that other companies follow legislation, yet they failed to do so themselves in the hiring process.) lolitrusa
5. Forgotten?
I mentored a student during his degree as part of an Alumni program. This fellow is destined for great things, off-the-chart smart, and keen to immerse in his industry. He tells me about an interview he went to with a large, well known pharmaceutical firm to get more lab experience - he ended up being accepted to Cambridge for his PhD - and he was left in a room on his own for over an hour (there was a short questionnaire he'd completed fairly quickly) and no one came to get him. Apparently, they forgot he was there. Needless to say that he declined their generous offer to join their team. geekpeeps
4. Family Craziness....
I had a family owned chiropractic business interview me. And while they're having me small talk about myself I mentioned my daughter. And they asked about her dad and I implied I was a single mother and their response was "yeah, so we're a heavily Christian based organization so we will be looking elsewhere." I was so taken aback I just left and didn't realize it was illegal until after when I called my friend who hires people for a living! A**holes. I wouldn't have wanted to work for them anyway. I had to agree to morning prayer circles and crap. It was so weird. pschlick
3. It's A Sign!
They had me speak with two people separately and they both asked me what my horoscope sign is and then they said that if they wanted to move forward with me they would invite me to a dinner to see how I fared.
I'm sorry, but, an employer who is going to care about the stereotypes of what your horoscope signs are is bullcrap.cookofthesea
2. Stay Alert...
I had an interview a couple of days ago, at a smallish local bank - 12 branches, they do about 1.5b in business a year, so it's a legit company. I had a feeling I might be a little overqualified but applied anyway, and part of the application was a salary requirement. I got an email asking for my availability to come in for an interview, and replied with my availability, but suggested a quick phone interview first to make sure we're on the same page and not waste anyone's time since I'm already employed.
They didn't want to bother with that and we scheduled a time. I met with the director of the department I'd be working in, and the interview went very well. Then I sat down with the director of HR, and that interview went very well as well, until she mentioned the salary requirements I'd put in the application and asked if it was "some pie in the sky number," which I'm pretty sure I actually laughed at, and informed her that was the number at which I would start thinking about leaving my current job.
Lady, did you not look at my resume before you asked that question? I don't expect a follow up with them.
Don't ask for a salary requirement in an application if you're not going to pay any attention to it when you bring people in for an interview. MonkeySherm
1. Y'all a Hot Mess!
GiphyI was interviewing for a teaching job. They did the interview in a closet room next to the gym where kids were screaming/playing basketball outside. It was so distracting. The principal came in and out of the room about 5 times and would jump into the conversation without any context. They asked me redundant questions and forgot which position I was being interview for. They also wrote and underlined specific answers that I gave that were obviously not what they wanted to hear. The entire thing was so disorganized and if I hadn't needed a job I would have walked out.little_cranberry5