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People Divulge Which 'Healthy' Products Are Actually Quite Harmful

People Divulge Which 'Healthy' Products Are Actually Quite Harmful
Photo by Alexis Chloe on Unsplash

It shouldn't be hard to try to become healthy.


While your mileage may vary, and everyone who can should talk to their doctor before starting any new health regimen, it doesn't have to be tough to get active. Go for a walk, get to sleep on time, and avoid eating food that has 60g of added sugars in it.

However, it feels like the world is against you, as most stuff marketed or sold as "healthy" could actually be the thing hurting you most.

Reddit user, SingLikeTinaTurner, wanted to know what's actually a scam when they asked:

What do people think is healthy but is actually harmful?

Seeing something on the shelves marked as "healthy" shouldn't cause you to second guess yourself. It should be easy, right? However, these products might be holding a darker secret than you realize.

For Those In The Back: Its Not The Fat, It's The Sugar

"Low fat or non fat foods tend to add more sugar than their regular fat counterparts to make up for the lost flavor."

"Edit: To clarify, for example I'm talking about something like reduced fat cheese its vs the regular cheese its. The reduced fat may seem "healthier" but it's really not."

joeyboii23

Just Eat The Fruit

"Fruit juice."

Winter_Let4692

"People focus on the fact that it contains some nutrients, but not that it also contains as much sugar as Coca-Cola"

Vertical_shelf

"This. The only truly healthful way to consume a fruit's juice is to eat the whole fruit. Peeling and eating an orange takes so much longer than chugging way too much juice. Plus the benefit of the fiber. Plus the benefit of fresh and natural vitamin C."

Midas_Artflower

Seriously. Just Eat The Fruit.

"Fruit Juice. An 8 oz. glass of OJ has the sugar of 4 oranges with none of the fiber."

richwith9

This One's A Real Bummer

"Those acai bowls are loaded with sugar."

DirtySingh

"Ohhhh damn. I see why I've been rapidly gaining weight recently . Those damn delicious açaí bowl."

Still-Rich112

You might be doing something every day that's causing health deficiencies in your day to day living. The worst part of it all is the notion that this unhealthy thing you're doing is supposed to be "fun" or "relaxing."

From The Earth? Yes. Still Smoke? Also Yes.

"Smoking marijuana. And I say this as a daily toker. Inhaling smoke into your body is ALWAYS bad for you. It's just better than inhaling poison (cigarettes) into your body."

Exact_Roll_4048

"This bothers so much. I smoked almost daily for 8 years, not as much now, but so many stoners refuse to acknowledge that inhaling ANY kind of smoke is bad for you. Yeah, cannabis has a lot of benefits. But putting any kind of mind-altering substance into your body it is not risk-free."

Jazzlike_Log_709

"Same with vaping. Just because it's a healthier alternative to cigarettes doesn't make it automatically healthy itself. It's just a good way to help those with smoking problems ween off it and be healthier. It's not meant to be used as a way to start an addiction. Addiction still kills."

Gamer-Logic

Find That Right Balance

"Not so much anymore because there is much more awareness, but being out in the sun. My mom would force me to sunbathe when I was a child because it was "unhealthy" to be pale and that people would think I am gross. Now she's not even fifty and her face is pocked with scars from surgeries treating melanoma, and every year has to go back in to the doctor for more skin removal and to determine if she needs further, more intensive treatment."

"I have never sunbathed as an adult and religiously put on sunscreen, wear long sleeves and an "old man" hiking hat when I go just about anywhere outside. Please, everyone, protect your skin!"

westcoastpizzarat

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Are chance encounters really serendipitous or is it part of some grand master plan? While we may never have an answer for why we come to meet certain people ...

"But also on the flip side, it's really common to have a vitamin D deficiency if your skin never sees the sunlight, so make sure you're taking a supplement if that's the case. Vitamin D deficiency can lead to a whole host of its own issues. It feels like every health issue is some variation of a double sided coin."

AhemExcuseMeSir

The Truth Hits Like A Truck

"Being with someone because you don't want to be alone"

zzotzzot

"Yes, but like many of the harmful things in this thread, it sure can be fun for a little while. Until the consequences start coming at you."

waltjrimmer

Online Jealousy Is A Thing

"Spending any more than an hour a day on the internet, unless gaming or working, social media will DESTROY your world view and by the time it comes to your 25th birthday youll have no friends no job and no life, be warned!!"

SnooMaps507

Relax With A Bottle...Or Three

"Alcohol. For example not matter what drink if it's a beer or Vodka. You're only allowed to drink a cup per hour. That's because our liver has his own process time for alcohol. So yeah. Indeed I wish people knew that better"

Alpha-011

What can feel a little shocking about some of these things listed is the thought that you're doing something good for you. You're working out! What's the worst that can happen?

Sometimes Crushing It Every Day Can Crush You Every Day

"working out with 100% effort everyday"

pk1950

"Agree. You can train different muscles, but in the end, you are still using the same nervous system. Also, Rhabdomyolysis is a thing, so….."

DLIPBCrashDavis

"In case anyone else feels the need to look it up:"

"Rhabdomyolysis is a potentially life-threatening syndrome resulting from the breakdown of skeletal muscle fibers with leakage of muscle contents into the circulation. The most common causes are crush injury, overexertion, alcohol abuse and certain medicines and toxic substances."

ChannelingWhiteLight

Talk. To. A. Doctor.

"Nothing really against those that do so and are followed closely by a doctor, dietician, and or other true health professional, there are many people that go into certain diets, running long distances, excessive exercise that are dying young or needing joint replacementsearly in life because they think more is always better or by going on a certain diet blindly is okay when everyone is different."

"If you have an undiagnosed genetic thing it can mess you good intentions up. This is why even professional athletes and dedicated amatuers work with dietians, doctors, PT, etc."

mamaturtle66

Feel Your Feelings. It's Okay.

"Toxic Positivity"

"Like trying to 'find the silver lining' in any case. It's dismissive and doesn't let people experience or process their emotions. It's along the same vein as gaslighting."

"A great example of this is in the movie Inside Out, where Bing Bong is depressed and Joy tries to get him to laugh instead of allowing him space to process. Instead, Sadness acknowledges his feelings and he's able to get through them. It's much more helpful than shoving the bad feelings under the rug."

CheekyCheesehead

You're Shifting Your Organs Around

"Waist trainers or like any fitness products for women for easy fitness. Women are a huge Target for fitness scams that hurt the body."

I_Am_Justin_Tyler

It's Goop. How Can You Not Trust It?

"Anything Gwyneth Paltrow is marketing."

magicbrou

"Hold on, you mean to tell me that shoving a jade egg up your vagina, isn't good for you?"

ImSigmundFraud

"The jade egg is probably the least unhealthy thing she sells, as it does absolutely nothing."

Hypersapien

Not Doing What You Think

All of those "Detox" drinks, and gimmicks.

8pointfouroz

Take care of yourself. Don't fall for health fads. Start simple and keep at it every day.

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From creepy strangers to inexplicable terrors, these people lived through real-life horror stories and lived to tell their chilling tales.

Going In A Different Direction

orange camping tent near green treesPhoto by Scott Goodwill on Unsplash

Back in the 70s, friends and I planned a camping trip for a long weekend. We picked up a hitchhiker headed to Kernville and dropped him off on the way. We thought it was no big deal, but when we got to our campsite, my girlfriend made a chilling discovery.

She found a note from the hitchhiker on her bag. It said, “I could have made all of you disappear forever". We didn’t sleep that night.

adanipse

Lost Backpack

I was exploring the forests near my house with my cousin. We were on a steep hill and as we looked down, we saw that there were a bunch of craters at the very bottom. As we looked inside one of the craters, we saw something strange. There was a backpack in there.

We tried to climb down, but the hill was too steep and slippery to do it safely, so we planned on returning later with a rope. The next day, there was a news story about how there was a backpack with the remains of a girl in that forest.

A guy walking his dog found it after the dog would not stop barking at the edge of the crater and staring at the backpack. My cousin and I decided not to go exploring in the forests anymore after we saw that news clip.

somewhatofalegend

All In Your Head

When I worked in healthcare, I had a patient who got a sinus infection. He stopped taking his antibiotics after a few days because he felt better. Then, overnight, everything fell apart. He got to the Emergency Department, where the doctors realized he was experiencing stroke symptoms.

It turned out that the sinus infection had spread to his cranial cavity. There was so much pus in there that it was twisting his brain. No one thought he would survive the surgery. The family was advised to expect the worst, but amazingly, he somehow made it through. It wasn’t an easy recovery though.

He ended up needing three more surgeries to wash all the pus out and then spent almost two months in the hospital. Take your full dose of antibiotics, people!

slappy_mcslapenstein

Break And Enter

When I was 16, I went to a flea market. It was the last day the flea market was open before closing down for the season. I came across a man in a booth selling knives, throwing stars, and all sorts of bladed instruments. Behind him on a rack was a katana. He sold it to me for $20.

Now, what is a 16-year-old guy going to do with a katana? Nothing. I kept it for years. It stayed either in a closet or under my bed for years. When I went to college, it followed. Fast forward to August 18th, 2006. I was living by myself in Charleston on the ground floor of a one-bedroom apartment.

My katana was under my bed. I have a sliding glass door with vertical blinds, a screened in patio, and a hammock hung outside. That night, around 3:00 AM, I woke up and heard my blinds rattling. I thought to myself, "Wow, it's windy outside”. But I soon came to a horrific realization.

I remembered that I never sleep with the sliding glass door open, and that someone was in my apartment. I was laying in bed, thinking of things that I can use as a weapon to defend myself and my home with. Then, I realized that the sword was under my bed. Oh, yes. It was righteous.

With my sword gleaming in the dim light, I crept around the corner and looked into my living room to find two very large men stuffing my belongings into garbage bags. When you're amped up on adrenaline, you say some dumb things. So, I yelled, "YOU! STOP!" They both turned and ran out the sliding glass door.

The only thought that going through my mind was that those jerks have my stuff...and I want it back! I chased them out of the door, through the wooded area behind my apartment and into a marshy area behind that. All of this was in my underwear, no shoes, no contacts, and with a big sword.

Sadly, I lost track of them and sanity seeped back into my brain. I realized that they might have a piece, I'm practically blind, carrying a very large blade, and the only people that know that I'm out here are me and them. I went back inside and called the authorities.

The burglars had cut away my screen on the patio and using the blade as a prying instrument, forced the lock on my sliding glass door open. How they managed to get past the hammock in the dark without getting wrapped up like a spider's prey is beyond me. For weeks, I made rounds to area pawn shops, but to no avail.

None of my stuff was ever recovered and I was uninsured. I lost my laptop, my DVDs, all of my video games, and my keys.

DeepFacedKiteFlyer

Distant Relative

I met a guy who had been traveling through Australia with a couple of friends, hitchhiking around as many people have done. He told me a story that I'll never forget.

One day, one of his friends told him they were near his distant uncle’s house. He'd never met him before, but he got his uncle's phone number from a family member. He called him and, as the hitchhikers had hoped, the uncle offered them a place to stay for the night.

He picked them up and drove them to his rural property way out in the bush. They said he seemed like a pretty friendly, cheery, and normal guy, so they had no worries about staying with him.

When it was time to set up a place to sleep, the uncle opened a closet that was totally full of sleeping bags and bed rolls. They didn’t think too much about it at the time, but looking back, that was a sign that something wasn't right.

They set up on the floor and stayed for a few days. Then the uncle drove them to the bus station, and they went on their way. A year later, the authorities took the uncle into custody. It turned out that he had been picking up young hitch-hiking backpackers, then taking their lives.

The guy telling this story was 100% certain he had slept in the sleeping bag of one of his victims.

pasomider

Warning Signs

empty road during golden hourPhoto by Gilberto Parada on Unsplash

My ex and I were out driving on a big Canadian road trip a year ago. One night, it was getting dark, so we decided to grab a hotel room and settle in for the night. On the way, we came across a car and a girl standing on the road and trying to flag us down.

Keep in mind, this was in a rural area and we hadn't seen any cars in a while, so we were already confused and weirded out.

Just to be safe, we stopped, mostly to see if the girl needed help. As my boyfriend rolled down his window to talk to the girl, I slammed my foot on the gas and took off. I happened to look at the opposite side of the road and saw three guys coming out of the bushes with baseball bats.

I don't know what that girl was doing, but I'm pretty sure she was going to lure us into something horrific.

Loundlooo

Shed Some Light

I lived in a house with four housemates for a year. We had a pretty big backyard with motion detector lights, a garage, and a tool shed that we never really used. Two of my housemates were very superstitious—they believed in ghosts, spirits, and other stuff like that.

So, when the lights in our backyard kept turning on randomly, I assumed it was animals, while my housemates were sure it was a ghost. One even said that she had caught a man-ghost looking through our window one night. She thought it was scary; I thought she was just being ridiculous. A few nights later, though, I became a believer.

I looked outside and swore that I saw a man standing behind the mesh door that led into our back patio. I screamed, got my roomies down, and made us all investigate. But by the time we got out there, whoever was there (if anyone had been there at all) was gone.

Anyway, flash forward a few months. I moved back to my home country and FaceTimed with one of my housemates. Well, it turns out that man hadn’t been a ghost. A homeless man had been living in our toolshed for God knows how long. It gave me the creeps for sure.

ieams85

Let Us In

I lived with three other girls in college. All three took off early for spring break, leaving me alone in the house. During my first night on my own, I heard someone bang on my front door at 2 AM. Then I heard more knocks at my back door. A man yelled, “I’m an officer. Open the door!” I didn’t believe him. I stayed in my room and started to panic.

As I heard bodies slam against both doors, and a man saying, “Little girl, open the door. We know you’re alone,” I frantically dialed 9-1-1. Thank God I did. As the sirens approached, I saw officers chase four boys from our school hockey team and pin them face down on the grass. I had to file restraining orders against all of them.

etrain828

The Lady In The Hall

When my son was not even three years old yet, he came to my room and kept telling me "the lady" was in his and his sister's room. I was half asleep and dismissed it, and told him to snuggle up in my bed with me. So he got in my bed, but every few minutes he kept waking me up to tell me about "the lady". Then he says she is at my bedroom door.

In an effort to show him there is no lady and we should just go back to sleep, I pick him up and walk him in the dark out of my room. We stand in the hall and I say, "See, there is no lady". His reaction terrified me. He points his finger down the hall where there is nothing to see at all and says, "Mama she’s right there. That's the lady! And this is HER house".

Nothing, not even a shadow where he was pointing. I kind of just tried not to show he was freaking me out and said, "Okay, she must be a nice lady," and took him back to my bed where he promptly fell asleep and I stayed awake for hours thinking this "lady" in my 100-plus-year-old apartment must be hanging out and watching me sleep.

kookenhaken

An Intersection Of Eeriness

I had an Android phone that had a Google "cards" feature option that could notify you like "15 minutes to home" if you were out. I thought this feature was annoying and useless, so I kept the feature off. After several months of no cards notifications, the strangest event happens.

One night I'm at home and a card pops up saying "35 minutes to home". It then pins me at a random intersection on the other side of town, let's call it 1st St & Story. I think, that's weird, I'm not even way over there, I don't even know where that is, and I’ve never been to that area.

I go to my card's settings to turn it back off…but it's already turned off. "That's weird". The next night, exact same thing happens.

"35 minutes to home from 1st St & Story". What the? Still definitely not over there. I check the cards feature and the notifications are still turned off, so no idea why I'm getting a notification. A few days later, a friend and I are out running errands, and he misses his intended exit so he takes the next one. Once on the streets, I ask "Where are we? I've never been over here".

Suddenly, a car to our right tries to turn left and crashes right into us. It messed up my friend’s wheel, so he pulled forward to the curb to call a tow truck. We had our kids in the car, so I call my sister to pick us all up. When my sister asks me for the location, I was chilled to the bone. I look up at the street signs: 1st St & Story.

permalink

Calling All Angels

man in black hat walking on sidewalk during night timePhoto by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash

After I totaled my car, a man with burn scars all over his face and hands came up to my window. He asked if I was ok and then came and sat in the passenger seat. He said, “I need you to know that everything happens for a reason". I said, “I know". The next thing I know, I’m talking to the other driver and the authorities, and the guy is just gone. No one else saw him.

cloud9atlass

Geriatric Grandparents

My sister and I were playing outside when an elderly couple walked by our yard. Our yard had this cemetery in the back that was a common local attraction for tourists as the house was built in the 1800s. Most of the graves were of children lost to illnesses. The old couple was pestering my sister. They were asking her to tell them her name.

We got scared and ran inside to tell our mom what had happened. The following week, I heard a chilling story on the news: It was about an elderly couple approaching a teenage girl and then grabbing her. It was the same couple who came over to us that day. It still scares me.

eddieswiss

Pause For Effect

When I was younger, my mother managed the apartment where we lived. Right before Halloween, she told a scary story about a tragic accident involving the two little boys and their mom above us in the vacant apartment. She said if you listened closely, you could still hear their footsteps running up and down the hallway.

At that very moment, we heard the sound of running upstairs. The look on my mother’s face was pure terror. She called the neighborhood patrol man and one of the on-duty maintenance guys to go and check the apartment. They found a homeless mother living there who had slipped through an open window with her two children.

My mom never told ghost stories again.

codeusasoft

What’s Out There

When I was eight, we all had to take swimming lessons at school. My mom worked late, so I went to after-school care and didn’t get home until after it was dark. One day, when we came home, my mom told me to get my swimsuit and towel, and hang them on the clothesline to dry. That way, I would be able to wear them the next day.

I was so confident going outside to do this. I had this real feeling of finally being a big kid, you know? But as I walked into our backyard, everything changed. Suddenly, a man leapt over our gate and started sprinting towards me. I screamed, jumped inside, and instinctively locked the back door.

Thankfully, he ran off and didn't try anything like that again, but it really messed me up. I slept with the light on until I was 16, and I get my husband to go outside for me when it’s dark.

CtrlAltDelusional22.

Face Off

I saw a dude with no face driving a car. No features at all, it was just blank. I did more than just glance at him, too; I was staring. Just smooth skin and a men's haircut. I've never told anyone because it's so ridiculous sounding and I don't think people would believe me. Maybe there’s a rational explanation, but I know what I saw.

onionofbensis

A Unseen Presence

silhouette of person sitting on windowPhoto by Bethany Zwag on Unsplash

It was like 4:00 in the morning. I’m quite the night owl, so I’m headed downstairs to grab something to drink. The kitchen is separated from the living room by a dividing wall, but I realize someone is in there because I can see a person's shadow from around the corner. I think to myself, "Oh my roommate must be up already. Maybe he has something to do".

So as I turn the corner I say, "Hey, good morning". I immediately get a chill up my spine. No one is in the kitchen besides me. I’m totally, completely alone. In fact, I search the entire first floor of the house frantically, and no one is there at all. So I head back upstairs and give a hard knock on my roommate's door.

No answer, so I slowly open the door. The roommate is passed out asleep, and doesn't seem like he is waking up anytime soon. There is no way he could have made it back up to his room that fast without running, and I would have noticed because the floors are creaky, especially on the staircase.

When he woke up in the morning, I told him about what had happened. His eyes got real wide and he turned pale. He looked me right in the eye and said, "That isn't a funny joke don't mess with me".

It turns out, he had been having bad dreams all night about someone being in the house who shouldn't have been, but whenever he confronted the person, he could never see their face; all that was there was a black silhouette. Haven't had that experience since, and we agree not to talk to each other about it.

DrConradVerner

Rebirth

I have memories that aren't mine. I described them to my mom one day, down to the house I was in, the view out the windows, what I was wearing, what I was doing. My mom looked at me with absolute terror in her eyes. It turns out the memories belonged to my cousin who drowned in a river before I was born.

I hadn't seen any pictures of her, the house, or anything. It still keeps me up at night.

Nightmare_King

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House

I was watching TV at home alone one night. It was Mad TV I think. Or Nick at Nite. Something harmless and not at all frightening. Then I noticed the image on the screen flickered slightly. Curiosity got the best of me, as it often does. I rewound it and then hit pause right at the point where it flickered. What I saw made my blood run cold.

In a little box on the screen sort of embossed into the picture were the words "I WILL BE BACK," and the E in BE was backward. It was so creepy. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had to just convince myself it was a glitch or something but I had the heebie-jeebies for the rest of the night. Luckily my sister came home a couple of hours later.

I've always wondered what that meant, who it was for, and how it even happened.

permalink

Quick Thinking

A girl I knew had a few drinks and decided to hitchhike home to a town about 40 minutes away from the one in which she’d been drinking. Note: It’s very common for people to hitchhike in this area.

She got picked up by a car full of guys, and all seemed fine until she pointed out they could drop her off just up ahead, but they ignored her and kept driving. She had that "instant sober" feeling that only comes with sheer panic.

She played it off like she was clueless and totally down to keep hanging out with them, and she acted like she was very plastered. In the meantime, they were passing through a more forested area of the highway. She fake dry-heaved and said she was about to puke, and really put on a show, so they stopped to let her out. She booked it into the bushes and just didn’t look back until she was safe.

whitethrowblanket

Hang Up

My mom once stopped to help an overturned car on the side of a highway. As we got out of our vehicle, my mom immediately called emergency as I wandered over to see if anyone needed help. Near the wreck, I saw the driver treating a woman (I think it was his wife) roughly. I was only a teenager and the guy was almost three times my size, so I tried to get my mom to come over.

She was busy on the phone, leaving me with these two people. I quickly realized that the man was plastered and looking for a fight. I figured that the only way we were going to get out of this was by playing it cool and then driving away as fast as we could. Once I could get my mom's attention, I'd find a way to tell her, but in the meantime, it was me and the two passengers.

The man asked me to help him move the car. I just stared at him and told him that was a ten-man job and there was no way he and I could do it. Then his wife started to scream at him. She was shouting that she got him hurting her and crashing the car on camera and that she sent the video to his sister. This caused the man to lose his mind.

He picked me up and literally threw me. Then he shoved my mom, took her phone, and pushed her down the bank. Panicking, I told him I had a blade, and I wasn’t afraid to use it if he touched my mother again. With that, he took his focus off my mom and stared right at me. As I tried to calm him, my mom snuck back into the car. When she was ready, I made a run for our vehicle.

On my way, a car that was speeding on the road almost hit me, but I made it to my mom. I heard her start the engine as I jumped in, and we tore off to the local station. The man was apprehended a couple hours later for two charges: one for hurting his wife and the second for assaulting an officer. We call emergency when we see crashes now.

El_Chapos_Cousin

How Kind

white mercedes benz c class on street during daytimePhoto by Viktor Avdeev on Unsplash

Once, my friend went out and met this girl who seemed really nice. After drinking with her, she passed out and woke up in an Uber. She told the driver that she didn’t know where she was. He told her that a girl brought her to his car because she wanted to make sure her "friend got home safe". My friend insisted that something very wrong had happened and told the Uber driver to pull over. He was a good man; he immediately believed her, stopped the car, and called for officers to come and figure out what was going on.

When the officers heard what happened, they said they recognized the address that the Uber driver had been given by this mystery girl. It turns out that there was some kind of human trafficking operation. A girl would slip something into a pretty girl's drink, then pour her into a cab, and send her to the same house. Until my friend called in, none of the girls had been seen again.

spacelordmthrfkr

Freak Incident

When my friend came home after work, his wife was gone. He thought she had taken the dogs for a walk and so checked the normal walk route. Then he saw all of these flashing blue lights. An officer stopped him and said he wasn't allowed to come any closer. But my friend had this sinking feeling. He looked over the officer's shoulder and realized that there was a woman bleeding on the sidewalk. That's when his stomach dropped: the woman was his wife.

It turned out that she had been on a walk in her neighborhood when a man randomly lunged for her. He had just been released from a mental institution and randomly happened to cross paths with her. Sadly, her injuries were too extensive and she passed in the hospital. It's the scariest story I've ever heard because it's so meaningless. This man ended her life for no reason.

Nick_Pears

Baked Even

There's a big bread factory in my town. One day, years ago, maintenance men had to go into the bread oven to fix some issue. The oven had been off for 24 hours before they arrived, but it was still hot. The maintenance men didn't want to go in, but the company insisted, saying that anymore time lost would lose them even more money.

So the maintenance guys took out baskets that held the raw bread on the conveyor belt, climbed onto the conveyor, and started up the machinery. Almost immediately upon entering the oven on the conveyor, the maintenance guys realize that something is terribly wrong. It's way, way too hot to be safe. They tried to run out, but there were too many baskets on the belt for them to get out. The path was blocked. They were trapped.

The only thing they could do was stay on the conveyor and go through the oven, a slow and horrifically painful process that essentially baked them alive. Those outside assisting with maintenance had to listen to their screams. Then the oven went completely silent. They saw one burnt body emerge on the other side of the oven. The second man somehow lived, but only for a few moments.

tails142

Baked Even

There's a big bread factory in my town. One day, years ago, maintenance men had to go into the bread oven to fix some issue. The oven had been off for 24 hours before they arrived, but it was still hot. The maintenance men didn't want to go in, but the company insisted, saying that anymore time lost would lose them even more money.

So the maintenance guys took out baskets that held the raw bread on the conveyor belt, climbed onto the conveyor, and started up the machinery. Almost immediately upon entering the oven on the conveyor, the maintenance guys realize that something is terribly wrong. It's way, way too hot to be safe. They tried to run out, but there were too many baskets on the belt for them to get out. The path was blocked. They were trapped.

The only thing they could do was stay on the conveyor and go through the oven, a slow and horrifically painful process that essentially baked them alive. Those outside assisting with maintenance had to listen to their screams. Then the oven went completely silent. They saw one burnt body emerge on the other side of the oven. The second man somehow lived, but only for a few moments.

tails142

Period Piece

I worked as an engineer and, unfortunately, being security detail came with the job, considering the hours were from 2 PM-11 PM. I was doing some rounds, and we’d noticed the previous day that there was a lock to an electrical room that had been removed. It was mid-winter, and we figured someone was trying to stay warm.

As much as I wanted people less fortunate to get ahead any way they could, it was my job to make sure that there wasn’t someone occupying some spot on the property. So, I went to check on the room. I walked up and noticed that the door was cracked ever so slightly. I popped my flashlight out and beamed it inside there.

There was slightly less than a foot of space between the wall and the machines that were in the room. Thinking it would be impossible for someone to be crammed inside, I did a lazy scan and went to close the door. As I was heading to the stairs, I could hear a shuffling behind me. It was late. There’s nothing going on.

I was newish to the city, so seeing owls or really big rats was still a thrill. So, I went back up and popped out the flashlight, but this time I crouched down to see the space beneath the machines. Sure enough, I saw legs. I called out to whoever it was and told them they need to vacate. They stayed still for a while.

Then they started to wriggle themselves out from the tight space. I stayed there because procedure would be to escort them off the block entirely. A woman popped out looking rough and started muttering absolute nonsense. She was taking her time, and it was snowing, so I got a little aggravated and told her to hurry up. Her insane response was absolutely horrifying.

This woman turned to look at me, stuck her tongue out at me with her mouth gaping, broadened her stance, and started to dig at her crotch. She pulled out a warm, totally used tampon and threw it at me, hitting me in the jaw and neck area. Then she proceeded to clamber away from me just yelling about something nonsensical.

theycallmeick

Tipped Off

grayscale photography of disco ballPhoto by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash

I was a hostess at a nightclub. I had a tip jar at the front. It was a Saturday night, so it was looking nice. This dude came up and started talking to me. Apparently, while he was talking, he nudged the tip jar behind my computer screen, so I couldn't see him take $120. I only noticed when he went back into the club.

I told security who checked the cameras, saw him do it, chased him down, and forced him to give me my money back. It felt great—but then things took a dark turn. As they were dragging him out, he looked at me with this crazy look in his eyes and said that he was going to wait outside for me. All of the security guards walked me to my car that night.

crusty_peach

Satan Take The Wheel

I was driving home from work one morning and was waiting to turn right at a stop sign on a somewhat rural road. A number of cars were turning left onto the road I was on. As the last one passed, a blue minivan, I locked eyes with the driver. I nearly jumped out my skin from fear. I am 100% convinced that I either saw a demon or some physical manifestation of pure evil.

The minute I noticed him, the hair on my neck stood up and I felt physically sick. From what I remember, he had no deformities or anything explainable, but something still felt so...off and terrifying about him. It was like looking at something ALMOST human. This was probably two years ago now, and I've never forgotten that otherwise normal ride home.

wiscowarrior71

None Of His Business

When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I went to a local Burger King with my mom. I was impatient to eat, so I went to go play around in one of those plastic playground things that are about 20 feet high. There were no other kids in it, so I just started to climb to the highest point. But things got really weird, really fast…

A businessman in a white shirt and tie looked at me climbing up, then calmly put his burger down and proceeded to climb up after me. He didn't say anything as he did it. I was old enough to think that this was weird, and had flashbacks to our school counselor talking to the class about getting kidnapped and such. I rushed to the slide and ran straight to my mom.

I gave her a giant hug. I didn't tell her about the incident until later.

Permalink

Coming In Handy

My sister's bedroom was on the second floor of our childhood home. Late one night, she suddenly screamed and said she saw a hand on her window. We thought she was just having a nightmare and told her to go back to bed. The next morning, when we all woke up, we made a truly chilling discovery. We found a ladder leaning up against our house by her bedroom window…

Ruddiver

Getting Up Close And Personal

I drove my sister to get sushi in a not so good part of town one time. We were in the car about to get out, and I reached down to get my wallet. I looked back up to find the creepiest, most strung-out looking human being I've ever seen in my life. He had his face against her window, licking the glass. He then pulled his sleeve up to show us some scars on his forearm, face on the glass all the while.

I don't drive out to get food at that restaurant anymore...

Brosendorfer

Gone Girl

gray road between green grass field under gray cloudsPhoto by Dave on Unsplash

My cousin works at a truck stop in Kansas. She told me about some guy who parked his truck and got out, and then a woman got out of the passenger seat. It was kind of cold, so the trucker was wearing a coat and hat. But the woman was wearing summer clothes. My cousin thought nothing of it and did her whole "Hi, welcome in".

The trucker bought a coffee, but the woman just stood there in the doorway. Now my cousin was freaked out. She didn't want to be rude, but she was a teenage girl alone in a gas station in the middle of nowhere. "Excuse me miss, do you need anything?" She asked. "Who are you talking to?" The truck driver asked when he got to the checkout.

"The woman who got out of your truck?" My cousin pointed, but the woman had disappeared. She told me she had never seen a look of such pure terror on a man's face before. He just whispered a quiet "Oh no". Got his coffee and left. The woman did not get back into his truck, and my cousin couldn't find her in the store afterward.

She says it was one of the most terrifying experiences she had ever had while on that job.

Spirit_of_the_dusk

Man’s Best Friend

My family has a Bernese mountain dog called Ava, who is very big. She’s a quiet and lazy dog, but she also seems to be alert at all times. One night, my parents went out for dinner and left me at home with Ava. I was downstairs watching TV and my lounge is right next to the front door. At around 8:00 PM, the doorbell rang.

I opened the door to see a guy in fairly plain clothes standing there. He told me that he had a delivery for me. I was confused because he didn’t look like a delivery driver, and he had no parcel. Suddenly, I turn my head and see another guy around the side of my driveway which goes to our back door. This other man is clearly walking towards my back door.

I freak out and the guy at the door notices this. He barges through, shouting for the other guy. This is when Ava wakes up and begins to let out the loudest bark I’ve ever heard, making the guy stumble back. She rushed towards him and jumped up, grabbing his shoulder and literally throwing him out the door. His buddy came along, but saw Ava and started to run.

The other guy managed to slip out of Ava’s grip and run down the road. I somehow managed to get Ava to stay so I didn’t lose her, and they got away. I was so shaken up. I called my parents and then the authorities, and I gave them a statement. It’s safe to say that Ava got plenty of treats from then on, and I always keep her nearby when I am on my own.

reggie2006

Railroaded

I live in Tokyo and commute via those famously crazy crowded trains daily. There exists on them this kind of unspoken agreement that everyone works together to make this suck as little as possible. But that’s only when the trains are full. About two stops before mine, the train goes from sardine can to everyone on this train could lay on the seats and have room left over.

So, usually, I can sit down at this point. I'm also very obviously not a Japanese woman. But despite my appearance, I'm fluent in Japanese. One day, I sit down when the train empties out, ready to enjoy the 10 minutes of sitting that I get on my hour-long commute. I'm sitting with my legs crossed, as there are maybe ten people in the whole car and I'm not in anyone's way.

All of a sudden, a hand reaches out and grabs my bare knee. I jolt straight out of my skin, rip out my headphones, and look up at the hand's owner. It's some skinny old Japanese dude, at least in his 60s. He points at my legs and, in slightly broken English, says: "You must not cross legs on the train!" I'm totally bewildered by this.

I start to tell him in Japanese that the train isn't crowded right now, and that I'm not in anyone's way. But he doesn't like this answer. He starts to reach for my legs again. I scream as loud as I can, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" Thankfully, this was enough to get him to stop that, as another thing you don't do on trains here is make a fuss.

Djtaffi

A Taste Of His Own Medicine

I was standing in line at the local pharmacy to get my prescriptions. This is a small town and I am a regular there, so they know me on sight. I was behind a couple of other people in line, and there were a couple of people behind me. I kept feeling a tickle in my hair in the back of my head, but every time I looked behind me, the guy there was a few steps back and looking at the floor.

This happened several times by the time I reached the front of the line. The pharmacist told me she wanted to talk to me about my medication in the consultation room. I thought this was weird, because we both knew I had been on this medication for years and would be for life. Nothing new. I get back to the room and close the door, and she comes in from the pharmacy.

She told me that the man behind me had been stepping forward, sticking his nose in my hair, and smelling it before stepping back and looking at the floor. This shook me pretty badly as this is such weird behavior, especially in my little town. The pharmacy staff insisted on having me wait there until the guy was distracted by another pharmacy employee.

They then had a security guard walk me to my car and watch me drive off, to make sure I was gone before Hair Sniffer came out and saw what car I was driving or what direction I was going in. I still use this pharmacy and some of the same people still work there. I will always be grateful that they took the initiative to make sure I was safe that day.

Cygnus875

Wet And Wild

When my mother was young, she went swimming with her friends. While there, she had to watch helplessly as her friend was sucked into a whirlpool at the bottom of a drainage lake. They didn’t find his body for days. That’s why I never learned to swim.

Squaragus_Asparagus

Incognito Infiltration

A group of friends at a coffee shopPhoto by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

I was a director of my college’s student government. There was this dude who was always willing to take on projects, so I assigned him a lot of work. I remember thinking he was pretty charismatic and well dressed, and he'd always done good work for me. So when he told me he owned a start-up clothing company, I bought some things from his website.

The next year I saw an article with his face on it. I found out that he was not what he seemed. He had been taking extracurricular classes as an excuse to stay on campus, even though he'd been kicked out of all his classes for a horrible reason. He'd been forcing himself on women at the university. His father was a wealthy professor and covered it up every time it happened. He seemed so normal.

HomelessSock

No Strings Attached

A co-worker's dad went into the nursery to check on his newborn baby only to find a horrific sight. The baby had reached for the blinds strap, somehow tangled his neck up, and began choking. The baby was already blue, and all of the veins in his face were popping up. Grandpa frantically called for emergency. Thankfully, EMS arrived in minutes and had the baby breathing again, but as a mother, I can't imagine anything scarier.

Offthepoint

The Phantom Of The Highway

I was driving one night in a really foul mood and speeding. Like when I say “speeding,” I mean at least 25 over the limit. Anyway, this car gets behind me and for some reason I can just tell it wasn’t an officer. It was a full-tinted Chevy truck with weird lights on it. Once it got behind me, I got a really eerie feeling I can’t explain. My body just knew something was wrong.

I figured if it was an officer, they would light me up for speeding, but for some reason they just kept pace with me, also speeding themselves. At this point I’m getting a little weirded out, so I turn off the freeway…and they follow me. I turn into a gas station and get out. If I’m going to get jumped, at least the cameras will pick it up and give my family some closure.

Something just didn’t sit right with me. I knew something was up. As I’m getting out of my car, the truck rolls its windows down. And what I saw still haunts me to this day. It was a heavily disfigured guy who just has this soulless stare. He starts to motion me with his finger, like telling me to come closer. I don’t care if he was going to give me the winning Powerball numbers, there was no way in heck I was going to approach his car.

I bolt inside the gas station, and at this point my whole body is shaking. I try to tell the clerk what’s going on as they stare at me, as my story doesn’t make any sense. Then, when I go to look outside, the truck is gone. I still have nightmares to this day.

Apprehensive_Art9012

Fortress Of Solitude

This story is 100% true. I experienced it myself in the summer of 1991. When I was about 10 years old, I lived on Woodway Drive in the Fox Harbor Apartments in Paducah, Kentucky. If you look up the address, you will see some woods just to the north of the apartment complex. My friends and I played in those woods every day after school and all day on the weekends.

During the few years I lived there, we cleared a small area in the woods and created a fort from various things we got out of dumpsters. It was our own place that no one else knew about, and it was awesome. One day, as we were walking to our fort, off in the distance we saw a man walking through the woods. He was walking parallel to us, but in the opposite direction.

We stopped talking and halted in our tracks when we saw him. We never saw anyone in the woods, especially not adults. When we stopped moving, he did too. He turned towards us and looked right at us. As I stared at him and was able to make out the details of what he looked like, I felt my heart stop in my chest. Not only was he was wearing what looked like a Halloween mask, he was also carrying an ax in his hands.

We stood there in silence and motionless for what was probably about 10 seconds, him looking at us and us looking at him. Then, he started sprinting straight at us. We did the only thing we thought to do, run straight to our fort. We were probably about 50 yards from the entrance to the fort and, in those 50 yards, he gained a lot of ground on us.

When we finally made it, he was upon us. All of my friends scurried up a tree and were screaming, but I was the last in line. By the time I could try and climb the tree, he was standing right there by us. He was screaming like a lunatic and waving the ax in the air. I was scared, had no idea what was going on, and my mind was blank on what I should do.

I grabbed a large stick and took a nice big baseball-style swing and cracked him on the face with it. He stumbled back a bit, moaned, and took the mask off. The craziest part? I recognized the face. It was the landlord and manager of the apartment complex. A man who was probably about FIFTY years old. He wanted to play a joke on us and thought this was the most appropriate thing to do. He was insane.

Brettuss

Window Shopping

When I used to walk home from the bus stop, I used to walk past a house where a man, maybe in his 40s, lived. If he was out in front when I walked past, we would say hello to each other. Perfectly normal. But sometimes, he would be inside at the window just looking out at me. He didn't wave or show any sign that he saw me.

My friend happened to be with me once when he did this, and she told me that it almost seemed as though he thought we couldn't see him. This behavior didn't happen all the time. Don't get the wrong idea, he wasn't a weird stalker or anything. Just sometimes, maybe about 10 to 12 times in total. Nothing ever came of it.

I eventually stopped bussing and started driving. He moved away from the area a few years ago, and then I moved away too even more recently. But I never forgot the creepy feeling of seeing him behind that window. I just remember that horrible feeling whenever I saw him watching, because I had no way of knowing what he was thinking.

smiles_at_strangers

Mother Goose’s Creepy Uncle

woman in gray crew neck shirtPhoto by Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash

Today, I was standing outside of my dentist's office waiting for my wife. I was minding my own business and having a smoke when this old guy walked up to me from out of nowhere. With seemingly no emotion in his eyes, he looked straight at me and asked me “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

I was about to start laughing it off when I started to realize that he was being fully serious and didn’t mean this as any kind of a joke. I awkwardly said that a woodchuck could chuck as much as it felt like. He just stared at me silently for a few seconds, then turned around and walked away. I just stood there watching him go and thought the whole thing was downright creepy.

Permalink

A Voice From Beyond

Driving through an abandoned section of Baltimore at 3:00 in the morning, my CB radio turned itself on and crackled for a bit. Out of nowhere, some voice over the radio said in a deep Southern drawl, “I ain’t got no panties on". I could see up and down the interstate for miles, and saw not one set of headlights around me for hours...

THREEkoalas

Grin And Bare It

A few years ago, I was living alone in a little house. It had a heavy back door that would swell up after it rained. This always made it get really tough to open, and it would make a lot of noise. Late one night, I had passed out on my sofa in the living room on the opposite side of the house. But I suddenly woke up to a strange sound. Netflix was still blaring away on my laptop, but I guess I had felt a vibration or movement.

As I slowly squinted my eyes open, I realized the outline of someone was standing still in the hallway looking down at me. They were not very large or tall based on how much space they took up in the door frame. Being completely disoriented in my not-quite-awake-yet state, my mind assumed that it must be my girlfriend.

I was unclothed at the time, so I pulled back my blanket with my legs sprawled apart and called to her in my best deep voice "C'mere baby!" I guess once they realized I was a 200-pound man without clothes on, beckoning to them with my downstairs, the person immediately turned on their heels and booked it for the back door. By the time I stumbled up to the door, all I could hear was them taking off into the darkness at a full sprint.

Arnold_Schrodinger

A Devoted Follower

I was 13 years old and on vacation with my parents in Turkey. We were at an all-inclusive hotel and enjoying the holiday. The hotel was full of tourists from different countries. There was this one guy, around 20 years old, who was staring at me for some time. I felt uncomfortable and asked him how he was doing. Wrong choice.

The next few days, everywhere I went, he also suddenly appeared. Not flirting, just lurking for hours and watching me. He had a really strange vibe around him and I felt I shouldn't be alone with him. Now, I was still young and my parents didn't want to leave me alone in a foreign country. So he couldn’t really bother me at any point.

But one night, there was entertainment in the hotel, which became boring to me after some time. I told my parents I wanted to go up to our hotel room and that I would see them in the morning. I left and walked to the elevator. I didn’t know it, but I was making a dire mistake. The guy who had been watching me for days saw me leaving, and he had followed me.

When I saw him also coming into the elevator, I was shaking with fear. He looked at me silently with a sinister smile. "This is it". I thought. Who knows what horrible plans he had for me. And just before the doors of the elevator were closing, someone stuck his boot between in order to prevent the doors from closing. I am not kidding, all I could see was a boot.

The doors opened and it was my dad. He saw that the creepy guy was leaving at the exact time I had left and didn't trust it. He looked the guy in the eye and said hello. My dad took me to my hotel room. To this day, I am so glad for the rescue because I don't want to know what would've happened if he didn't.

dees94

Home Sweet Home

When I was 13 years old, my family moved from a village to a city. This city had a fairly high homelessness rate, so of course, there were always a lot of people looking for somewhere to stay. An old family friend of mine is a letting agent, so he often lets me use some of the unoccupied houses as a sort of recording studio for music that I create in my spare time.

He is totally fine with me using the houses for this purpose as long as I keep them clean and clear out for a while whenever there are viewings. This arrangement works fine for me. One night, after recording at one of the houses, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet there. So, I cycled back, got my wallet, and decided to check the rooms since the door hadn’t been locked properly.

I go upstairs and open the door to one of the bedrooms. Lo and behold, there was a man in his mid-30s lying on the bed like it was his own home. Both of us just looked at each other, completely startled. Neither of us said anything. I guess we came to some sort of non-verbal agreement, and I showed him out. Definitely a creepy experience…

Metal_Warrior_69

Personal Emergency

a red emergency sign in front of a large buildingPhoto by Robert Linder on Unsplash

There was a fatal car accident. The first officer on the scene had recognized that the victim was the daughter of an emergency dispatcher. The same emergency dispatcher who had been relaying all of the information about the crash to emergency services. This was before cell phones, meaning the officer had no easy way to tell her what had happened. He just had to keep that horrible information to himself.

ChipLady

Going Somewhere?

When I was nine, I was playing at the school down the street from my house. It was the middle of summer, and my friend and I were watching some local boys play street hockey. One of the boys called my name and said a man in the parking lot was looking for me. The parking lot was mostly obscured by a nearby building, but I could see an old 70s style van that hadn't been there earlier.

I was walking over to the van when the mother of one of the other kids showed up looking for her son. When she saw me, she said hi and asked me where I was going. When I told her, she took my hand and started to quickly walk away with me. At that exact moment, the van pulled out and sped off.

My friend's mom walked me all the way home, and I wasn't allowed out of my yard without my parents for the rest of the summer. I was so upset and didn't understand why I was being punished. It was only years later that I had understood that I was likely being targeted by some opportunistic loser for I don’t even want to know what.

Im_vegan_btw__

Anybody There?

I once interviewed a woman who told me a horror story about something that happened to her as a girl. When she was ten, she had trouble sleeping. She thought that the Boogeyman was standing in her closet and staring at her whenever she tried to sleep. Every night, she would go downstairs and tell her parents about how scared she felt. And every night, her father would tell her the Boogeyman didn't exist and then send her back to bed.

This happened over several nights, and the father got tired of it. That night, he walked her back up to her bedroom, turned on the light, and said, "I'll show you there's no Boogeyman". As he went to open the closet door, something on the other side held it shut. The dad immediately sent his daughter out of the room and forced the door open to find that a man was in there.

He'd been sneaking into their house every night to stand in the girl's closet and watch her.

JamesRenner

A Midnight Visitor

When I was young, my parents and I relocated across the country to Maine. We lived in a very small town and our house was old, beat up, and on many acres deep in the forest. It had two stories, with the top storey being the main level and the bottom story being the bedroom level. My bedroom had several large windows that looked out into the forest.

I don’t remember having curtains or blinds but I’m sure I must have, because my mother never forgot details like that when decorating my bedrooms as a child, but I must have left them open one night. I remember waking up in darkness, with a faint glowing orb of light hovering just outside my window. I watched it in utter terror as it went slowly across one window, and then the next.

Then it paused, flashing briefly into my bedroom, before shifting into the third and final window and disappearing altogether. I was so upset by the ordeal that I went and woke my parents up, and my stepfather stormed the backyard. There was nothing and no sign of the strange orb. My eyes are watering as I write this. Deep down, as an adult looking back, I realize that orb was anything but magic. It was something much worse.

It was someone’s flashlight. It never happened again, but I’m still afraid of having window blinds open at night.

KindlyAggravating

God’s Plan

When I was in my 20s, I had a car accident that kept me in the hospital for about a year. It was a Catholic hospital and most of the nursing staff were nuns, and besides the normal checks they regularly just stopped in to chat and see how I was doing. Early one morning, there was a knock and this nun came in who I hadn’t seen before.

She introduced herself as Sister Greta, a member of the nursing staff. She sat on the side of the bed and we spoke for a few minutes, then she asked if she could say a prayer for me. She held my hand and said a prayer then wished me well and left. About five minutes later, there was another knock and one of the regular sisters came in to say hi.

I remarked it was going to be a good day because I’d already had one visit from Sister Greta and now I was getting another one. Her face went oddly blank. She said there wasn’t a “Sister Greta” on the staff and there were only two sisters around right now, it being so early. I pointed to the bed, which clearly showed where she had been sitting.

I described her and the habit she had been wearing, now getting a bit unnerved. The sister basically shrugged and bustled off. She came back about half an hour later with a book about the hospital’s history and showed me a picture of some nuns from the 50s. Their habits were exactly the same as Sister Greta’s that I’d described.

Turns out that patients regularly mentioned talking to nuns in old garb that definitely weren’t part of the current staff. I never saw her again or anything similar while I was there...I’m not religious by any stretch. Could the nuns have been pranking me? Absolutely. Despite perceptions they are a funny bunch, enjoy a good laugh, read comics and watch Star Wars. Only, there was never a “Ha, we got you!”

sadzanenyama

Woman cringing
Photo by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

As much as we would love to be able to date one person, for that to be the right person for us, and for the two of us to get on with our life together, we all know it's going to take at least a few tries to find the perfect match.

But some of these matches make us want to throw in the towel.

You've got to listen to your gut (and your eyes) when you sense a red flag.

Redditor tjeast asked:

"What did you find out after a first date that was a deal-breaker?"

Just... A Couple... Of Red Flags

"I found out that he had restraining orders against him from not one, but two exes. He also asked if he could move in with me on the first date."

- lalalabeeee

An Ex Collector

"On the surface, he was a lawyer with an Ivy League degree. Then just one layer deep, he had six kids with five different women."

"One of his exes hated him so much that she took their kids to Germany to get away from him."

"And the kicker (yes, more than the Germany ex)? His youngest was six months old and he was sleeping on his latest ex's couch."

- Banjo-Becky

Questionable Connections

"I met up for drinks with a woman, and she started telling me about how she thought I’d get along with her brother. After a couple of drinks, we ended up at the bar where her brother worked. He's a h**l of a guy."

"We kept playing hair metal on the jukebox and drinking beers. She went from saying I would get along with her brother to I remind her of her brother. The more she drank, the more she said it."

"We ended up making out, and she started repeating the s**t about her brother while trying to get something going with me."

"I made sure she got home safe, but that s**t creeped me out so much that I never spoke to her again."

- weeew87

Secret Babies

"Prior to our first date, he said he didn't have any kids."

"While he was driving me home after our first date, he mentioned that he hated letting his baby mama use his car because she always messed with the radio stations and that it took forever to get his seat adjusted back to how he liked it."

"I was just out of high school and wasn't looking to date anyone with kids. With how disrespectful he was during our date, finding out that he had a kid was an automatic deal breaker for me."

"He then kept calling and texting me and after I blocked his number he kept creating new social media accounts to get a hold of me because he wanted to go for a second date and kept bringing up that he was making good money so I'd be an idiot to say no to him."

- 2baverage

Specific Looks Wanted

"My date kept trying to braid my hair, lol (laughing out loud). At first, it seemed weird, but not like a deal-breaker, but then he KEPT asking."

"The first time he asked, we were walking through the park, and I was telling a story, but he interrupted me, asking, 'Can I please braid your hair?'"

"I laughed, politely said no, and continued talking, but he kept interrupting, asking to braid my hair."

"I asked why, but all he said was, 'I just want to braid it,' and kept reaching for my head. I swatted his hand away a few times, and when that didn't work, I told him I was ready to go home."

"It was so creepy!"

- TheDahliaXO

Her Body, Not His Plans

"He told me that he couldn’t wait to have kids with me and that he had picked out our kids’ names."

"When I told him that this was our first date and that I wasn’t sure about kids and that this was a super creepy thing to say to me, he insisted it was my duty as a woman and that it would make me very happy."

"Yeah, there was no second date."

- NymeriasWrath

Just Practicing for Thanksgiving!

"He was a felon. He had a really unbelievable story about being locked out of his ex’s house and he broke in while JUST HAPPENING to be holding a rifle from Turkey hunting. Terrifying."

- _lmmk_

Very Different Interests

"She got off on watching the guys she was with get in fights. She gave some dude the come-f**k-me eyes and then expected me to brawl when he came up to hit on her. F**k no, girl, maybe you can catch a ride home with him."

- discussatron

No Third Wheels

"Her other guy showed up in the middle of our date. She said, 'Can I talk with him for a minute?'"

"I said, 'Sure,' and then walked out the door and never looked back."

- New2ThisThrowaway

Not a Good Morning

"She was married. We met at a bar and left together. We went and had dinner, saw a movie, and she spent the night."

"The next morning she said, 'I wonder if my husband figured out I didn’t come home.'"

"Then she asked me for a ride to work, and I got a ticket because she didn’t wear her seatbelt."

- PM_ME_THEM_TACOS_GURL

Totally Wrong

​"He asked me to pay for his court fees, that was my turn-off, so I wanted to leave to end the date."

"I said my goodbyes, and then he threatened to tell the whole restaurant I was having an affair and cheated on him if I left."

"I stayed in fear of embarrassment."

"Later, I excused myself to the restroom where I made my escape to the door. He saw me from the window."

"I saw him coming out, so I ran a bit, and when I looked back, he was chasing me. (I got away, but wow.)"

- Ok-Ambassador-8982

Supporting the Arts

"He was a really bad magician. He brought cards and everything, but he couldn’t land a trick."

"I felt bad and took him up on a second date, but that was it."

- Durdengrl322

Financial Investments

"He lost a pile of money in crypto and NFTs. But he still tried to convince me to get my money into it."

- hanginwithyuka

"Some people cannot be saved from themselves."

- Creative_Recover

Unrealized Love

"I think she was in love with her best friend and didn't realize it."

"She told me she and her long-time best friend she called her 'wifey' lived together in a single room with the friend's baby. She said that this friend always comes first and they're inseparable. They also have gotten kicked out like three times from house to house."

"She left the date early because whoever they were renting from was threatening to kick them out."

"We never really talked again but I wanted to tell her she shouldn't be dating because she's already in a relationship."

- PupEDog

We've all heard of first date fails, terrible dates in general, and big relationship deal-breakers, but just the same, we can completely understand how these were such major deal-breakers.

From lying about their real life to trying to involve us in something we're not interested in, there are some people who are simply not meant for us because their lives are just too different from ours. And that's okay!

People Suck: Stories Of The Worst Humanity Has To Offer
Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

People can be just the worst, right? Everyone on earth has a million stories about their fellow human beings acting downright terrible. From cheating partners, to rich jerks, to random acts of cruelty, we've all seen humanity's darker side. It should be little surprise then that the people of the internet have some of the most infuriating, cringe-inducing stories about horrible people—and we've collected them for you here!

All in the Family

man in white dress shirt and black pants standing beside green wallPhoto by Blake Carpenter on Unsplash

Standing in the rain at night, after two years of dating, I think she is about to tell me that she loves me. Nope. She tells me that she is in love with my brother and has been dating me to get closer to him. I told my brother and he said, "Heck no! Screw her!"

Permalink

Housewarming Present

We moved into this new house, and apparently, the people who lived there before us never told their "friend" that they had moved. He let himself in one day and went into the bathroom unnoticed. I went in there sometime later to discover some random guy passed out with a needle in his arm in the middle of my new bathroom floor.

Worst first night in a new house ever!

sourwormsandwhisky

Art of the Deal

I used to be a divorce lawyer. My entire job consisted of dealing with people constantly outdoing each other for the title of "Most Immature Thing You've Ever Seen an Adult Do." Best of all was the guy who, when he felt he was not getting his way, offered to completely abandon his children and agree to never see them again, in exchange for not having to pay any support money.

the_8th_henry

The Nerve of Some People

Someone had a heart attack on the patio of our restaurant. Paramedics came and were assessing the situation and trying to prep the guy to go to the hospital. This woman dining with her husband decided very loudly to ask my manager in her best condescending rich person tone, “Is this going to take much longer, we were enjoying lunch.”

The restaurant goes dead silent and her husband looks like he’s about to puke from embarrassment. They were politely asked to leave and never come back.

throwaway3vze

A Serious Effort at Discipline

My nephew (by marriage) is a jerk. I had to drive him once and he kept messing around with the windows, so I locked them. Then he started incessantly pushing my door lock buttons. So I stopped holding back farts and stopped opening the windows. And let me tell ya, this was during a phase in my life where my farts smelled like I might be suffering from some sort of colonic necrosis. He gagged and sputtered and threatened to throw up.

It didn’t matter. I just kept farting. In fact, at a certain point I thought I might crap my pants. I didn’t care. I was willing to do it just to make that little bugger suffer a bit. Take that, Evan.

TheFire_Eagle

A New Level of Jerkery

man sitting on stool while crossing both handsPhoto by Muhmed Alaa El-Bank on Unsplash

My boss fired the girl who was in her third trimester of pregnancy three days before her maternity leave was to start.

hisloyalconcubine

Small Business, Big Problems

I work at a small business. 20 employees +/-. My wealthy boss made a big speech about austerity measures and no raises this year. A week and a half later he drives up in a brand new Silverado with all the bells and whistles. Expensed to the business of course. He would hate to have to pay taxes on those profits. One of the less subtle members of the staff took a literal dump in front of his office door.

DentedAnvil

Did He Get an A+?

I caught my boyfriend of two years. He had asked me to proofread his paper on his Mac and the text messenger popped up in the right hand. He was sitting in his bed texting some girl "goodnight, I love you" while sitting right next to me in his bed. I deleted his entire paper, wrote "Who's Marissa?" saved it and told him it looks great and left.

She was his girlfriend of eight years who lived next to his parents two hours away.

pixie_dicks

Santa’s Been Naughty

I got rejected when I wasn't even trying to hit on the guy. A few years ago in December, I was at a bar with a friend when a guy dressed as Santa Claus was walking around. He walked up to my friend and said something like, "Santa's giving out gifts, and all the pretty girls get one for free!" and handed her a trinket. Then he looked at me up-and-down and added, "Yeah, you'd have to pay."

blueeyesredlipstick

Sleepover

He has a longtime friend of his (who happened to be female) who was staying the night. She was sleeping in the basement bedroom and we were upstairs. Well, he slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and woke me up. When he noticed, he told me he had to go to the bathroom. I guess I already had my suspicions, because I lay there and listened to him walk down the hall, then past the bathroom, and down the stairs. So, I followed. And caught him in the basement getting ready to have sex with her. Oh. I was not a happy puppy. Was stupid and tried to salvage our engagement, but I wasn't "fun anymore" and he left.

Ilunibi

That Explains a Lot

man in black crew neck t-shirt wearing black framed eyeglassesPhoto by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash

After I came into work on a Saturday to help with some orders that were behind, the boss came in the back and started SCREAMING at me about why things were a certain way. I tried to explain that I just got there, that I had nothing to do with the job until now, and that I was just trying to fix it. More screaming. I said, "Phil, be reasonable!"

He responded by jumping up and down and screaming "I don't WANT to be reasonable!!"

JoelQuest

Over the Hill

My ex-wife and I went up to Big Bear to go snowboarding and spend some time together. We were having issues and I thought to be fun to get away and do something fun together. Let's just say it did not go well. She said she grew up snowboarding, but she never made it down a hill and had a terrible time. So we went back to the cabin and she was pretty much just on her phone, not talking to me.

We make it back and she says she needs to just shower and be alone for a bit. She goes off and I just hang in the den. She left her phone in her purse and it just kept buzzing, so I checked it out because what if someone was trying to reach us or something? I open it up to read a full conversation between her and this guy. It wasn't good.

I read how that day’s texts started and they started really early in the morning. "Hope you're doing ok up there." "We'll see, doubt it. He's trying too hard. He should just know it really doesn't matter. Wish I was up here with you instead." Just the worst stuff. And that was before I even woke up. I was pretty devastated and really didn't know what to do.

I knew I didn't want to fight because I realized she wasn't worth fighting for. Grabbed my bag and drove back to San Diego. I took her phone with me, so I could text him and tell him "We're coming home early, let's meet." I ended up inviting him to a coffee shop and waited for him to show up. When he walked through the door, he saw me immediately and kind of stopped. I waved him over and wasn't too far from the door, so I told him we need to talk.

He comes over and already front loads with the "It's not what you think," blah blah blah speech. I told him that if he wants her, he can take his sorry ass to Big Bear and go get her. Because I was leaving and we're through. See you when we sign the papers. And I left. Second worst day of my life but I'm glad it happened. Met my lady three years later and we've been together for four years, now engaged.

RaddialFox

Sold to the Highest Bidders

Mitch got everything he wanted. Granted, he was smart and ambitious, but was also petulant and snobby. The combination made him virtually hated by everyone. "I liked him more than most people did and I hate him" (paraphrase: Al Franken on Ted Cruz). Our 3rd-grade class would get monopoly-esque money for an auction of toys at the end of the year. If you were bad, you had to pay money, but if you were a little sycophant, like Mitch, you were filthy rich.

At the end of the year, Mitch surveyed all the toys and calculated how many "brownie points" it would take to swipe all the best stuff. One by one, Mitch swiped the best toys, always bidding perfectly. At the end, Mitch had enough for the most coveted toy on the table: the Chia Pet. Brent had the second most money and timidly started the bidding.

Mitch toyed with him and gradually raised the price until Brent had to go all in. Mitch raised the bid by a small margin and then Susan, who almost had a nerf gun, gave her sizeable pile to Brent and Brent raised. Mitch panicked and counted his money for a higher bid, but it was already too late. All the people he had screwed suddenly turned the auction into a popularity contest and Brent delivered the final blow. Mitch freaked the heck out and had the most satisfying meltdown.

If he had just tried to get a few things, no one would have wanted to screw him, but by leaving so many people with so much worthless cash, he was truly hoisted by his own petard.

Screw Mitch, lol.

CommieLoser

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I work retail at an electronics store and it was launch day for a new product. A guy and his 13-year-old son and asked if we had the biggest and baddest model in a certain color in stock. I told them we had that model in a different color. The father gets a phone call and tells his kid to talk to me. The kid pulls out a wallet full of credit cards and snidely asks, “How much would it take to get me that phone?”

I told him I couldn't sell him something we didn't have, but that he could order it online. The father comes back and the kid tells him the news. The father looks at the kid and says, “I have to go to a meeting, I'll have the driver come get you. Don't back down.” And walks away. I look at the kid. Challenge freakin’ accepted.

He says, “I read on Mac Rumors that you hold 4% of your inventory for DOA phones out of the box. I want one of those phones.” To which I replied, “We don't have any for that model because we didn't get any actual stock for it in.” Long story short, the kid starts screaming in the middle of the jam-packed store.

My team leader, who happens to be there, comes out and the kid tells her that I called him a snobby little jerk. She looks at me like he was a crazy person and somehow convinces the kid to buy a different color. As it turns out we couldn't sell him the phone because the cardholder wasn't present to show ID. I was mad about the whole thing at first, but felt that he got what he deserved.

Creenburg

A Fight to the Death

My old boss started firing people by lining two up at a time and seeing which one they prefer to keep on. Didn't matter if you were there for 20 years or two. Also hiring management from outside and not promoting within which means the new managers have no knowledge of anything that company does in terms of ethics, procedures, or employee status. It has turned this "clique" type environment into every person for themselves. Very toxic.

1oneself

A Costly Choice

person looking at silver-colored analog watchPhoto by Andrea Natali on Unsplash

I was invited to a graduation party, hosted by a very wealthy couple whose daughter had just graduated from Yale. Her father came out, in front of the guests, displaying his Rolex and Cartier watches—asking which one of the two expensive watches the group thought would be "the more appropriate for the occasion." Everyone just looked at each other, silently—not quite sure what to say.

Back2Bach

Seems a Little Harsh...

When I was eight, I was on a road trip with my family, and my dad got lost. He got REALLY angry when he got lost. So to vent his frustration, he pulled over to a Jack in the Box and had me come in with him (he demanded that only I come with him, no one else). He relieved his tensions by sitting me down and telling me for ten minutes why he didn't like me. From the way I cleaned my room, to the way I did in school, to the way I SPOKE—he told me how he despised everything about eight-year-old me. I'll never forget him saying, "I don't like a single darn thing about you." Hard to take when you're eight and your dad is still Superman to you.

Born2dodishes

Getting Peppered

I had a man in his 40s call a 16-year-old girl I work with a stupid idiot because she forgot to put extra peppers on his sandwich. I was in an irritable mood that day, so I confronted him about it. I asked him if he had any children, he said yes. I asked him if he thought it would be appropriate for them to talk to a stranger (let alone a young girl) like that. He said no, so I asked him, "What makes you so special then?" He looked very ashamed of himself and just walked out of the store without saying a word. I got some applause from one of the tables.

TheusernameIwantedyo

Put a Ring On It

I called her at work and their receptionist asked, "Is this her boyfriend, Dave?" "No... it's her fiancé." I'd had suspicions for a few months before that but this was the clincher. So glad I got out of that one.

fsm20132

When You’re Rich, the World Is Your Toilet

I was once a server at a high-end steakhouse in Newport Beach, California. A rich guy's son comes in, probably in his mid-30s, with a big group. They get a private room and spend thousands on food and booze. The guy gets hammered and instead of climbing the stairs to take a leak, he just relieves himself in the hallway. On the floor. He didn't get kicked out, either. They just had a janitor come in and clean it up and the dinner kept going. Nice to have that kind of money, I guess.

zodar

Selectively Poor

person holding U.S. dollar banknotePhoto by Vitaly Taranov on Unsplash

Our bosses cancelled the Christmas party and Christmas bonuses for the whole company because we "didn't have the money for it." I found out later the CEO and the CTO used company funds to take a week-long ski vacation in Whistler instead of doing something nice for the employees. You better believe I spread that evidence around the office.

capnhist

It’s the Thought That Counts

20 or some odd years ago I caught my ex, not actually having sex, but in bed with another guy. On Valentine's Day. With a dozen roses in my hand. What a horrible person. Fighting would get you kicked out of college, so I told the much smaller guy that as soon I saw him off campus someday, I'd kill him.

Fifteen years and worlds later, I'm at an engagement party at a bar, and some friends come up and tell me the guy over there is extremely scared of me and thinks I'm going to kill him. I look over and couldn't stop laughing. It was so far in the past, but for some reason, that guy remembered it like I had sworn an oath to avenge my family. It felt good. His fear was redemption enough.

HaveaManhattan

Low-Class Attitude

I was briefly an assistant to the CEO of a large company in my country (I live in Northern Europe), and this guy was a real jerk to everyone. I just made coffee, ran with mail, and copied things. I say "briefly" because I only worked there for three weeks. I made an honest mistake, copying the wrong documents, resulting in a brief embarrassment on his side in an in-house meeting with some of the other big guys of the firm.

I got called into his office and, knowing his history with previous assistants, I was visibly nervous. He then began absolutely shredding me for 15 minutes, completely red in the head, spit flying in my face as he stood above me, basically ripping me a new one. I started crying (This was my first job, and I was 15 at the time), and he stopped shouting. But that wasn't a good sign.

He took one finger to my chin, lifted my face up so I looked straight at him, and then he said "You're a nobody. Don't you ever forget that." And then he threw some paperwork at me to let me officially know that I was fired (which I then had to pick up from the floor), and then he yelled at me to get the heck out of his office.

djputin1

At Least You Could Still Get Dinner…

I was once given the number to a pizza place instead of the guy's number I had asked out.

blonderdhd

A Sinking Feeling...

Years ago, I was hosting a house party. A pair of girls went into the bathroom together. Not uncommon. Well, one of them decided to take a piss in my sink and accidentally dropped a loaf while she was at it. They came out laughing and telling everyone that someone must have pooped in my sink. I was literally the last person in that bathroom before them. I even watched them walk in. And I don't recall defecating in my own sink. After confronting them, they got pissed off and left. They didn't even bother cleaning up the sink!

s******plug

Getting the Real Story

person holding smartphonePhoto by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

I work in an Apple Store as a Genius. A kid (13-15 yrs old) comes in with his iPhone X and tells me that he wants a new phone now. I ask him what is wrong and he says every time he plays Fortnite or Minecraft his phone gets hot. Explain to him that is an expected behavior for graphic intensive games and explain that I play PUBGmobile and my phone does the same thing. He screams “I want a new f***ing phone now!!” And slams the phone on the table, which shatters the display. The phone drops to the floor (which is stone) and shatters the back. He looks at me and blames me for making him slam his phone. I tell him well now the phone is broke and that will be $549 to replace it since it’s now broken. At this point his mom comes in and sees the phone and asks what happened. Her son starts to say that I did it. She looks at me and says what happened. I tell her and she laughs and tells her son to get the hell out and he will be without a phone until he can pay for it himself.

im2fat4astormtrooper

Be Thankful You Don’t Work For This Guy

After a mistake was made on a product at my work, the assembly team was left to try and get the project out on time. The deadline was around Dec 1st. The boss demanded that everyone work on Thanksgiving. Someone said, "We want to spend time with our families." We were told, "I don’t care, I hate your families!!!"

JoelQuest

Indecent Proposal

Oh boy, story time, so, I'd been with this girl for two years, I was madly in love with her, I was going to propose. Bought a ring, went to pay her a surprise visit, walked in because I had a key, found her in bed with another man. Threw the box with the ring at her, walked out, drove off, never looked back. Got about five miles away, pulled over and broke down crying.

5tr4nGe

Sliding Scale

When I was a waiter, I had a guy put a $20 on the table when I came to greet him and his wife and say, “This is your tip. However, every time you do something wrong, I will remove a dollar.” I thought he was joking, so I chuckled and asked, “Like, what?” He takes the 20 off the table and replaces it with exactly $19. Who carries enough bills to do that? He responds with, “Like that.”

MissJoey

But Tell Us What You Really Think

In a company of six people, owner said in a meeting with everyone that his two sales guys are irreplaceable and that the rest of us are "just paper pushers."

zeeker1985

Love is Not a Game

person holding game controller in-front of televisionPhoto by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I'd finished doing the daily quests on my WoW character, and I knew he wasn't going to be home for a while so like many times before (with his permission) I logged into his account to do dailies for him. Then the PM's started. Very explicit PM's. Not only was he cheating on me in a game (with loads of people, cybersex in WoW, eugh), but there was one girl who was talking about things outside the game too. I admit I played along for a while to see what was going on. After that, I told her who I was. It all ended rather badly, between her and I, him and I, and him and her.

Miyenne

With a Little Help From My Housekeeper

There was a kid at my high school. When he was 14, he had a learner’s permit, but his parents got him a Mercedes-Benz G-Class. Every day, he drove it to school and was determined to park it in the parking lot to show it off. So, he had his housekeeper drive to school with him and the housekeeper's son drove a car behind her to take her back home—which was only about two miles away from our school.

CollectandRun

Preventative Measures

A co-worker came up to me and told me not to even think of asking her out. Umm, I wasn't going to—but thanks for randomly telling me how much I apparently SUCK.

kingeryck

Future Serial Killer Alert

I was a kid, probably 9 or 10, and my mom had a friend and her son over for lunch. The kid disappeared for about 10 minutes, and at the time I thought he had gone to the bathroom because I really had to go. So when he came back I quickly maneuvered my way past him into the room before the bathroom, where we had a fish tank. This would be completely irrelevant if the fish tank wasn’t cloudy and swirling about. At first glance, I didn't know what it was, until I noticed smashed and ripped apart pieces of little fish faces moving around in the swirl. The kid had reached into the fish tank and squeezed the ever-loving life out of every single fish in that tank.

eta5minutes

Think Fast!

I was on the bus a year or 2 back and a kid and his mom were seated in front of me. The kid kept screeching about wanting to "press the button" (you press a button to notify the bus driver that you need to get off at the next stop) because he liked the beep it made. Every. Single. Bus stop. This little twat screeched asking if he could press it yet. Finally his mom said he could press the button. I pressed it. It only beeps for the first person to press it. The little brat cried.

LuthienTheMonk

Being the Smaller Person

woman in black and white dress sitting on concrete stairsPhoto by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash

When I was about six years old, my stepmother had said something that humiliated me. We got into an argument and I yelled that I hated her. She responded, "I hate you, too!" and I was pretty much just stunned. I think she was in her mid-30s then, and that moment stuck with me for a long time…

fluffyxsama

Power in Numbers

I had accused my boyfriend of cheating previously but over and over he turned it around and got upset that I didn't trust him. Finally, after talking to the girl he cheated with on the phone, we called him together and he came clean. Couldn't lie to us both.

almostascone

You Probably Know What Evian is Spelled Backwards

I worked at a private villa in Bali. One guest stood out because she only drank and bathed in Evian. So one day I spent almost an hour filling a large tub from tons of Evian bottles. The same young woman complained that the path from her villa gate to her room wasn't well lit. This was probably because she wore sunglasses at night.

icycld

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy

My old boss actively tried to ban friendships. If co-workers became friendly she would schedule them so they would NEVER see each other. "You're here to work! Not to socialise!" She also banned everyone from coming into the workplace when they were not working. It was a pub. She banned socializing in a pub. This was a corporate pub, so drinking for free was never allowed. She was literally turning away paying customers.

A co-worker once asked her if he could bring in his visiting Grandpa to show him where he worked and she told him to screw off. She became insanely paranoid when she learned four people were in a WhatsApp group. She said the only reason people who work together set up group chats is because they wanted to talk trash about her. She was actually kind of right.

ohboythisisit

Holden Would Be Proud

My best friend lived in the family's old vacation trailer behind his house (back in the 90s). I arrived with a twelve-pack, opened the door and there was my girlfriend. She was standing full frontal (not a stitch on) and he was in his boxers. Later he told me "Nothing happened." JD Salinger had a term for that kind of guy, it was... PHONY.

Ash_Britt_Chloe_Spik

More Income, More Intergenerational Problems

woman in black long sleeve shirt covering her face with her handsPhoto by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

My mom works in a family-owned business, and while the owners aren't excessively rich they're definitely upper class. I think the most messed up thing that I know about them is just how they treat members of their own families, let alone strangers. For example, the founder of the company fell and broke his hip when he was around 80.

Since he could barely walk around on his own anymore, let alone run a company, he finally retired and gave the company to his daughter. This was a huge mistake. She put him in a home, never visited him again for his entire life (He passed away at age 92, just to give some perspective on how long that was), and almost immediately began to drive the company into the ground.

Around three years after the daughter became the owner of the company, her grandson is hired into basically the same sort of secretary job my mother has. Now it's a bit of a long story, but he lives with his aunt who also works for the company, basically in the same job his grandmother had before she became the company owner.

So, things are going fine for a while, then eventually he comes out as gay, and is immediately fired for some BS reason by his own grandmother. On top of that, she demands that her daughter kick him out of her house or she'll fire her too, but thankfully she wasn't taking any of that, and said she'd sue her mother if she fired her over it. Her mother backs down, and thankfully the kid isn't kicked out onto the streets, but he's sure as heck not getting his job back. Then of course since he was fired, all of the work he was doing is piled onto my mother's desk.

ErickHatesYou

Different Goals

My sister hooked up with a classmate a few times and said they got along very well, sometimes coming over to hook up and never getting the chance because they would get so lost in conversation. So one day she goes, "Hey, we get along well and I think you're pretty attractive, maybe we can go on an actual date sometime?" Without a beat, the guy looks to her and says, "Listen, I'll sleep with you, but I can't be seen in public with you." She claims she clocked the guy and never spoke to him again.

Cananbaum

Multiple Counts of Stupidity

I invited a friend over for drinks—and BOY did she drink! She got so drunk that she vomited on my living room wall and fell down the staircase. She looked like she had rolled around in chicken salad. After I made her shower and gave her some of my clothes to wear, she stole my flip-flops and went RUNNING out of the house to go to her boyfriend's apartment.

I had to go follow after her, and she eventually got detained for public intoxication. I have not invited her over since.

ladyheracross

The Experience Pays off

Working at a Chuck E Cheese one year. Some little kid keeps getting pissed because he can't win many tickets from a game. Kid begins to kick and scream. Toss stuff around, etc. I think he tried to hit one of the animatronics. When someone tried to get him to stop he pulled the, "DO YOU KNOW WHO MY DAD IS? DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE CAN DO TO YOU?" We all just shook our heads and didn't know what to say. Was his dad the owner? Rich? etc? "Tell me what I can do."

We see this guy in a business suit just standing there with a really pissed off look on his face. It was the kind of face that you look at and wonder if this man ever smiled. The kid just froze up and muttered something. The man apologized and walked away. He came back a few hours later and gave all the employees gifts. I got an Xbox 360. One of the first generation ones. I still have it with me if anyone wants a picture. He just gave me the console. No wires, controllers, or anything.

Lady_Otaku

Selectively Deaf

Both of my parents are very immature in general, but this particular incident caught me totally off guard. When I was 13, I won an argument with my mom. It was something to do with Earth Hour, and how we should try our best not to use any electronic devices during that time. To my surprise, when I started winning the debate, my mom literally put her fingers in her ears and started screaming "I CAN'T HEAR YOU, NANANANANA!" I learned a lot about human nature that day…

ForkToTheLeft

Tripped Up

man standing on black rock surrounded body of waterPhoto by Slav Romanov on Unsplash

I was gone for a week for work. Got back to my building after a flight home and had no ride. She forgot to come pick me up. I finally got a hold of her, came to pick me up half drunk, went back to our house, I was unpacking and turned around and she had her hair and makeup done and just said "I'm going out, see ya" and left. This was after I had been gone for a week.

The next day was Friday, she had got home after I went to bed and left for work before me. I got home, and she was already gone, and had texted me and said she was going to her friend's house to hang out for a house party for the weekend. I didn't hear from her again for two days despite calling and texting her. She got home late Sunday night and told me she "lost her phone in the couch.”

I told her this wasn't working, and she needed to leave. She packed a bag while I cracked a beer on the couch. A couple days later, my friend emailed me a boatload of pictures from the weekend she disappeared, all of her and the guy she was cheating on me with. He had posted them on his Myspace that Sunday evening.

She actually continued to mess up things for me for quite a while after this, financially mostly, but eventually, I got free of that disaster and moved on happily.

Paugh

If You’re Going to Complain About a Dish, You Better Know What Goes Into It

At my restaurant, someone once ordered the dessert on special—it was tiramisu that day—and sent it back, saying that “Mascarpone cream doesn't go along well with coffee and your recipe should be changed.” That is literally the original and classic recipe. Then get this. She asked for tiramisu with Victoria sponge.

First, we had no Victoria sponge, second, just because someone asks for it we are not going to make something we won't end up selling, and third, I think the chef would've rather carved his own eyes out with a fork. Just because you have the money to pay for a 200€ meal doesn't mean you are entitled to whatever you want. We are workers who want to turn a profit at the end of the damn day, not your personal staff of cooks and waiters.

Totally-not-a-scam

False Sense of Hope

My boss told a bunch of people they were going to be promoted to get us to do extra work, but no one actually got promoted. I basically did her job for a month. Me and three of my co-workers quit and she got fired a few months later.

Emersonson

We Feel For You

This is so recent (a week ago). I went to the spot I first took her to on the ship we worked on to surprise her, and she was on top of another dude. They looked me in the face and laughed when they saw me. I absolutely loathe infidelity, and feel for all the victims of heartache.

cant_afford_gas

Spite Trip

I drive a limousine, often for wealthy clients. My least favorite are the children. One of my spoiled trust fund clients once insisted on picking up four friends from different areas of town. He convinces these people to go to the bar with him, but when we get there, he kicks them out and has me drive him to the airport, where he picks up a last-minute flight to Vegas.

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Man wearing pink shirt and sitting with legs crossed inside an art gallery.
Ryan Spencer/Unsplash

One of the lamest ways to insult someone is by describing their behavior as being gay.

The attempt at emasculating a perceived straight heterosexual male by comparing his actions to something that a homosexual male might do is a common form of mockery by alpha males.

Examples include mocking a guy who gets manicures, wears pink, or sits with his legs crossed. "Gay, gay gay," says the immature antagonizer.

Typically, the ribbing occurs between friends and is not prompted by verbal attacks.

Still, this casual form of bullying can be tiresome and only perpetuates misconceptions and stereotypes that can be harmful to the LGBTQ+ community.

Strangers online shared their experiences being targeted when Redditor Spagoobli0 asked:

"What is the dumbest thing people called you gay for?"

Apparently, maintaining good hygiene is so gay.

Being Clean

"i was called gay for showering daily."

– ilive4manass

"with other men?"

– intheken

Scrubbing The Backside

"I was told it was gay to wash my a**. The guy was recently evicted for defecating on his own floor for 6 months and not paying taxes."

– my-recent-throwaway

Pro-Tip

"In boot camp we shower with other dudes. I had someone call me gay in the shower for washing my a**. As if the only reason for washing my a** is to make it presentable for someone else. Nah, dude, I just don’t want skid marks in the tighty whities they make us wear."

"It’s not even like I was doing it weird. Like if I was bent over spreading my cheeks so everyone could see my brown eye, that would be one thing. But I literally just took a handful of suds and ran it down the crack a couple times because, pro tip to my fellow dudes; the water running down your back is not enough to clean the part of you that poop comes out of."

– Morningxafter

Lotion Up

"I once had a friend of mine stop by before we were going to meet some people for brunch. I had just taken a shower and gotten dressed when he walked in the front door (I always had a just walk in policy, suburban life). I have pretty dry skin so I was putting on a bit of moisturizing lotion. First words out of his mouth were 'moisturizing? That’s pretty gay isn’t it?' I said 'If feeling like I don’t want to scrape my skin off is gay, whip out the d*cks!'”

– bg-j38

Keeping up with appearances is hard enough.

The Damaging Effects

"'Gay' was the first 'dis' I ever heard, I had no idea what it meant for like a year. I just knew it was the worst thing to be. My whole generation struggled with that and I really feel for the people who had to come out to friends and family when I was young, it must have been really tough. I came out as bi about 6 or 7 years ago and that was pretty brutal, and the only reason I came out was because something happened that made it clear I was. Tbh it was f'king humiliating and awful at the time, it really f'ked with my head and my self worth. I am totally, 100% ok with it now, in fact I'm kind of proud I have the balls to tell people I'm bi now. It's become who I am and I'm ok with it.

"Just to be clear I've never had an issue with anybody being gay, at all. It's just for me it was a really difficult thing to deal with. Extremely personal. A lifetime of unconsciously being told gay was 'bad' has an effect on me, I wish it didn't but the truth is it did. I have mad respect for all openly gay and trans people."

– NitroD*ckclapp

Revealing Color Choice

"Had a guy genuinely ask if I was gay because I was wearing a red pair of Vans."

– LemonMan589

"Maybe he was cruising."

– InverseRatio

List Of Indicators

"I was a child in the 80s. Calling people gay was standard derogatory talk for checks notes literally everything. Bad play in sport, choice of clothes, hobby, etc."

– f_ranz1224

The Hopscotcher

"I was called gay for about 6 months in middle school for jumping down a hopscotch thing as I walked past it after lunch."

– Sado_Hedonist

What happens in the bedroom...

Going Down

"Like giving oral sex to my wife. Will never understand that."

– Beenthere-doneit55

"Fellas, is it gay to go down on a woman?"

– raveturned

"I view it selfishly. It combines the two two things I love the most, eating and having sex. If that makes me gay, so be it."

– Beenthere–doneit55

Flawed Logic

"They think if you'll do down on your wife you'll go down on a guy?"

"How would the two even translate??"

– WillieOverall

Even before I came out to my friends as gay, being called anti-gay slurs–even in jest–only suppressed my inclination to want to share my truth.

One of the things I've been mocked for during high school pre-coming out was my love for Disney.

The girls had no problem sharing my passion, but the jocks made fun of me for wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt to school, saying I was a "sissy boy" for liking Disney and that only "f*ggots" liked Disney.

Now, I know plenty of demographics–gay and straight, all ethnicities–that universally appreciate Disney. But I have to say, good on them for being accurate in knowing who I was before I did: a proud f*ggot who loves Disney.