Cruise Ship Employees Reveal Stories About The Biggest Problems Passengers Never Discovered
Cruise Ship Employees Reveal Stories About The Biggest Problems Passengers Never Discovered
[rebelmouse-image 18345439 is_animated_gif=Cruises can be some of the best vacations a person can take - and also some of the worst. A pleasure cruise can pretty quickly go all Titanic. Ships have to be fully self-contained, so all it takes is one sick passenger, one little kid with lice to infest a whole ship, one broken pipe - and it could all go sideways. Things go wrong on cruises all the time, but most passengers never know about it. One reddit user asked:
Cruise Ship workers of reddit, what was the biggest "oh sh!t" moment on the boat, that luckily, passengers didn't find out about at all?
Antarctic Toilet Paper
[rebelmouse-image 18347745 is_animated_gif=Water pipe burst in a store room and soaked ALL of the spare toilet paper. This was on day 2 of a 14 day voyage to Antarctica. The cabin stewards had to swap around rolls of paper between "low use" and "high use" guest cabins and it came right down the wire. None of the guests found out or realized. Now toilet paper is hidden in every cabin instead of a centralized location.
The Special Freezer
[rebelmouse-image 18347746 is_animated_gif=Currently working on a cruise ship - people die on cruise ships, and the bodies are kept in a special freezer. Most guests will never know. I mean, you gotta do something with the body if you're at sea. Spent a lot of time in the casino on my last cruise.
Same few faces there each night. Day 3 or 4 one of the guys doesn't show. I comment on it to a dealer and she says something about
"Yeah - my guess is he ended up in the freezer... you see a bunch of people who come here for their end... maybe his money ran out."
Not Landing The Helicopter
[rebelmouse-image 18347747 is_animated_gif=The last cruise I was on, somebody needed surgery and so the coast guard came to collect the passenger. Rather than land on the deck (it did have a helipad), they just hovered and EMTs were lowered to the deck, they strapped the kid into some kind of gurney, then raised him into the helicopter.
At the reception, I asked the captain why the helicopter didn't land and he just said they didn't need to land. I imagine it's similar to picking someone up in the city. Sure, you could find a place to park and walk to where they are and escort them back to your car, or.... you could just double park out front and tell them to hurry the hell up.
Dryer Lint
[rebelmouse-image 18347749 is_animated_gif=Drier lint fires are the number one cause of shipboard fires nowadays.
Always empty the lint catcher, folks.
Bankrupt Cruise Line, Stranded Workers
[rebelmouse-image 18347751 is_animated_gif=I worked on a cruise ship, and unbeknownst to the passengers and most of the crew, the ship was on its last cruise. The company was going bankrupt and when the ship landed, that was it. Everybody was out of a job, and a lot of the immigrant workers were stranded in a foreign port.
Ran Right Off The Ship
[rebelmouse-image 18347752 is_animated_gif=I worked on a cruise ship for three years! I've got a lot of these kinds of stories, but here's my favorite one:
Our ship officers got a call from a ship of a completely different cruise line, off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. They found one of our passengers floating in the ocean. He wasn't even near the shore at all, just floating in open water. He was alive & perfectly fine.
We reviewed the security footage, & in the middle of the night this guy was drunk on Deck 5. He could be seen holding his phone, dancing to music by himself. He then climbed onto one of the lifeboats, put his phone down & did a RUNNING JUMP into the ocean. His body was so fluid from being drunk that he wasn't injured when he hit the water. It wasn't a suicide attempt, he was having a blast. We think he just got too into it?
The other cruise ship spotted him & rescued him. His family didn't know he was missing because he had booked a separate room.
This guy told the news that a "rogue wave" pushed him off the side of the ship. He was on Deck 5, so the wave would have been over 40 feet tall. No wave was seen on the video, nor did any other ships report a wave anywhere near that large.
Don't know what happened after that. The entire crew was talking about it for weeks before it hit the news, though.
Extra Lifeboat Drills
[rebelmouse-image 18347753 is_animated_gif=I was on the Costa Serena in January 2012. Just cruising around the Mediterranean. Woke up one morning and ALL of the crew and wait staff at breakfast we're stone cold and depressed looking. They made us do an extra life boat drill that morning, to all of our confusion. Found out later that day that our sister ship, the Concordia, sank overnight but didn't have many other details.
My now wife wasn't on the trip and didn't know the exact name of the ship I was on..and found out before us. She was terrified till the next morning when I could get on to the ship's internet connected computer.
We also found out the crew was especially depressed because a lot of them had family on the other ship and very little information. The captain of the other ship (who was probably drunk) had a civilian girlfriend in the bridge when he shouldn't. He ordered the ship to steer closer to the rocks to get a better view. He ignored all alarms and navigated by eye because he claimed to know better than their navigation equipment. When they struck, he lied to the coastal authorities and said they just had a minor power outage. This heavily delayed rescue /assistance. Then he tried to sneak on board a lifeboat ahead of passengers. People died as a result of all this.
The Italian Coast Guard had to order him to get back on the ship and help. He's in prison for the deaths he caused.
Took a few days, but things got back to fairly normal. I just remembered doing life boat drills and thinking they were a waste of time... Then we found out and learned that lesson
He Died. She Finished Her Vacation.
[rebelmouse-image 18347754 is_animated_gif=Ship just arrived in Whittier, Alaska (the port for Anchorage) and an elderly passenger dropped dead while walking down the gangway. A conflict ensues between the port security and the ship's medical team. The port security didn't want the ship's medical team to get involved because it technically happened off the ship and the local authorities had jurisdiction. There really was no saving the guy but the ship's medical team at least wanted to try but the local authorites wouldn't even allow the chief medical officer to start CPR.
The coroner had a ~6 hour ETA so the port authorities bagged up the body and stuffed it in an x-ray machine storage container in port (guarded by local police) until the coroner could arrive to take the body to Anchorage.
The wife of the deceased continued on to finish the vacation for the 7-day rail trip to Denali (it was a 14-day gimmick... 7 days at sea, 7 day scenic rail trip). My understanding was the cruise line comped her entire vacation, arranged for the remains to be returned home at no cost to her, and provided a personal escort/assistant for the remainder of her vacation.
Purple Rain
[rebelmouse-image 18347755 is_animated_gif=I was playing a production show (guitar) was standing on stage with a wireless unit alone to play Purple Rain, and then all of the sudden the house lights came on and the curtains closed. Everyone in the audience looked at me, and I ran off the stage. Turns out a sewage pipe burst backstage and there was literal, actual sh!t everywhere.
Show was cancelled and the passengers didn't find out why.
Hurled Himself Overboard
[rebelmouse-image 18347756 is_animated_gif=A QM2 transatlantic crossing one of the kitchen staff got drunk one night and hurled himself overboard in the North Atlantic. The ship basically found out the next morning when the first mate kept calling on the ship wide intercom for him to go to his post. That afternoon, the captain announced what happened and that the ship was turning around to, with the help of 3 nearby merchant ships, try to search for the him. Of course it was foggy as hell and you couldn't see 100 yds but just about everyone was on the railings with binoculars trying to search for the poor guy.
A wedding on board even stopped, the whole party out looking once the announcement came that we were in the search area.
Nothing was found. The concierge desk set up a multinational-currency donation box to send to his family back in Chile. There were 4 days left in the trip at that point and every day that box was stuffed to capacity.. I hope it helped them.
Windows 7
[rebelmouse-image 18347757 is_animated_gif=All of the computer systems run on Windows 7, including all of the automation in the machinery space, security system, fire detection system etc.. When Windows updates it will restart the computers, as it does with a normal desktop, unfortunately it can also take out every computer at the same time and we're flying blind until it finishes.
People may be more worried to hear that there is a hole in the hull yet they're actually fairly common occurances in older ships and easily plugged.
Fires happen occasionally. The most terrifying was a crankcase explosion. The fire suppression systems are good at extinguishing them quickly enough though so they're not even a concern to the crew ... unless Windows is updating at the time.
Bye Sweden
[rebelmouse-image 18347758 is_animated_gif=I was a cruise ship worker for a few years and on a route between two cities there was a really bad storm. So a few minutes after the passengers got off, the storm got so rough that the ship was ripped off the docks and drifted out to sea. Bye Sweden.
Because it takes quite a while to start up the engines it took some time until we got back to the harbor. Not really dangerous, but if it had happened while the passengers were deboarding it could have gone badly.
Bullet Fired From Shore
[rebelmouse-image 18347759 is_animated_gif=Somebody shot at the navigation bridge of the ship from the shore on my last ship, the bullet bounced off and hit my colleague on the hand (no real damage but it scares the hell out of her, ended up going home for a few weeks). While we waited for the local police to come on and investigate and take statements, guests were told we were delaying the departure to take on fresh water.
I'm still shocked that never leaked out.
Cocaine And Group Sex
[rebelmouse-image 18347581 is_animated_gif=Was a casino dealer with a major (you know their name kind of major) cruise line for five years. The biggest thing the passengers never know about is that the crew gets LIT.
Cocaine use is rampant due to cheap costs and quickly metabolizing (out of your system in a day or 2). Cocaine in Panama and Bahamas etc. is waaaayyyyyyy stronger than any here.
Group sex: It's not like orgies everywhere but I've seen some pretty buttoned down, conservative types lose there morals quickly. Vacation mode and booze and drugs etc...plus not having to worry about reputations and all makes for some good times.
Catching Human Waste In Garbage Cans
[rebelmouse-image 18347760 is_animated_gif=I used to work on the Tahoe Queen as an engineer. We would cruise around Lake Tahoe for 2.5 hours and do lunch or dinner cruises. Between cruises, it was my responsibility to pump the feces out and pump on water if we need it. A lot of times we don't need more water, or we don't have enough poo to warrant pumping.
This was one of the times where we needed water, but not to pump poop.
Problem is, the water systems on large boats/ships can be a funny thing. Long story short, I left a valve open where I shouldn't have, and started taking on water into the water tanks, which, while in transit, apparently overflow into the sewage tanks. The sewage tanks quickly began to fill up, and I spent the last 1.5 hours of the cruise catching human waste in trash cans.
I don't know that anyone would have necessarily panicked.... but I don't think people would like to know what was going on right below where they were eating.
Check For Whales
[rebelmouse-image 18347761 is_animated_gif=If you're pushing 140 revs on the shaft and the ship still won't break 15 knots, check the bulbous bow for whales. The weight of a dead whale will slow a ship down. Cruise ships hit whales quite often and the passengers never know.
The What-Ifs
[rebelmouse-image 18347763 is_animated_gif=I was on bridge watch during a cruise around Alaska. It was right at the end of the hour so I had just been relived. Luckily, because I still had my night vision, I was still hanging out on the bridge just chatting with my relief and this new chief mate.
That's when I saw what looked like a shadow on the water, it was extending left from an island. Something about it didn't look right so I kinda did something a little out of character for our role as deckhands and jumped over to the the big spotlight and flicked it on. That's when we saw, just a few boat lengths in front of the ship a rock and gravel shoal. It was low tide and this big long shoal was just smack dab in front of us
This new chief mate cranked it hard over and luckily we missed it. It did rock the boat quite a bit and we all just stood there in shock. Lucky nothing more came of it other than a hard turn. Thank god it was the last hour this new chief mate was on watch and thank god I was relieved from bridge watch. Apparently it was was very quiet and very awkward hour with that guy.
He was fired that day and sent packing. It turns out all he was doing all night was following the GPS plots. Those are guides, not actual tracks one should follow without using the radar, charts and all the other aids to navigation we have. This idiot was just following a line and doing no proper navigation at all. He wasn't even marking the chart or logbook properly, just copying what the GPS said. Apparently that's all he had ever done in the open waters of the gulf, just follow a line so that's all he did in the tight and confined waters of Alaska.
Sometimes I think about the things that could have gone wrong. What if I had just left the bridge instead of staying to chat, my partner didn't have night vision yet so he would not have seen it. What if my relief had shown up late, or early, what if the conversation was a little different? What if I had just thought that shadow was just from the trees on the little island and not flicked on the light? So many things could have gone wrong and who knows how it would have turned out. Would it just have been a collision with a soft sand bar and some paperwork, or would we have hit hard rock and torn the bottom open drowning most of the crew asleep in their underwater rooms? SO many little variables and any one of them could have changed the outcome.
Sea Trials
[rebelmouse-image 18347764 is_animated_gif=I provide software and services for most of the major cruise lines and spend a lot of time "cruising". On the new builds is when you see a lot of crazy stuff happening.
When a brand new ship is built they have to go through what's called Sea Trials. This is a full systems check for multiple reasons, biggest ones being safety, emissions, and engine/navigation testing. This happens without passengers , and a lot of stuff breaks usually. They will list the ship (lean it all the way to one side) as hard as they can and hold position while doing a circle or figure eight pattern in the water. I had a ~600lb wine cooler (fully stocked) fall face down about 12" away from me while installing a PC at a bar. It sounded like a stick or dynamite exploding from the pressure of all the bottles hitting and simultaneously breaking. I froze staring at it and as I started to come out of the initial shock, four security crew members came running around the corner, no one else around except me and about $10k in broken wine (and the cooler wasn't cheap either). I just stuck my hands in the air, and slowly exited the scene. I'm pretty sure if I was standing one foot to the right it wouldn't have been pretty for me.
Found out the yard workers forgot to bolt it down (as per protocol), oops.
Freddie Mercury And A Free Steak Dinner
[rebelmouse-image 18347765 is_animated_gif=I was a musician aboard a cruise ship. One time, a guest entertainer (a fly-on act who joins the ship for a cruise to perform one show) thought he was fcking Freddie Mercury or something. He decided to literally throw out his CDs like ninja stars into a completely dark audience.
One ended up hitting some old woman a half an inch below the eye and she had to go to medical. The husband wrote the cruise director a very threatening letter basically saying "my wife almost went blind so I strongly suggest you give us a free steak dinner."
Cheaters Overboard And Into The Jellyfish
[rebelmouse-image 18347766 is_animated_gif=One time I was on a cruise, and a few cabins down a man and woman who were cheating on their wife and husband, respectively, got super drunk and fell over the edge of their balcony. From really high up. It was at night too.
The whole cruise ship stopped once it was reported and it took like an entire day to search for them. Apparently the man had his jeans or something because he had inflated them somehow and they were floating holding them.
They reported that they were stung by multiple jelly fish and were super cold the whole time. That must have been the scariest most terrible eighteen hours of their lives.
H/T: Reddit
Homeowners Break Down The Weirdest Things The Previous Owners Left Behind
Reddit user Oblivious_Dude14 asked: 'People who bought a house. What is the weirdest thing you have found left by the previous owner?'
Buying a home is a daunting task, but it comes with the comfort of finally having a place to call your own after the lengthy process of purchasing.
One of the things new homeowners look forward to is renovating certain areas of their newly acquired domicile.
However, embarking on this next phase of making a home their own can come with some surprises.
For example, doing a gut reno in the basement or tearing down a non-load-bearing wall can unearth unusual relics left from the previous homeowner.
These discoveries can either be treasures, or something very unpleasant.
Curious to hear from new homeonwers, Redditor Oblivious_Dude14 asked:
"People who bought a house. What is the weirdest thing you have found left by the previous owner?"
These will spark curiosity about former occupants.
Hidden Message
"First time I took a hot shower in our new home. The steam covered the mirror, only to reveal the phrase 'HELLO, I SEE YOU' in large finger drawn writing."
"It freaked me out for a second, but made me laugh soon after that."
"It was such an inconspicuous yet obvious thing to leave for the new homeowner (me)."
– Individual-Common-89
A Special Request
"It's not really weird but I think it's kind of a nice story."
"One of the kids' rooms has a shelf going all around the top edge, and when my kid was putting stuff up there they found a letter from the previous kid. The letter welcomed them to the room etc and asked them to take special care of a rose bush in the front yard that was their special rose bush. My kid thought it was really cool to have that connection with the previous kid."
– catsaway9
Instructions
"Not really weird but they left a typed out and printed note about the house and how to take care of it. Detailing all the plant life in the backyard and how to prep for the winter. Described how to take care of the hot tub and gave random tid bits about the electrical."
"They were good people lol."
– pet_zulrah
Theses secret chambers piqued Redditors' curiosity.
Secret Dwelling
"Not my house, but the school my friend worked at."
"A pipe had leaked and ruined a wall in the building, one of the oldest schools in the city. It was a beautiful property. Anyways the pipe leaked so they pulled down the ruined wall and behind the wall found a door."
"A fully furnished apartment was there. Had a coal burning stove to heat it. Early 1900s appliances and decor. It was for the caretaker of the school."
– Used-Stress
Antique Showroom
"My ex-wife's family knocked down a wall in a 400-year-old house in Cornwall, and found a perfectly intact bedroom from the 1800s, still with all the personal effects where they had been left."
"Nobody knows why it was boarded up, or why things weren't taken out of it."
"Oh, and that house always appears in the guides for the most haunted locations in Cornwall, if you believe that kind of stuff."
– ledow
A Medieval Theme
"A basement room that was fully decked out as a 'dungeon.' Faux stone walls, a stocks (like where you lock your head and hands in ala ye olde England), candle scones on the walls, a metal-barred cage in the corner from floor to ceiling. Oh and the closet had a load of toys, some normal, some....not so typical."
– DisIsDaeWae
These Redditors got a glimpse into past lives.
Family Treasure
"Before I met her, my wife got a call from someone she worked with saying they'd just bought an old house and in the city, and in it was a steamer trunk with her family name (not a common one) carved into the woodwork on one end."
"As it turns out, it was the trunk that her great grandfather used when he came over from Germany, and it made the trip to my wife's hometown when he met her great grandmother on a visit, and subsequently moved to her city to marry her. We now have it and it's full of family portraits and albums."
– LateralThinkerer
Vintage Trickster
"My first house purchase in 2005 - bought an old farmhouse that was built in 1923. The basement was FILLED with crap - we told them they needed to clean it all out before closing, but they didn't do it. The realtor asked if we wanted to postpone closing, and we decided no - some of the stuff looked interesting enough. Maybe it will be worthwhile to go through."
"Most of it was just junk. Then, about half way through (we were working our way from one end of the basement to the other, because you could barely walk through), I went to pick up what I thought was a small box, only to quickly realize it weighed at least 75 pounds. Upon further inspection, it wasn't a box, but a wooden square, 4' wide and about 12'x12', with two thin masonite plywood covers on each side. On one edge were two bolts with wires coming off that had been cut."
"Very strange - had no idea what it was, but thought it was interesting. So I put it aside and we kept going. At the very back of the basement once we cleared everything else out, was a rickety gray cabinet, built into the house. Inside, were numerous strange small tools, vials of mercury, vials of a strange powder, and thousands - literally thousands - of dice blanks. Some actual dice, but mostly blanks without the dots. they were all in little boxes labeled 'dice blanks'. Also very strange..."
"Not too long after that, I met a guy and upon learning my address, he said 'can I come over?My best friend grew up in that house'. He came by, and proceeded to tell me stories for an hour and a half about his childhood best friends eccentric father: Someone who was a part of the 'Dixieland Mafia' in the 60s and 70s, and who made a living traveling around the US as a traveling gambler. The enormously heavy box was an electro-magnet. And the dice blanks were for him to make his own loaded dice with a little bit of metal powder under the inlaid dot, so he could set up his own table with the the electromagnet underneath, and turn it on when he wanted to persuade the dice. He told me many other stories, including that there was 'no doubt in his mind that he had killed someone'. Pretty fascinating."
– GIjokinaround
A Soldier's Story
"A diary of an American soldier in WW-II, South Pacific Theater. Found it above a door when remodeling 20+ years ago. My wife and I tried everything we could think of to find a descendant, but to no avail."
"UPDATE: I just posted photos of it with the person's ID info on r/WorldWar2."
"Last Update: Thanks to all the help from this community, and those at r/worldwar2, this diary is now in the hands of its writer's son who came to my office this morning to retrieve it. I am so thrilled to have been able to facilitate this!"
– Factsaretheonlytruth
These folks really hit the jackpot.
Forgotten Stash
"$1200 in cash above the door on the inside the closet. I found it while painting."
– whymetoo
They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To
"A glass bowl. It was kind of pretty, with horizontal blue stripes."
"We kept fruit in it. We thought about dropping it off at the local charity shop, but never got around to it."
"Then one day I was at an antique fair and I saw for sale glass bowls that looked almost identical to ours. I went home to get my bowl and brought it to be assessed."
"Turns out it was a vintage Orrefors crystal bowl. The assessor valued it at around $800."
"We no longer keep fruit in it."
– khendron
When my great aunt passed away, our family went over to her and her husband's home in Pomona, CA to clear it out in preparation to sell.
They emigrated from Japan in the late 1930s and brought with them many decorative figurines, sculptures, and wooden carvings from the homeland.
One of the pieces was a kabuki doll on a wooden base. As we were placing the item in a box, a tiny envelope that had been taped underneath the doll's base came loose.
I opened it and found what looked like instructions for something. I kick myself to this day that I didn't keep the letter and never bothered asking my parents what the note said as we were frantically trying to empty the house.
But man, my imagination ran wild. Was it a treasure map? Who knows. I still wonder to this day what the note said and tossing it aside remains one of my life's greatest regrets.
The Best Real-Life Examples Of 'You Can Have A PhD And Still Be An Idiot'
The saying "it's not brain surgery" hasn't meant the same thing to me ever since Ben Carson took his place on the national stage.
The saying "it's not rocket science" doesn't hit the same with me ever since one of my life-long friends became a rocket scientist.
I don't know Ben Carson—just his many public blunders—but in the case of my friend, he's an absolutely brilliant guy.
However I often wonder how my friend managed to survive this long and apparently this isn't an unusual phenomenon.
But more about my friend later at the end of this article.
Reddit user mariababexoxo asked:
"'Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot,' stated Richard Feynman. What are some real-life examples of this?"
Chemical Engineer
"I had an intern with a PhD once. She was trying to be a chemical process engineer. VERY book smart."
"I spent the Summer teaching her how to use basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches for simple tasks like opening containers and adjusting clamps. She had zero practical skills and couldn’t figure anything whatsoever out on her own."
"She’d get lost in a building and call me and I’d tell her to find the exit, but she’d get lost inside and we’d have to go in and get her. This routinely happened, and she would just find somewhere random and sit until we collected her."
"When her car’s GPS lost signal once she didn’t know what to do so she stopped in the middle of the road and texted me where she was and that there was something wrong with her car and to come help. I figured there was a breakdown or something based on the text and drove out to check on it because she wasn’t responding."
Giphy"She was crying sitting on the side of the road and a cop was yelling at her to move her car which was still in the lane."
"If you told her to pick something up from a store she’d ask where it was and if you didn’t know, she would never find it "She refused to ask an employee because she knew they weren’t as smart as she was."
"She’d just walk in random directions looking for things. For example if you said 'go to Walmart and find some work boots because you lost yours' she would send me pictures of random aisles in Walmart with 'is this close? which way from here?'.”
"Book smart but utterly dim."
~ captainofpizza
It's The Milk That Makes Them Healthy
"My wife once had a roommate who was working on her PhD."
"At one point she went on an Oreo diet because they're vegan."
"She was later surprised to find her health wasn't improving."
~ educational_palmeira
GiphySquirrel!
"I am a graduate student at the University of Oxford."
"I recently had to explain to another grad student the concept of animals hibernating. She's British and English is her first language, so it wasn't a vocabulary issue. She just didn't know that animals did that."
"When I explained it she said 'Oh! like squirrels!' Squirrels actually don't hibernate, but I just nodded."
~ slider501
Have You Tried Turning It Off...
"Ask literally anyone who's ever worked for a university's IT department. I've never met a group of people more unwilling to learn anything new—outside of their small specialization—than university professors."
"These people would rather argue with you for 10 minutes that 'I did restart my computer' than just spend the 2 minutes to restart the computer when the logistics software is showing the machine with a 45 day uptime and all of us can see that sh*t."
"Department heads do this."
~ Mammoth_Clue_5871
GiphyIt's One Banana, Michael
"My roommate in college was/is an academic genius, 35 ACT in med school right now."
"I brought him to Walmart with me because he wanted to buy an 8-pack of Gatorade. At the self checkout he scanned one, saw the price was 7 bucks, and decided that must have been the price for EACH Gatorade."
"He ended up scanning the pack 7 more times and paid 56 bucks for some Gatorade, all while thinking that was a fair price."
~ Royal-Character-2035
And Vampirism!
"The nurse I used to work with during the pandemic was constantly bragging about how rich and important and highly educated she was.
"Only for her to suggest to our director of nursing that the kitchen start putting extra garlic in everyone's meals because garlic cures COVID."
~ GlassPeepo
GiphyHistory ≠ Geography
"I know someone with a PhD in History who went to the Caribbean with only long trousers and jumpers/sweaters to wear."
"He was so hot he had to cut his jeans down to shorts."
"Then, as part of the same trip, he went to Washington DC, and had to wear jean shorts the whole time because he cut up all his trousers."
~ RexEverything_
And On The 7th Day...
"I met a PhD molecular biologist who was an evolution denier. I found out years later that he was somewhat infamous."
~ whittlingcanbefatal
"I’ve met two PhD students who worked on bacterial evolution and one who worked in biochemistry."
"All three believed that human evolution was not a thing, all three were religious."
~ D-g-tal-s_purpurea
GiphyNobel Disease
"There are a ton of laureates that go conspiratorial batsh*t later in life."
~ hacktheself
"Kary Mullis is the worst one and he really emboldens other conspiracy theorists."
"He won the Nobel prize for helping invent the PCR test... then he denied AIDS existed while in a government position leading to 330,000 deaths and said climate change wasn't real because his astrologer told him so."
"Oh, and ghosts."
"Anti-vaxxers love him."
~ AstonVanilla
Members Around The World
"Heard about a mechanical engineer who is a flat earther."
"So yeah, him, or any engineer, physicist, or astronomer that believes in that."
"The fact that a single one can get their degree and then turn around years later and believe in something fundamentally incompatible with the BASIC physics required to make sense of their degree is baffling."
~ QuanticWizard
GiphyWhat Did They Do With The Couch?
"Helped some mates move house. One was a Uni Student doing a double degree in Computer Science and something else very challenging."
"While we were packing boxes he asked if he could could borrow a saw. When I asked why, it was so he could shorten the legs on the dining table so it would fit out the door."
"The look on his face when I grabbed one of the legs and started unscrewing it was priceless. As was the look when I asked him how he thought they got it in the room in the first place."
~ cruiserman_80
New-Fangled Gadgets
"In my old university in Germany in the early 2000s. The university was old, really old."
"And when I started they just began modernising the lecture halls etc... The German department got a new, fancy, state of the art lecture hall with any kind of technology you could wish for."
"The professors got extensive training on how to use it."
"There were some of them who after three months still didn’t know how to switch on the lights. Don’t even talk about the microphone or how to open and close the blinds on the skylight."
They didn’t originally plan on having an old-fashioned overhead projector there, but after a few weeks they relented and provided one because the professors didn’t know any other way."
"In their defence, the other lecture halls were so old that they still had the hole for the ink well in the tables."
~ moosmutzel81
GiphyDo No Harm
"I work in mental health and have known sooo many healthcare professionals with advanced degrees who I wouldn’t trust to take care of a goldfish and can’t believe counsel people on a regular basis."
~ DeadSharkEyes
What's That Burning Smell?
"My MIT PhD. friend complained his dryer was taking forever to dry his clothes."
"I asked him if he was cleaning the lint trap—'it doesn't have one'."
"Spoiler alert: it did have one, way in the back and I took out a sweater's worth of lint."
~ arbiterror
GiphyIt's Not Rocket Science...
I chuckle whenever someone uses this saying to indicate something isn't complex like rocket science ever since my friend became an aeronautical engineer.
Why?
Well, we'd have to go back to the mid-1980s when we were both teenagers in high school. As many teens with cars in rural America did, my friends liked to drive around on the back roads as a form of entertainment.
One sunny, Summer day two of my friends came to visit me with a tale to tell.
It seems they were driving on a stretch of road with a speed limit of 35mph [56kph] because of a cluster of homes and farms. When the car slowed to this speed, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist looked down at the pavement passing by below his window on the passenger side.
Upon studying the passing blacktop for several moments, he came to the conclusion he could easily run as fast as the car was moving, so...
...he undid his seatbelt, opened the car door and STEPPED OUT of the moving car.
According to the driver, one moment our friend was sitting next to him and the next he was gone. Or mostly gone.
After a brief moment of panic during which he slowed then stopped the car, he noticed Mr. Future Rocket Scientist's right hand gripping the door's armrest and his left hand gripping the side of the passenger seat.
He was probably only dragged for a few seconds which wasn't long enough to do more than scuff up his jeans, jean jacket and the toes of his shoes.
He escaped with only minor road rash and a few bruises.
After the driver told me what happened from his perspective, Mr. Future Rocket Scientist interjected:
"It worked!"
"I was doing really well until I tripped over that rock."
Luckily an understanding of things like velocity, speed, trajectory, friction, drag, inertia and gravity aren't needed for aeronautics.
GiphyNeedless to say, we've never let him forget his "experiment."
He still claims the only problem was that rock on the road.
And I now use the saying "it's not rocket surgery" instead of either of the original sayings.
Back in the 1980s the threat of nuclear war was pervasive in daily life.
That fear and paranoia made the TV films Threads and The Day After particularly effective. People were genuinely terrified or traumatized.
Both told the story of an atomic apocalypse, with Threads set in the UK and The Day After in the United States. I wasn’t familiar with Threads until about 5 years ago, but The Day After was a TV event everyone seemed to be talking about in the USA.
But fear inducing isn't quite the same as creepy.
For creepy, you need something like The Twilight Zone, Creepshow or Night Gallery.
Reddit user juliacorco asked:
"What is the creepiest tv episode or movie you’ve ever seen?"
Haunting of Hill House
"Haunting of Hill House on Netflix."
"Scary as hell."
"Bent Neck Lady makes the hair on my neck stand up on end every time."
"Same with the ghost looking for his hat. Or whatever was down in the cellar."
~ Pretend-Cucumber-711
GiphyHereditary
"Hereditary"
"That one scene near the end in the dark bedroom…is essentially a reverse jump scare. Something is there the entire time and it’s just a matter of when you notice."
"Sent chills up my spine."
"That movie stuck with me for days."
~ Plus-Statistician80
Doctor Who/Torchwood
"I have two contenders, from the Doctor Who universe..."
"'Blink' from Doctor Who."
"'Children of the Earth' from Torchwood (all 5 episodes)."
"Both are the stuff of nightmares, but in very different ways."
"'Blink' will make you not sleep at night, while 'Children of the Earth' will deeply disturb you."
~ Common_Sense_Dudd
Giphy"The first few seconds I was exposed to the Weeping Angels in 'Blink' I thought it was a dumb, silly conceit."
"By the end of that episode I knew I would have nightmares for months."
~ codyish
"'Children of Earth' was amazing. There was so much complexity to it, and the way they solved it was downright horrifying."
"The 456 just felt so real with their motives, and were really dark compared to other Who-niverse villains."
"It wasn't that they were trying to build a galactic highway, or were trying to save the universe. Just that (SPOILERS) they were drug dealers/addicts and would kill millions if the didn't get their supply of children."
~ NinjaBreadManOO
Paranormal Activity
"Paranormal Activity."
"I was not prepared and only 12 years old."
"Traumatized for years!"
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode 'Hush'."
~ Malk_McJorma
"The gentlemen were some of the best villains."
~ Sudden-Star-7190
Room 1408
"Room 1408 creeped me out."
"I usually don't find hauntings or ghosts scary, but this one was something else."
"Left me really uneasy when trying to sleep after."
"I had to keep a light on. I'm 46."
~ hartschale666
The Twilight Zone
"I find the The Twilight Zone episode titled 'Living Doll' to be particularly creepy."
~ Ill_Fisherman5547
"Talky Tina was so creepy."
~ peachesfordinner
"The Twilight Zone episode—'Mirror Image'—with the woman at the bus station who has a doppelganger still creeps the sh*t out of me."
~ BurningSlash88
Ghost Ship
"Opening scene from Ghost Ship."
~ teslatinkering
"This movie is 21 years old, I’ve only watched it once and I still remember this scene vividly."
"Props to the creators because I can’t say that about many movies."
~ PainfulPoo411
X-Files
"The X-Files."
"Episodes 'Home'—inbred family in Pennsylvania—and 'The Host'—the Flukeman."
~ True-Mousse4957
"I was going to say season 3, episode 12—'War of the Coprophages'."
"Only due to one little thing."
"Mulder is in a lab with some scientist looking at the weird cockroaches. They're just chatting away when a cockroach walks across 'your' TV screen."
"It's made to look like it's an actual cockroach walking across your in real life screen. We don't even have cockroaches like that in my region of the world, but it still freaked me out for a second."
~ STROKER_FOR_C64
The Blair Witch Project
"Not gonna lie."
"I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theatre after watching some MTV documentary on it the day before."
"I thought it was real and I was afraid to walk to my car."
~ heavymetalsculpture
Are You Afraid of the Dark
"There's an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark—'The Tale of the Dead Man's Float'."
"It's about a school that was built on an old cemetary and there is some sort of creature thing thant comes into the pool while some kids are swimming."
"I still think about that episode every so often."
~ streetsoulja31
"There’s that one episode—'The Tale of the Frozen Ghost'—where a kid froze to death at some point and the ghost kid just appears and says 'I’m cold' in such a weird inflection…."
"It still creeps me out now. And whenever I am cold, that’s the only way I can say it in my head."
"Man that series had no business being that scary!!"
~ mistresssweetjuice
GiphyFor me, children in horror can always produce the creepiness factor.
Who doesn't feel unsettled after seeing the twins in The Shining?
So what movies or TV episodes creeped you out?
People Break Down What's More Emotionally Painful Than Being Cheated On
Content warning: abuse and suicide.
There is a level of devastation caused by being cheated on by a partner, especially if it's someone you trusted and have been with for a long time that people who haven't experienced it can't understand.
I've been lucky in that I've never been cheated on myself, but I've had friends who have gone through it. My college roommate told me it was the worst pain she's ever been in when she found out her boyfriend cheated on her, and she couldn't imagine anything worse.
It was indeed horrible. My confident, strong roommate was crying all the time and wondering why she wasn't good enough to keep her boyfriend's interest, even though that had nothing to with it.
Redditors agree that being cheated on is painful, but also are prepared to share things they think are emotionally more painful.
It all started when Redditor Darkterrariafort asked:
"What is something more emotionally painful than getting cheated on?"
Medical Helplessness
"Watching your most precious person die a painful and scary death and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. F**k cancer."
– coastalliving40
"This. I watched my husband starve to death from gastroesophageal cancer."
"It was like watching a nightmare repeat of my dad all over again. 😞"
– NedsAtomicDB
Mama Who Bore Me
"Death of your child."
– NBA_Fan_76
"I truly cannot imagine a deeper pain."
– theawkwardmermaid
"Your child being serious injured by your ex, and custody court keeps forcing the kid into contact with their abuser."
"You spend years of your life dealing with court homework where you recount every excruciating detail of your own abuse at the hands of this person, in addition to the crimes against your child."
"It costs you about $100,000 in legal fees, and you still aren't able to protect your child. It keeps going on indefinitely, and perversely, your ex tries to send you to jail because the child runs away from them."
– JadeGrapes
"Being responsible for your childs death directly."
– Kanulie
"My father passed very suddenly and unexpectedly two summers ago. It was the deepest, unimaginable despair that it was almost like a dream. Being walked to the little room at the hospital where they let you know he didn’t make it on the ambulance ride was surreal and up to that point the worst moment in my life."
"One month after he passed, I was in a four wheeler accident with my then three year old. And we were alone as my husband was out of town. I wasn’t being negligent- it was just a terrible, terrible accident. But, in the chaos of being thrown off and being in complete shock, I thought the four wheeler was pinning her down. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and crying and trying everything I could to lift it up. Remaining calm simply wasn’t a possibility when you think you’re killing your own child."
"She wasn’t pinned-and actually didn’t have a scratch on her. EMT checked her out and I went to the hospital because I had ripped the top part of my thigh off trying to lift the ATV."
"The whole thing was eye-opening in the worst way possible. Because, I could never, ever, ever, ever imagine losing my daughter- especially to my own fault. What if she had been hurt or died that day? I would be living in my own constant hell. I didn’t think there could be worst pain that when I lost my dad, but now I know there is. Just the thought alone of losing my daughter brings tears to my eyes."
"Life is really rough sometimes. But it gets better."
– BoredMillennialMommy
Going Down
"Seeing a loved one go on a downward spiral and you can do nothing to stop it."
– New_me_old_self
"Extension of your comment: Seeing a close one(wronged by their protectors) going down the spiral."
"You tried to help them a lot but they dragged you down with them and left you not just empty but drained."
– Sullen_Wretch
So Hard
"Suicide bereavement."
"I lost my best friend in 2022. Found him. Everyday is a struggle to not be in my grief."
"I’d take 100 heartbreaks, 100 nights of going to bed hungry, and 100 punches right to the face just to have him back."
– KatastropheKraut
"It does. I got wasted and said far too much about myself once. One of my friends verbally smacked the f**k out of me, got me to see that people do care about me and that my relationships aren't all just superficial, really just hit my sorry a** over and over again with the idea that I'm deserving of love not because other people get something out of being with me but because I am a human being, and it slowly does get better."
"It stopped me, I was going to kill myself in two months on new year's."
"When I can't live for myself, I live for other people, even when I start doubting other people actually like me, I still don't do it or hurt myself at all, because there's always, no matter what I feel in the moment, a chance that they do truly just care about me."
"If I end myself now then I give so many other people survivor's guilt, I leave all the people I care about wondering for the rest of their lives how it all could've been different if they had just tried a little bit harder to help me. I won't elaborate now but I feel a similar sort of regret when it comes to a number of aspects of my own life. I could never leave someone with something so unfathomably more painful than that."
– pissandsh*tlord
Sounds Awful
"Mental instability. It's cruel because it's your own mind killing you, you can't run or hide and it's long-winded. I couldn't say a single event has been more emotionally stressful than what's happening."
– Country-Road--
"It’s like you’re dead in your twenties but haven’t been buried til you’re 65."
– Gmr33
Tragedy You Never Get Over
"Having your mother pass away in your arms."
– Repulsive_Cricket923
"Something similar happened to me when i was 4. My parents sent me over to get babysat by my grandmother and she sat on a chair and passed as i was sitting on the floor playing with my toys. I only thought she was sleeping at the time, but later learned the truth as i never saw her again."
– Lucidnuts
Just Done
"As far as relationships go, being abandoned by your former partner is pretty damn painful."
– heyitsvonage
"Mine did this to me after 2.5 years and it was f**king devastating, it took years to get over. He acted as though everything was fine, I was his everything, we were actively planning how we would elope after I finished my degree that term, and BOOM NO DO-OVERS YA DONE."
"It was immediately what came to my mind when I saw this post."
– paprikashi
My Work
"When someone steals your research, hands it in first, gets the high distinction, then everything you submit is plagiarizing that a**hat."
– StaunchMeerkat
"This is two steps worse than, "hey can you put my name on your paper too.""
– karmagod13000
Rather Be Cheated On
"When the person stays with you but they secretly still yearn for that other person (even if no cheating occurs)."
– Deleted User
I actually didn't think there was anything worse than being cheated on after watching my friends go through it.
I stand corrected.
Do you have any stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/