Wait long enough at any dinner party, and almost surely someone has a story like this. A tale from their past, usually involving ignoring the law and breaking a couple of rules, which they happily share with anyone who will listen. People with a "breaking the law" story from their youth and, most surprisingly, from old age feel a liberation to ignoring the status quo and living to tell the tale. Sometimes they're epic, sometimes they're a little smaller, as evidenced by the following stories.
Reddit user, u/StrangeDamage9, wanted to know about those times when braking the law was life-changing when they asked:
What is the most illegal thing you've done and gotten away with?
When You Absolutely Need To Play
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I used to technically break into my high school after hours just to play computer games. (Well before people had PC's at home.) I'd just unlock a window and then come back into the school later.
This is actually kind of impressive.
Fire Me, Will You?!
I stole my boss's car when he said I wasn't allowed to quit my job (we were based really far in the mountains and the only way to leave was with his vehicle... so thats what i did). I left the car a day later in a nearby town.
I need to know more. Why didn't he let you quit? What happened when you stole the car???
It was an equestrian centre in Bavaria. They exclusively hired extremely young foreign girls and took advantage of them. I worked illegal hours... getting up at 5am and finishing at 9pm with about 15 minutes rest. I was also promised at least 1 day off a week but it turned into 1 day off a month. There was no way off of this mountain, and it was January, so it was dangerous to walk anywhere. I told my boss I was done and wanted to go home, but he told me that I had to fulfil [sic] my 3 month contract. I tried calling a taxi in the night but they said they wouldn't send anyone up there.
One afternoon I decided f-ck it, and I waited until my boss and his wife was out in the paddock when I went into their house and stole their car key. They were parked facing a snow bank, and as I threw my bag in the back I remembered that the car doesn't reverse and you have to push it out. I couldn't do it by myself, so I just smashed through the snow bank instead. There was some scratches to the front. I drove over an hour to the nearest village and tried to hide the car as best I could before getting a b&b for the night with a fake name (OTT i know but i was 18 at the time and was on a dramatic high lol). Next day I drove the car to the nearest train station and left it there with the key behind one of the wheels...
Never know what happened to it. I got a text from my boss that day but I deleted it without reading because I was so scared about what it could say. Flew back home and never heard from them again.
When You Absolutely Need To Play Pokémon GO
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I once smuggled my smartphone into the military, kept it inside a book Andy Dufresne style, used it when I was alone and got away with it.
How did you charge it??
You're allowed to keep your power bank in your locker in my country's military, so every once in a while I took it to bed and charged it under the pillow.
To Be Fair, This Doesn't Seem Like Your Fault
I bought 2 sets of furniture one day. An end table and an dining room table set that was in 3 boxes. All of it was assembly required, all stacked up on a heavy duty cart, all from the same company. The cashier scanned the top item, an end table that was 50 bucks, and thought it was the whole cart of sh-t, worth 500 bucks.
I was poor and I accepted his mistake.
Sorry. i am bad.
That's how I got a free Nintendo switch, grabbed it with the full intent to buy it but when they didn't scan it I wasn't gunna say anything, did speed walk out of the store as fast as possible tho
What A True Mafioso...?
Serial Jaywalker right here. I do it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Try and stop me.
I'm making a Citizens Arrest. Right Now.
Target Better Be On The Lookout
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A friend of mine would compulsively steal from clothes stores all the time, she'd brag about how she could get away with anything and would put on jewelry and clothing and just walk out. Then one day she started working for the store and they had a binder full of faces pulled from CCTV who'd been caught and oh no, hers was in there. To her advantage she'd changed hair color and had lost quite a bit of weight so wasn't easily recognizable but I doubt it really taught her any real lesson.
We don't talk anymore.
Was it Target? Their LP does NOT eff around and will purposely let you get away with it at first just so they can start building a case and hit you with a whammy
So what you're saying is that you can steal one thing from every Target.
The giant flat-screen bandit has hit every Target on the east coast. But NEVER twice!
All Signs Point To: REBEL
I took a lot of street signs as a teen. It was dumb, but whatever. They are still stashed in the woods. I've considered returning them to somewhere where it can be picked up because I feel kinda sh-tty about it today.
The best is when you take it and you put it in your friends yard at night and they wake up and see a sign planted in their yard.
Who Wouldn't Need A New Door?
I once stole a guy's apartment door for a little while.
I want so much more information than that!
My friend and I saw that he'd had a new door delivered but it wasn't yet installed. We took it, leaned it up against a tree nearby, and invited people to the party at our new place. They came and it was a good time. It got cut short when the door's owner caught us, politely asked for his door back, and we returned it.
It's The Thought That Counts?
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The other day I was taking my shopping to the car with a trolly and I realized I hadn't scanned a packet of vegetable stock that was hidden underneath my bags. I felt too awkward to go back into the TESCO to explain the situation, so kept it. I'm so sorry Lairg TESCO, I owe you one!
Get your pitchforks ready there's a monster among us.
And The Winner? House. Stole A House.
We stole a house.
As young poor mountain hippies (way different from city hippies) unable to afford building materials, we came across a (seemingly) abandoned 2 story cabin in the woods. No furnishings or windows. So the three of us dismantled it board by board and salvaged the hand hewn beams and every scrap of lumber. Even found opiate elixirs antique bottles hidden in the walls under 1800's newspaper used for insulation. It took several weeks, many trips over the mountain, and much hard labor, but we considered it a recycling project.
On the last day, as we were securing the final load on my '47 Dodge flatbed truck', the property owner showed up and was angry and amazed at the same time. This was before cell phones and the nearest phone was miles away. We apologized, saying we thought it was abandoned, and left. He couldn't even prove that the house ever existed we left the site so clean.
No dude, the story can't end there. This man went home to his family and had to explain the cabin he bought to fix up was TAKEN away and that next years week long camping trip is canceled.
H/T: Reddit
Do You Even Lift, Bro?
Used to break into my high school to use the weight room :-D
Would just leave the lights off and lift in the dark!
Probably creeped the shit out of the custodian who would hear grunting and metallic noises coming from a dark room.
It's just the ghost of swoleness past.
Shots Fired
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I returned from an active war zone, by aircraft, and then taxi and public transport on the train, hitch hiking the last 2 miles. When I got back to my parent's house, I dumped all my dirty laundry and headed out to see my girlfriend right away.
When i got back my mother had put my smock in the wash, with a ton of ammunition in the pocket that I had not known I had in there.
That can get you in a lot of trouble, and it was a total accident. I decided the best place for it was at the bottom of a deep hole with a pond on top.
You Want A Pizza Me?
I once took the last slice of pizza at a birthday party.
I later realized I forgot to ask the buyer of said pizza before I snatched that delicious morsel away from anyone else's grasp.
I am ashamed.
That Escalated Quickly
When I was 16 I was making some very high quality fake IDs. But I was also participating in a site called ShadowCrew that focused on carding, identification etc. Well somehow I got access to the "Upper levels" VPN. But the site operator had been busted and the VPN was essentially just a monitoring device for the US Secret Service.
Eating dinner with my parents one night, I hear a smashing at the front door, look down the hall and see the door fly open with about 5 guys in kevlar with automatic weapons and then the back door flies in as well with "RCMP RCMP! GET ON THE FLOOR!". I was handcuffed in front of my parents and taken in for questioning with 2 USSS agents watching. I guess they thought I was a lot bigger than I actually was, they put me in a cell until 3am then let my dad come pick me up. I never heard another word from them again, no charges, no follow up. I was in the newspapers etc. You can read about the operation on Wikipedia it was called Operation Firewall. They arrested like 30 people around the world at the same time and a lot of people did time.
This is the excerpt from the news article describing me. They got the username wrong due to my info being sealed:
A 17-year-old Canadian went by the nics "Liquid Dust," "LIQ.dust," or simply "Dust," American authorities say. But this is impossible to corroborate through police and prosecutors in Canada; the teen's name cannot be published because of provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
A third teen was later also taken into custody.
Details of the crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Canadians remain sealed by court order, as prosecutors in that province continue to weigh what, if any, charges will be laid against them.
But what investigators in both countries allege is that the 17-year-old was the mastermind.
"He was unusual," says Johnson, "in that you typically don't get that high up in that hierarchy at that (young) age.
And one of its elite, police allege, was a 17-year-old youth, said by police to be the brains behind a Canadian document forgery and drugs operation that allegedly included two accomplices from the Lower Mainland.
Armed officers from the Vancouver Emergency Response Team, the local RCMP detachment and the Vancouver police arrested the youth at his Richmond home as he sat at the dinner table eating lasagna with his father, brother and a teenage friend on Oct. 26, 2004. His computer, switched on when officers arrived, was taken into evidence.
"We went in there and literally the fork just came out of the mouth," Det.-Const. Mark Fenton, a computer crime investigator with the Vancouver Police Department, says. "Then I had to sit down with the [17-year-old's] parents and explain why we were there because obviously [they] were dumbfounded, to say the least."
Goldilocks
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Finding a random suburban unlocked home in the middle of the night, sneaking into the house and emptying the liquor cabinet.
Pushing Your Luck
I used to steal Playstation 2 consoles. The Wal-Mart Supercenter by the place I was staying at, had sensors (specifically set to respond to the strips that were stickered onto each unit's box) that would trigger the alarm system by both of the sets of doors on each of grocery and general merchandise sides, but I noticed that the home and garden department had an exit after the registers that had no sensors, so I would put a PS2 in my cart, and some other things to make it look realistic, stroll out of the gardening department, and just kept doing it. After the tenth time or so, they installed sensors by the gardening doors.
So I started peeling off the stickers, so that I could still walk through said doors without triggering the alarms. Several consoles later, they implemented a policy of locking up the consoles, so I would ask an employee to get one of them out of the locked cases for me, and then I would repeat the process. Then, it became policy that once they console had been taken out of the locked cases, they were required to be checked out before leaving the electronics department. That is when I started stealing them from Best Buy, which turned out to be much easier. I would walk in with a legitimate but dated receipt for a PS2, pick one up, walk to the door, they would glance at said receipt, and let me walk out.
Several successful repeats later, I saw the difference in policy when they started reading the receipts much more carefully, so I would walk in with an empty PS2 Box, (making sure that it had the small metallic strip on it that would set of the alarm when coming in) get a pink sticker on it (this denotes that the merchandise came in for return or repair, so that it could be walked out with) then casually stroll over to the PS2s proudly on display, take the pink sticker off of my empty box, place said empty box in the display, and slap the sticker onto the new box, walk to the front, go through slowly so that the alarm would go off, brandish the sticker towards the employee at the front, so that I would be waved on out.
This all happened during the winter of 2000 and lasted until the fall of 2001 when I got a job, which changed my outlook drastically. I completely lost count of how many consoles I got away with. If I'm being boastful, I would say in the 70's, but honestly, it was prolly much closer to the fifties in quantity. I'm not proud of the choices, and to be frank, as much as it was for the money, there was a much more needy concept of feeling like I was outsmarting (for all intents and purposes) THE WORLD, but I know that I would just being a shitty person, and making life harder on good people that worked at the Wal-Mart locations, and the Best Buys that I preyed on.
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When we're intoxicated, or even the slightest bit tipsy from having a little too much to drink, our immediate perspective on things is hazy.
But there's nothing like a bit of alarming news or a jarring incident to snap us out of the fog and focus on the moment.
Sometimes alcohol isn't always to blame for our impairment.
It can be a state of mind, like a perpetual numbness from being complacent in life, and all it takes is one shocking moment to rattle us back to our senses.
Curious to hear from strangers online about this type of scenario, Redditor Known_Challenge_7150 asked:
"What’s one thing that sobered you up real quick?"
These individuals were witness to shocking events that sobered them up right quick.
Bleeding Out
"Got out of a taxi and found a naked man profusely bleeding from his head crawling up the driveway in my condo. Called him an ambulance completely forgot I was absolutely wasted until 45 minutes later when I'd helped him translate and in to an amublance and stepped in my front door."
"Later a few days later learned he'd slipped in the tub and literally crawled out for help. Poor dude. He was fine but I genuinely thought he was going to die there."
– DongLaiCha
Tragic News
"At a bachelor party and we got a phone call that the groom’s father had suddenly passed."
– accountnameredacted
Bottom Of The Barrel
"I went to visit my parents back in July. I was homeless and deep into fentanyl addiction so I lost a lot of weight. My folks could see it. They knew something was up. Anyway, I spent the night and I was getting ready to leave in the morning and I looked at myself in the mirror for a good long time. I finally had enough and told them everything. They took me to detox, from there I went to rehab. Graduated in August and been living with them ever since then. I have 160 days clean and sober."
– Crotch-Monster
A reality check can be enough for some people to snap out of it.
Like Father, Like Son
"Was driving a drunk friend home, he had been on a bender again and was smart enough to call me for a lift rather than try and drive. As I helped in to his house his mother came down the stairs and said 'your as drunk as your father' and went back upstairs. I haven't seen him drunk since then, he still drinks but the thought of turning into his dad scared him out of hard drinking."
– psycospaz
Busted
"Flashing blue lights."
– FiddleOfGold
"This sobered me up just thinking about it."
– redmaple_syrup
Losing Sight
"Woke up to no sight in one eye. I had cataract surgery so just thought one of the lenses had slipped and it was an easy fix. Eye doc says nope, you had a stroke. I loved soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and salty food, which caused high blood pressure, which caused retina damage. Over six months was able to get most of my eyesight back with medication, and all back within a year. Trying to navigate life with one eye was very sobering. Started taking HBP much more seriously."
– MissHibernia
Quitting The Bottle
"Looked up someone I went to highschool with who was an awesome guy. Found out he had been dead for 3 years from alcoholism, at age 33. I made an overnight change. I hadn't started drinking that night yet, 10 months ago. Haven't touched it again since."
– omgtater
These disturbing moments were enough for Redditors to immediately come to their senses.
Unplanned House Guests
"Me and a buddy Woke up in someone’s living room, realized neither one of us knew the people, they were just nice and let 2 drunk guys sleep on their living room floor. We didn’t even say goodbye."
– Oneinsevenbillion75
Serious Health Warning
"Elevated liver enzymes."
"And the knowledge that this sh** was gonna kill me and I just couldn't orphan my family over it."
"So I opted for recovery, instead."
"Clean and sober since June 5, 2009."
– Far_Meal8674
The Joyride
"Grew up in a rural area. The little town hosted dances at the hockey arena, everyone (adults and kids) went and they overserved everyone, regardless of age. I was maybe 16 or 17 and was absolutely sh*tfaced, and jumped in the back of someone's truck with about 8 other people to go back to someone's cottage for after dance drinking. The driver (still don't know who it was) started racing one of his buddies and we whipped around small dirt roads, flying around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, going god knows how fast. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen. It was crazy scary and I was sober and thankful to be alive when we finally arrived."
– foxfood9116
The human psyche is a fascinating thing, isn't it?
How we can automatically focus on something urgent at a crucial time, even after getting buzzed from drinking too much alcohol.
But as we're in the thick of the holidays, it's a good reminder to drink responsibly and stay off the roads if you drive to your celebratory destination.
Cheers. Stay safe. And happy holidays.
We've all complained or vented about something in our lives which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't exactly a problem, or is very easily solved.
Then there are those who complain about things that others almost hope will happen to them at some point in their lives.
These are known as "first world problems", as they are problems that pretty much only the world's one percent faces.
From having to fly business class instead of first class, or being served Roederer instead of Dom Pérignon, these complaints are often met with amusement, bewilderment, or even anger.
Redditor jennimackenzie was curious to hear the most absurd "first world problems" anyone ever complained about, leading them to ask:
"What’s the most ridiculous 'first world problem' you’ve seen people get worked up over?"
"Tale As Old As Time..."
"I once knew a mom who was legitimately devastated, to the point of tears/grief, because a doctor predicted her 8 year old daughter's final height to be around 5'2","
"Which wasn't tall enough to get cast as Belle at Disney World."
"That was the child's (and her mother's) only dream in life, apparently."
"Didn't appreciate my suggestion that she could be Minnie or Mickey."
"Lol!"
"Only a face character would do!"- TravelLovingMom
"Must Be Funny, In A Rich Man's World..."
"My boss from about a decade ago was this insanely rich dude who always went to the bank to get fresh and crisp currency."
"He'd call the bank in advance to make sure they had some on hand."
"I think he was a germaphobe."
"He had a trash can that he'd throw $1 and $5 bills in that he thought was 'dirty' and regularly just donated it vs spending it."
"I asked him why he did this and he said it was too much trouble and asked if I wanted it."
"I said f*ck yeah dumped it into my bag and when I got home it was close to $400 in singles and fives.
"Another time, he wanted to upgrade all the computers in his studio, so we went to a store and bought 10 PCs."
"They all had $150 mail in rebates and he wasn't bothered to go through the trouble of mailing them in."
"3 weeks later I received $1500 after spending a whole afternoon filling out all those goddamn forms."- azninvasion2000
Money Burn GIF by nog
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Who Wore It Better?
"When I was about 19 years old, I was at my boyfriends family BBQ."
"I was wearing this pretty floral sundress."
"His cousins girlfriend showed up in the same dress and she was SO mad that she went and changed."
"I will never understand being upset when someone is wearing the same thing as you.'
"Did you really think that your shirt you bought off the rack is going to be unique to you?"
"No."- mertsey627
Seeing Red! Or Blue In This Case...
"The blue of the balloons wasn't quite the same as the bridesmaid's sashes."
"Years ago my wife and I attended a wedding."
"It was very low key."
"The dinner was in the dining hall at the university where the couple met, cinder block walls and all."
"It was a Baptist wedding - no booze and very serious."
"The dark blue balloons attempting to liven up the hall were a slightly darker shade of blue than the sashes on the bridesmaid's dresses."
"The bride lost here sh*t and absolutely raved for nearly an hour."
"I can't remember how they finally managed to talk her down."- mechant_papa
south park wedding GIF
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See You In Court!
"Rich neighbors who end up in expensive court battles because they disagree about where a tree can be planted or whether the color of a fence fits in with the street’s 'amenity'."
'These disputes get really heated and rack up huge lawyers’ bills."
"The most pathetic part is after the judgement when they are arguing about who should pay the other party’s costs."
"Lots of affidavits filed citing the 'emotional distress' they had to endure, or painting themselves as brave warriors who were forced to take a stand to fight for 'justice'."
"Also lots of pompous litigants insisting that the judge refer to them by their 'Dr' title."
"An absolutely insane dumpster fire of entitled rich people problems."- ElectrocRaisin
It's Always People With Money Who Don't Want To Pay!
"I work in a public library."
"People will get so so mad if they have to be put on a wait list for a book."
"A popular book that just came out."
"Ok our services are not only free but so are the books."
"You’re welcome, a**holes."- Switchbladekitten
A Warm Butt Is A Happy Butt!
"My own."
"We have a bidet toilet seat (Fabulous! Everyone should have one!) and not only does it wash your bum and blow dry it, but the seat's heated!"
"It's shocking how much a heated toilet seat makes the whole process more agreeable."
"Except: We had a power outage and I went to use the toilet and the seat was cold!"
"Unacceptable!"
"This shall not stand!"
"I was really upset because it didn't feel good."
"Then I stopped and thought: This is the most first-world problem anyone's ever had."
"I was really pissed because my heiny was tepid."
"I got over it."- DeathGrover
homer simpson episode 23 GIF
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Holy Matrimony!
"Weddings are a gold mine for this question."
"People get so hyped up over their 'most important day of their life'."
"They'll destroy friendships, go into debt, and have crazy expectations."
"It's not always the couple who go crazy, either."
"Sometimes, it's the parents or another family member who feels entitled to control the wedding."
"It's just a party."
"Be considerate of guests, have plenty of food and drinks, and enjoy it."- magicrowantree
When Fast Food Isn't Fast Enough...
"Having to pull off to the side to wait for a drive-thru order to be brought out to you because your food isn't ready and there's a line building up behind you."- demanbmore
In Case You Don't Think Customer Service Employees Are Undervalued...
"I was working the return desk at a Target next to a military base so I have so many stories."
"One of my favorites was a lady who had her baby shower before revealing the gender and was livid that she had received floral newborn diapers when she’s having a boy."
"It was a huge box of super expensive, all organic diapers, that we didn’t carry and therefore could not return."
"I cannot accurately express her fury and disgust."
"How dare either suggest her boy could wear feminine diapers."
"I suggested she donate them if she didn’t want to use them and she instead threw away the entire box."
"When she left we pulled it out and threw it in our donate bin."
"There have also been multiple times where mom’s order massive toys and when we bring them out to the car they get furious that they aren’t wrapped."
"We don’t offer wrapping services."
"Here’s the thing, if you don’t want your kids to see the toys you got them for Christmas or their bit to day DON'T BRING THE CHILD WHEN YOU PICK IT UP."
'I’ve had multiple women scream and curse me out that I had ruined their kids Christmas by bringing the toys they ordered out to the car like they requested."- clever-mermaid-mae
Customer Service Waiting GIF by Juno Calypso
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Happiest Place On Earth!
"I used to work for Disney."
"That in itself should tell you everything."
"However for fun I'll give you two specific stories one form our tech department and one from my wife who worked bookings."
"I specifically worked for their call center to help with technical issues with magic band and the website."
"Suddenly got worse huh?"
"A right of passage call everyone has at least one story of is the 'Dome call'."
"Basically there is a subset of Disney Guest (TM) that believes if it rains at Walt Disney world there is someone that will push a button to encapsulate the whole of Disney property in a dome to keep out the rain."
"I'm not kidding."
"If this button is not pushed they call our tech department to angrily ask why."
"My wife worked booking."
"Pretty much everything including Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique and Pirate's league."
"These two things did roughly the same thing difference being price and theme."
"BBB was expensive did more and was focused on princesses, pirates league did a bit less and focused on mermaids and pirates."
"Lady called up my wife, and got pissed about BBB being booked up (It goes FAAAAST)."
"Karen: 'Im going to give the phone to my daughter and I want you to tell her how you are ruining her vacation by not letting her do BBB'."
"Wife proceeds to explain how pirate's league is so much cooler and how she can be a mermaid or pirate and basically gets the kid to start demanding to their parents about how they want to be a mermaid instead of a princess."- trollsong
Disney World GIF
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The horror!
Being booked into a junior suite at Disney World instead of an executive suite!
It's almost as bad as having no money for groceries, or no food to feed you children...
Said absolutely no one.