You know what they say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Because the people who have our best interests in mind typically have good intentions when they give us advice, but there's a chance that that advice can go horribly wrong.
Try not to follow the bad advice given here, because you don't want to get the results that these guys did.
U/Duckerton375 asked: What's the worst advice someone ever gave you, but you still followed?
The workplace can bring a cornucopia of terrible advice. Don’t follow these unless you want to get fired.
Bad jobs are usually not worth it.
Stick with a job no matter how bad it is. I stayed with a terrible job working retail, dealing with horrible customers and sexual harassment. I was told I wouldn't find anything better.
"No, no, you misunderstand. I said you wouldn't find anything better at making you feel like complete garbage."
This gets really creepy really fast.
frustrated workplace GIFGiphy"After you put in a job application, you need to call them at least once a day every day until they hire you."
Note: this did not get me hired. It got me called out by the HR person I was calling and forbidden to ever contact their facility again.
I work for a law firm that employees over 1500 people in the home office alone. Once I received a call from the building security saying, "Insert Name is here to speak with the owner." Well we are run by a committee so that's odd. Found out they just applied for a job and wanted to talk directly to the person that would potentially hire them. Told him the firm will contact them to schedule an interview. They refused to leave without "talking to the owner." Had security escort them out of the building.
This is absolutely not true.
"Sleep is for people who do not want success" great words from my uncle, it almost killed me.
Now I may be oversleeping.
Interpersonal relationships are also a big breeding ground for terrible advice. Don’t listen to any of these.
Heartbreaking.
My father always tought me and my brother that "having friends is bad and in the end they will never be there for you" so everytime I told my father about my friends he would get kinda mad and give me the advice to stop talking to them.
Now I am afraid of people and have several trust issues, thanks dad.
This won’t end well.
A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphyIn the fifth grade my teacher was talking about bullying, then she said "if anyone tries to bully you just agree with them." So the next time I got bullied I agreed with the bully and they bullied me more.
Dude one time I saw an anti bullying video that told the victims to just BE NICE TO THE BULLY. Like the bully was hurling insults and the victim was smiling and complimenting him. My first thought was about how much I hated the mere thought that this would work. My second thought was of how the people who came up with that method had clearly never been bullied.
Oof.
When I met my now wife at the age of 19, one of my coworkers said that it's very important to start at the bottom with presents and work your way up, she still has the socks I gave her on our first anniversary on the wall over our bed as a reminder...
I'm still trying to teach my boyfriend about good presents and bad presents. Biscuits from the supermarket = bad present. Cheap unbranded laptop battery from China as my only present = bad present (and only lasted 2 months). Anything off my 7-page wishlist = good present. It's literally a list of things I want to receive as presents.
Can tell you from experience that this is a bad idea.
Had a falling out with some friends. My husband recommended I reach out to an old friend who ghosted me suddenly in a manner that induced some pretty severe abandonment trauma. Went for it anyways because "it's been so long, surely they changed". Am now experiencing the same things as last time.
When you follow bad advice, it can lead to mistakes that you just can’t come back from.
Buying a house is tricky.
for sale dancing GIF by Lisa VertudachesGiphy"Buy a home now before the prices go up!" -my FIL in 2006.
We bought in 2007 and paid $259,500 for our 1,300 sq ft house (we really couldn't afford it and had an 80/20 so we had 8% interest for one loan and 6% on the other) and in 2008 it was worth $97,000 so refinancing wasn't even an option. We watched all of our neighbors walk away or get foreclosed on but we kept paying our bills and as of this very moment our house is worth $462,000. I'm so happy we stuck it out, we both worked our @sses off and the house will be paid off in 2 years.
It worked out for us, it's a horrible idea. Especially since 1300 sq ft houses are $460+k
My heartbreaks for future generations, I honestly don't know how people are going to afford housing in the future.
It’s there for a reason.
"Never apply for any government assistance."
Cue years of suffering trying to work full-time with a painful disability. Quit a particularly terrible job, and wanted to apply for food aid until I could find another gig; a friend with lots of DHS experience recommended I apply for Social Security "just to get in the system." Turns out my disability was bad enough to get accepted the first time, which I wasn't expecting. Really could've used that support, oh, the 30+ previous years of my life.
Credit is important to have.
I was told to not get a credit card until after college. I was super fortunate to have my college paid for so I had no loans, car paid in cash, no credit card or anything to start building credit. Found myself out in the world at 22 years old with a credit score of 0.
So while a lot of this bad advice came from trusted people, oftentimes they were too misinformed to give that advice in the first place. Don't trust the word of one person--do your research, and make decisions for yourself.
It'll be way better in the long run
Not to startle any of you, but death stalks us.
We all have nightmares about diseases and murderers.
But what if, in the end, we just choke on a pickle we inhaled too fast?
Maybe instead of a pickle, a little coleslaw would have been the wiser choice.
We'll never know.
The most minute things can send us packing.
Redditor SuffocatedByThighs wanted to discuss the things that can extinguish our lives in the most basic ways, so they asked:
"What simple mistake has ended lives?"
Tripping over untied shoelaces.
It can break your neck.
TIE YOUR SHOES!!!
Off the Rocks
On No Falling GIF by Outside TVGiphy"There have been too many instances of rock climbers rappelling off of the ends of their ropes, which could have been easily avoided by tying stopper knots at the ends of their ropes."
LZRDLZRD
Seconds
"I worked at a tire place for a summer and the first thing they told me was 'See that torque wrench? One mistake with this and you can kill a whole family in a matter of seconds.' I thought well, better take this thing seriously."
FrenchMicrowave
"Man for a second I was thinking 'F**k you'd have to swing that thing around fast to take out an entire family' and just bluescreened on the idea of changing a tire."
lurking_my_a**_off
How Vexing...
"THERAC-25. The world’s deadliest software error. Cost several radiation patients their lives by administering lethal amounts of radiation, and for a while, the doctors didn’t even know."
Longjumping_Event_59
"THERAC-25 suffered a particularly vexing sort of error known as a race condition. Essentially, the circuit required multiple inputs in a particular sequence, but sometimes the timing of that sequence could get thrown out of whack and it would lead to all sorts of nonsensical output."
"This is less than ideal when all you're doing is manipulating pixels, but when your software is handling radiation beams you really don't want this to happen."
"Even more vexing is that race conditions are frequently heisenbugs, which can vanish altogether when one attempts to study them. If you don't have a good idea of what's causing the error, you may never cotton on to what sort of bad input is required to test it. Under those circumstances, it's easy to write them off as imaginary, only to then find."
dancingmadkoschei
Heavy Drifting
"Leaving the stranded vehicle on the road in winter and trying to walk to get help. It happens in rural parts of our province once or twice a year and they find the body a few days later. They get disoriented and freeze."
Regina_Runner
"I got blown off a road in high winds. Heavy drifting. Less than a mile from a friend's house after I had turned around. Drifts made it impossible to complete the trip. Trying to run a mile in full blizzard conditions was a fight for my life as an in-shape 24-year-old male athlete.
"rotyag
Simple Slips
Uh Oh Omg GIF by BounceGiphy"Almost any simple mistake can end a life if you're an anesthesiologist, that's how my grandpa died in his early 60s."
dwserps
Any second. Any moment.
Stay vigilant people.
Celibacy could be better...
Oh My Wow GIFGiphy"Not being honest with doctors about Viagra. It has many dangerous drug interactions and can cause a lot of problems from what I’ve heard. Trust me the doctor ain’t gonna judge you guys, they have seen many more embarrassing things. And it would suck to die because you wanted to hide something just for it to be later stated in your death certificate."
The_upsetti_spagetti
Check the Numbers
"As a healthcare worker, giving the wrong amount of insulin."
UzumakiHorror
"During the first shift of my first clinical rotation in nursing school, I watched a nurse draw up insulin out of an auto-injector pen that was CLEARLY marked to specifically not do that AND she was drastically wrong about the dosage and almost killed a guy by giving him essentially like a hundred times the intended dose."
someguynamedg
Stay In
"Pulling the knife out of someone."
rcadephantom
"Yeah, I did that but it was a broken tree branch that had impaled my leg. Without even thinking I pulled it out. Blood started gushing so I pulled off my shirt and tied it into a pressure bandage. I was lucky I didn’t bleed to death."
Olddog_Newtricks2001
"Shock is an IQ reducer. I once sliced a bit off the side of my hand with a broken glass, and sort of dazedly picked off the piece of me and tried to stick it back on. It did not work."
UncannyTarotSpread
Stay Dirty
"Mixing cleaning ingredients."
Jonnysource
"My dad was trying to unclog his kitchen drain and mixed drain cleaners by adding one then adding another a few minutes later. It started bubbling and he began coughing intensely. I heard him coughing from the other room, saw what happened, and opened the nearby window to get rid of the chlorine gas he just produced."
"I forgot there was a large hive of wasps that had moved into that window and they did not appreciate this unexpected interruption. I took him to the emergency room for the gas exposure and it was tough explaining that the wasp stings were not why we were there."
CharmingTuber
Dear God
Jeff Goldblum What GIF by The Late Late Show with James CordenGiphy"A friend’s husband locked himself out of their home. He tried to get in through a window that had security bars. While squeezing through his foot slipped and he essentially hung himself on the window sill."
Cokej01
Life is fleeting. Here is proof.
LIVE!! But live smart.
But thanks to an unnamedRedditor, some of those were revealed when they asked strangers online:
"What are some really creepy facts you know ?"
Scientific facts like these can be downright terrifying.
The Sound Of Prey
"Dogs like squeezing toys because it sound like a dying animal."
– Nain6969
"My dog loves squeeze toys except the chirping bird toy we got for our cats. If he hears it he picks it up very gently and brings it to us and then whines and is distressed by it."
– CopperTucker
Ominous Mass
"There is a black hole called Phoenix a, and it is estimated to be 100 billion times the mass of our Sun, comparable to the mass of an entire galaxy. Its event horizon is 590 billion kilometers wide, or more than 100 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto, or about 1/16 of a lightyear wide."
"To get a visualization of how big that is on a human scale, lets shrink our solar system by 1 trillion times."
"The Sun would be 1 millimeter wide, and Pluto would be a little more than 5 meters away, and that black hole would be 590 meters wide. For reference, Alpha Centauri would be about 40 kilometers away at that scale."
– Youpunyhumans
Easy Passage
"Take away the stomach acid and an octopus could go into your mouth and crawl out your a**hole."
– Resident-Clue1290
Creepy Crawlies
"Spiders, one of the most evolutionary advanced species on the planet. We keept killing them, they began to get better at hiding. They can also convince us we have killed them when we haven't. Rain doesn't destroy their webs, not even a pressured hose does anymore."
"Also forgot to mention, they can do nothing, sleep all day and wake up to find food in their webs. They do not need to hunt or attack like almost every animal."
– Unlucky_Ducky23
Some of the sinister forces around us are the work of humans.
Murderers In Our Midst
"As many as 50 serial killers are active in the US and on the loose."
– Individual_Bit_8528
"Wayyy more than 50 if you include organized crime affiliated killers. Probably a lot more than 50 lone weirdos killing strangers too, but definitely hundreds or more if you include the former demographic."
– fluffedpillows
Corruption
"A guy disappeared in my country. Everyone knew he died. Everyone knew who did it. But the guys were policemen. So the investigation was so ruined it became ridiculous."
"There are people on this planet who can interven in the investigations made against them, decide to block them and if you do something about it, no one will investigate when you will mysteriously vanish."
"Can't fathom to be so powerful but yet use this power to be so heartless."
– Least-Designer7976
A Patient's Risk
"In 45 states, doctors and medical students are legally allowed to practice pelvic exams on patients who are under anesthesia without being granted explicit consent to do so."
– TrailerParkPrepper
Feasting On Flesh
"The first known human cannibal was a Neanderthal whose victims' 100,000-year-old bones were discovered in Moula-Guercy, a cave in France."
"There have been sites where the act has occurred involving the cannibalism of children leading some to speculate the act was not just done for food, but that it was done as a warning to rivals."
"Some anthropologists suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies as early as the Paleolithic."
"To this day only a few countries have laws which explicitly criminalize the practice of cannibalism, and the act can still be found in isolated regions of five different Countries."
– JustSomeApparition
Death itself is a mystery.
Ill-Fated Flight
"The crew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia was still alive for several minutes during the fatal and futile reentry attempt."
"The first signs of trouble were observed at 8:53:46. More and more started to go wrong but Mission Control was able to maintain communication through 8:59:32. Sometime after that, the shuttle entered a flat spin while traveling approximately Mach 15, which is enough to cause disorientation and very painful injury, but most likely not unconsciousness or death. Review of recovered data recording shows that Commander Husband and Pilot McCool were still attempting to restore systems and recover control past 9:00:05. The first lethal event was depressurization, which occurred between 9:00:35 and 9:00:59."
"All that means that the crew was very much alive and very much fighting to maintain/regain control for more than 7 minutes despite knowing that realistically their chances of success were pretty much zero."
– HoopOnPoop
After The Chopping
"Supposedly you're still aware for a few seconds after being decapitated."
– Broski225
"There was that one scientist or whatever who got beheaded in France. He said he would attempt to blink as many times as possible after his head was lopped off, for science, and his head did. I'm paraphrasing since I don't remember anything about the story but whatever. lol"
– Adkit
Now you know.
Some of the scariest things in life are our real living nightmares, and once you know about them, you can't unlearn them.
Reading through some of these examples, it's very clear that our world is a mysterious and creepy place to live in.
Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite.
"People who don’t get buddy-buddy with your neighbors, why?"
Awkward Greys Anatomy GIFClassic Conditioning
"I was raised in an area where we had no neighbors."
"Now living in a neighborhood it drives me crazy to be outside working in the yard with people on all sides."
"I miss privacy."- Best_Fondant_3027
Friendly, But Not Friends
"I'm friendly with all my neighbors but I'm not trying to hang out with them."
"I don’t have any cool neighbors I can relate to on a personal level other than the fact we live in the same area."- ibetyouranerd
"I'm not against it, but none of them seem interested in more than a 'hey' head nod."
"Which I'm okay with."- Toastybunzz
seth rogen film GIF by NEIGHBORSGiphyIf The Chemistry Isn't There...
"Unless my neighbors are really cool, and we have a good amount in common, I wanna keep the relationship to just waves, how do you do’s, and hey your house is on fire."
"I’m here for pleasantries and emergencies only… I don't need to hang out with you."- Mundane_Tour_3215
"Why would I want to?"
"The only thing I have in common with any of them is that we live on the same block."- great_auks
It's A Generational Thing...
"My neighbors are either half my age of thrice my age."- BarefootBestseller
Baby Boomers Dancing GIFGiphyNo One Likes A Gossip...
"Neighbors next to us and directly across the street gossiped about other neighbors within a few days of us moving to the neighborhood and meeting them."
"Like heavy stuff about affairs, sexual preferences, mental health issues, arguments, etc."
"Also, one of the neighbor’s kids is a disrespectful drama queen."
"I try to steer my kids away from interacting with this kid, but they live next door."- PhatBitty862
My House, My Rules...
"Why would I?"
"My home is the one place I am not required to interact with others."
"I don't want to be bothered and I don't want to bother."
"I'll be friendly if I pass by them or something but I'm not going out of my way to befriend them simply because they live near me."- LunaMay196
Cultural Thing
"I live in Sweden."
"We don't do that here."- SweetWodka420
Sweden Flag Sport GIF by xponentialdesignGiphyYou See Them Every Day...
"Same reason you don't date someone from work."- dudeab1des
"Separation of church and state."
"I have friends, and those friends have to text me to see if I'm home."- Doyce_7
Just Human Nature
"What do I look like? Some sort of extrovert?"- heyitsvonage
Season 5 April GIF by Parks and RecreationGiphyQuality Over Quantity
"I try to get buddy-buddy with as few people as possible IRL."
"I like to live a simple life, and new connections beget new obligations."- Tylensus
Quite The Assortment Of Characters
"One is incredibly reclusive so I leave her alone and one has more faces than the town hall clock so I stay tf away the others are pretty ok though."- Banana_boof
No one should feel obligated to become friends with their neighbors.
On the flip side though, no one should be averse to it either.
After all, when you click, you click, and when you don't...
Well, you get the picture.