Life is NOT fair! That is learning lesson #1! The even bigger truth... most EVERY aspect of life is NOT fair! Nor will it ever be. Now many times people will be rewarded for their diligence and hard work but more often than not the credit one is due is sadly misplaced. We go around life never being given that handshake, pat on the back, million dollar reward or even the simplest of thank yous. But that is why we are told to do good and be productive and our ability to be proud of oneself is it's own prize. Yeah... I'm not buying it either.

Redditor pimonroy wanted everyone to speak up for themselves asking to admit... What's something you've done that deserved credit but no one gave it to you? Gimme my applause!!!

2%? THAT ALL YOU GOT?

I wrote a perl script that saved my company $10 million when the electric company dug up our data lines. We were able to continue production for 17 hours and keep the Jeep plant running with no interruption. It wasn't even my job to write that script, I just saw the potential emergency situation and decided to do something about it. Got my normal 2% salary increase that year. Thanks Exel.

About 10 years ago I applied for a job as a Recycling Coordinator. Part of the application process was that they left me alone with a laptop to answer the question: "How would you improve compliance?" So I laid out this idea I had about a PR campaign. I didn't get the job. But about 6 months later they rolled out a campaign that was exactly what I had proposed.

I'm still waiting to serve cold revenge to the Director of that department.

Helped design significant portions of a multi-million dollar renovation, just to have my name scrubbed in a fit of office politics.

I discovered the first recorded evidence of a blacksmith's forge in a major (literally world-famous) Roman site. I was uncredited as I was working as part of an unpaid Archaeological student excavation team...

I helped raise and take care of my niece and nephew for many years. I decided that I couldn't stay in my mother's religion anymore and left it when I was 19. They were no longer allowed to speak or have anything to do with me after that. For so many years I changed their diapers, fed them, bathed them, cried with them, rocked them to sleep, cleaned up so much vomit, drove them to and from school, took them to work with me on Bring Your Kid to Work Day, watched cartoons...and it was just all taken away in the blink of an eye. I saw them a few years back at my dads house (he's not in my mothers religion), they hadn't seen me since they were about 6 or 7 years old and they were both getting ready to graduate high school. They barely remembered who I was and didn't say two words to me hardly.

It breaks my heart to this day to know that they'll never realize how much I love them.

Designed my school's logo in an after school "logo designing" class back in 7th grade. They just used it without ever telling me.

flozz101

My college senior design class requires students to sign over project IP to the school. Then the professor had the gall to reject any projects he didn't think were innovative enough to get bought by Google.

oversized_hoodie

There was a fire in my apartment building. The old lady who lived in the apartment below mine had fallen asleep smoking, and woke up to her apartment on fire. She got out, but was too shocked to notify anyone else. So, I was the one who noticed it, got my girlfriend at the time out of the place, then ran through knocking on doors and yelling in windows. Everyone got out safe. I sort of voluntarily avoided credit for two reasons; first, my girlfriend at the time was recently divorced (but separated for a good amount of time), and she was spending the night, which her parents didn't approve of, being a conservative Catholic family. Second, my local news had seemingly been on a string of interviews where not a single person being interviewed didn't come off as being a yokel/hill person. It was mostly reason one, but reason two was a benefit.

The apartment complex thanked me by moving the old lady back in to the same apartment, despite her refusing to quit smoking. My lease renewal was coming up, so I noped out then.

Also, the only people we told were my parents, and my wonderful mom's reaction was basically"oh, Bad_Idea_Hat would never have done something that heroic." So that's cool, should have seen that coming.

I used to work at an exotic car dealership startup. I was just a detailer at the time. We had a meeting to discuss ways to improve cash flow cuz we weren't selling enough cars. I had the idea of using the empty front parking lot of about 30 spaces to sell cheaper cars like Mercedes/bmw/Audi etc. they shot that idea straight out of the sky. I was eventually fired for_"not caring about the business." _1 year later and guess what they are doing. In fact they're not even selling exotics anymore. Just used cars.

I was 18 and on holiday with my girlfriend in Italy, we'd just arrived in Rome having flown in and caught a train to termini station. We stop in a park not far from the station to take a break and have some food before finding our hostel. We're both quite tired so my girlfriend starts napping in the sun and I'm lounging out too, occasionally shutting my eyes. After enjoying the sun for 20 minutes or so I open my eyes to see a man walking away from us but quite close by, then think to myself that that's quite strange because I hadn't heard him at all. I look around and immediately realize my girlfriend's handbag is gone, I jump up and run after the man who I now see is wearing a big coat and is clearly in a hurry to leave. I shout after him and manage to catch up before he gets out of the park and grab his arm, spin him around and wrestle the handbag from underneath his coat. He runs off and, not particularly wanting to start a whole thing, I decide to leave it and return to my girlfriend with her handbag containing her passport, mobile phone and holiday money. Amazingly she had slept through the whole event so I woke her up, told her what had just happened and that I had essentially just saved the entire holiday.... Her response. Nothing. Not a _'thanks' _not even to this day. About 8 years on and several girlfriends later this still annoys me.

I've BEEN doing the dishes, thats why the sink isn't overflowing. You just use a lot of dishes.

My first week as a solo police officer I "saved" a toddler who escaped their home. It was right as winter was rolling in and it was maybe 40 degrees. A few hours later, as the sun had set, I see a half naked toddler near a treeline down a private road about a mile from his house. Hopped out of my patrol car, grabbed him, and stuffed him into my jacket. Went back to the car, pumped up the heat, and radioed for medical/fire. They arrived, the news crews arrived, and the firefighters got all the credit.

I believe I was the first to remove the border on the commodore 64, shared the code freely with my friends, only to discover that my _"friend" _would post it as his own in a code-competition in a magazine back in the early 80's.

That's my first taste of treason and humanity.

I wrote a paper for our senior year. My partner did nothing, except screwing things up and writing like an infant.

We won the award for the best paper at graduation. He was the only one mentioned and got the award because he got 0.5 more points on his oral exam.

In like 5th or 6th grade my reading class was doing greek myths and fables like Odysseus and Perseus...

We had to choose between like 6 projects. Most kids chose easy ones like read a book do a cutout or report or glue paper on paper really easy busy work. I chose one where we had to make a throne for one of the gods. So i spent the entire weekend building a throne for hades (i liked skeletons and edgy stuff)

Took me a long time and a bunch of pain Styrofoam and dollar store arts and crafts to make a throne that really expressed what hades was all about. I then took a skeleton guy from the budget Halloween area and put him on the throne. Presentation time came around even though my throne was bomb diggidy i am awkward and got a C on the speaking portion. Whatever its the throne that was mainly interested in

I never got the throne back. It was used a display in the library which is cool and all but i was never told that and as far as the random kid knew it was nameless cuz there was never any "Made by : " stickers on it.

So my hard worked art was shoved on display with no real credit on it for like half the school year and when i got it back the kids who passed by messed with it and it was missing bits and pieces and the entire skeleton was gone. got an A on the throne which averaged the grade to a B. But if i just did the easy flip books or whatever it was i would have gotten the same grade because the dumb girl who sat near me got a better grade for trash that took her like 10 minutes to do.

About 20 years ago my engine company (fire department) went to an arson call. Somebody stuck burning paper inside somebody's apartment door mail slot. The fire didn't take hold and it became more of a police department scene. Just before left the scene, the mentally-unstable tenant, who was suspected of the arson, grabbed a rifle and charged past us. He was running toward police that were headed downstairs about a floor below. My captain and I grabbed him and subdued him until the police came back and disarmed him.

The police department never thanked us for nor acknowledged our actions that night. I'm sure they were embarrassed that they didn't properly clear and secure the apartment. I doubt it was ever mentioned in any report, and it chaps me a bit that it's probably because of pride. But of course I'm glad we were able to help and would definitely do it again.

Notified my neighbors that their house was on fire, helped them exit. Went back in for their two dogs (mucho flames at this point). Walked across the street to tell my wife I was fine, sat down, walked back over to make sure the neighbors were going to be fine (police and fire on the scene by this point) cops told me to leave or be arrested and wouldn't let me get checked out for smoke inhalation.

Back in 2009 I used to work in social media development and I came up with a simple idea:"what if we had a special slot for a new photo we ask people to take, with them having the site name and their username written on a piece of paper? ... we can give them a little verified green check mark if they do it"

I think a few sites had done 'verification' back then but it was mostly pertaining to a verified email address. We had a Philippine admin team just checking photos on the backend so they were all manually approved. So yeah, in my most modest fantasies, I like to think that I helped that check mark become the standard you see now.

A lot of people on my course in college left all their coursework to the last minute for the whole year, i'm talking 1 week before the deadline most people still had the the first assignment to finish so i stayed from 8 am to 10pm everyday that last week including on my birthday to help them out, some of them even got distinctions when they would have been disqualified without me and yet the next year rolls round and not one credited me for helping them and most got openly hostile if i suggested that i did help them.

When I was just out of high school, my dad was having some alcohol issues. I lived with my boyfriend, was going to college full time, and worked full time. I'd drive the hour to my dad's house to stock his fridge once a week. I paid his utilities for him for almost two years. I endured drunken 2am phone calls during this time. I decided to take a semester off, to get ahead on money, and didn't go back. After about two years of this, my dad got a DUI and quit drinking.

Flash forward ten years. My little brother and sister are 10 and 12 years younger than me, and are just beginning college. Our dad pays their tuition, their apartment rent, visits them to take them out to eat, and sends them cash every week. And "jokes" with me that maybe one of them will get their degree and do something with their lives.

It was absolutely my choice to do everything that I did, but some acknowledgement of my help would be great.

I actually donated my bone marrow to a totally random woman and, from what I'm told, directly saved her life. I asked the registry people if I could call and check on her or send a card or something, but apparently she's refused to have any contact with _"The donor" _- me.

I don't ever bring it up in real life because if you donate and talk about it, I think it somewhat negates the meaning of the act itself. But, yeah. Nobody actually knows I did that and the one woman who does, for some reason, refuses to have contact with me.