Karma is real. Basically, your one job in life is to not be a complete jerk, so when you fail that test, the universe will arrange to get you back. And we'll be watching. And possibly laughing.
u/forevergallifralone asked Reddit:
What's the best case of Instant Karma you've witnessed?
Here were some of the best cases.
Karmic Capitalism
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Two of my friends and I were playing monopoly sometime around freshman year of high school. One of my friends owned all the railroads, meaning any player who landed on a railroad would pay him 200.
The entire game felt like I was just moving my token from railroad to railroad, paying my friend each time, having no opportunity to buy properties, and getting super frustrated (in reality it was probably only two or three times).
On my next roll, I quickly calculate which space I was going to land on as I start to move my token, and lo and behold, I was going to land on another f*cking railroad. I gracefully slide (cheat) passed the railroad and plop my piece on the next space, Chance.
Chance card read something as follows: "Move token to nearest railroad. Pay owner twice the amount."
I lost my sh*t.
'Nuff Said
I love car karma.
One time my dad was driving through a tunnel to get back from work. He was driving slower because it was snowing and extremely icy and, while it looked dry in the tunnel, it's pretty notorious for black ice.
Well this guy behind him is honking and flashing his lights while my dad is going a completely acceptable speed for the weather. The guy gets into the left lane and floors it into the tunnel. He hit a patch of black ice and immediately spun out and totaled his car.
Miraculously, no other cars were damaged, but that guy was lucky he walked away with no injuries.
Your Brain Took Control
I was at a touristy place at the top of a big cliff. People were hanging around at the top, just enjoying the view, and this one guy was eating a sandwich while staring at his phone. After he was done, he couldn't be bothered to find a trash can so he went to throw the sandwich wrappings off the cliff, but he got his hands confused and hurled his phone off the cliff instead.
Car-ma
A few years back, I was traveling on the interstate to meet some friends who attended a different college than I did for a weekend.
On the way there, I'm in the right hand lane, minding my own business, when a car tries to cut me off. No big deal right? Except she ended up clipping my bumper and running me off the road, with her driving speeds of ~80-85mph. Other driver keeps on going along her merry way, while I'm on the shoulder attempting to contact the local police to report an accident.
5 minutes later, a state trooper pulls up behind me and asks what happened. I explain the situation, describe the other vehicle, including a partial license plate number, and he asked if my car was still drivable. After confirming that it was, he said, "just follow me up to this next exit - I got a call about a driver who is out of gas and needs assistance."
We pull up to the next exit just shy of a gas station. Sure enough, it was the girl who was the other party in my hit and run. She tried to deny anything occurred, until the trooper looked at my front bumper damage, and her back end damage, assessed the paint colors matched, etc. Bonus is that her plate had the partial information I had gathered as she sped away.
Turns out, girl has no insurance and no license. Gets hauled off to jail on a hit-and-run, all because she couldn't slow her *ss down and be a decent driver.
Kick And Dodgeball
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Was working at a trampoline park which had two different dodge ball areas. One for kids 12 and under, another for 13 and up. Annoying little sh*t of a kid kept trying to sneak into the 13 and up game, running around, breaking rules, and basically being a pain. We couldn't really do much about it.
Eventually I just let him sneak on and not a moment later he got smacked beautifully in the face with a rubber ball. Actually sent him flying back a couple feet.
He wasn't so keen to play after that.
The Faceless Fight
I just walked into a crowded bar with my friend back when we were in our early 20's. Make our way around the entrance handrails and bam this dude smashes his shoulder into mine knocking me back. Thinking it was just an accident caused by a crowded bar I start to recover and this dude throws his shoulder into me again. Before I can even begin to react to the second more aggressive hit, this monstrosity of a bouncer watching the whole things go down, picks the guy up and literally throws him out the exit doors.
It all happened in a matter of 5 seconds. I don't think any other person in that bar, nor my friend, even saw it go down.
Post-Trauma
Maybe not instant but close enough.
Working as a medic a long time ago and get called for a leg injury at a Friday night soccer game. We get there and determine it's most likely a torn ACL, painful but basically any hospital can handle and it's not really a priority. So we explain to the patient it will pry be faster and a lot cheaper if she just wants to have someone else drive her to the hospital that's literally around the block.
Here comes the white knight into our story. This guy oozed friend zone, explained how he's a medical student going for his doctorate and she needs to go to the local trauma center, which is a good 30 min drive. We explain no, we'll go to the local they can handle it, however the patient pulls the nastiest look at us and says her friend knows more than my partner and I because he's actually studying medicine and we're just ambulance drivers.
My partner and I give each other that look. An ACL tear isn't priority for trauma center, especially on a Friday night. Drunk driving crashes and gun shot wounds are gonna be taking up the ER there. We oblige the the request with documented protest.
The friend rides with us, we make him ride up front. He explains how the surgeon there is his friend and she'll get seen right away. We roll in and sure enough there's about a dozen ambulance crews trying to unload patients in much worse cases than ours.
We get to triage after about 15 mins, and the Rsn tells us to put her in the waiting room, she starts crying bloody murder. Cherry on top she asks her friend to do something, he calls his "buddy" surgeon down. Turns out not his buddy but one of his teachers who proceeds to yell at him about thinking that an ACL tear needs to come to a trauma center.
She could have been in and out the hospital in an hour if she had listened to us.
Spaghetti Stains
During my lunch break at work a few years ago, I ran over to this convenience store that sold a few deli items and also had a lunch of the day special. That day it was spaghetti.
I walked into the store and headed to the back to the coolers to grab a drink and I start walking over to the line that was formed to grab a lunch. This older woman, who was talking to a woman not even close to the line, saw me walking and literally strong armed me to get in front of me. She full on shoulder checked me. The cashier saw it, looked at me and I just shook my head as if to not call her out on it.
She gets two orders of spaghetti. They come in a Styrofoam compartment tray. She walked towards the door and someone comes in that she knows so she's saying hi. I pay for my food and I'm out the door.
As, I'm walking to my truck, I hear a loud "OOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFF". I turn around and this woman is planked on the ground with spaghetti and meat sauce all over her white shirt.
The Cops Came Through
Worked at a convenience store several years ago (check my other posts for a couple of funny stories). This was back before gas pumps were all either card at the pump or prepay. It was about 7am and the morning rush was on. A suspicious fella pulled up to our farthest away pump and positioned his car so that it was not easily visible from the building. This is a dead giveaway for someone who is going to drive off without paying. My manager and I watch this guy as we are ringing up other customers and sure enough, when he filled up, he gets in the car and peels out making a run for the road. He leaves our lot via a small access rd that ends at a traffic intersection. Red light. He stops for the light, then decides he needs to get the hell out of dodge and guns it again through the red light. When he does, he breaks his drive shaft. Car coasts to a stop right in the middle of the intersection.
But wait....theres more...
Guy walks back INTO THE STORE, and asks if he can use our phone because his car breaks down! My manager says "sure, after you pay for the gas you just stole." Guy gets all indignant "I didnt steal no motherf*ckin gas!" getting more and more agitated and confrontational. Just then two police officers walk in. Now these are two lady cops, both in their late 50's early 60's that usually are stationed at the local high schools but always stop in for a coffee and a pastry. These ladies are the nicest people you'd ever meet, always with smiles on their faces. As soon as they turn the corner after entering, they see the guy getting into it with my manager. Their demeanor's changed in an instant, going from kindly grandmother to IM GOING TO KICK YOUR F*CKING TEETH IN in microseconds. They manhandle this guy away from my manager, push him up against the wall, cuff him and stuff him.
You know how you always think to yourself "Why is there never a cop around when you need one?" This time there was.
Reckless Endangerment
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I was driving on the freeway one day and needed to get over. I checked to make sure it was clear, signaled and changed lanes. I didn't realize there was an escalade coming up behind at over 100 mph in that lane. (He was going so fast that the lane looked clear when I checked 1 second ago.)
The escalade decided to teach me a lesson by acting like it wasn't going to stop and plow into me. There were now cars on both sides of me so I couldn't swerve out of the way. So the escalade screams up until last possible second and then hits the brakes hard so he matches my speed about a foot away from my bumper. While this is happening I'm freaking out and wobbling the car cause I think I'm going to get creamed.
The cop that was one lane over and 2 cars back immediately flipped on his lights and pulled them over. That was quite a roller coaster ride of emotions for me.
"Total" Karma
The first time I tried online dating was a f*cking disaster. The guy I texted wasn't too bad looking and seemed pretty normal. Until we met in person.
We decided to meet up at a coffee shop and drink some coffee together. That's when I found out that he was the biggest redneck I've ever met. I casually mentioned that I failed at my theoretical exam for my driver's license (my depression was at it's peak during that time, so I could hardly motivate myself to do anything at all, and studying was almost impossible). So apparently this guy thinks if you want a girl to like you, you better make fun of her failing at a test. He went on joking about how women are too dumb to drive. The people from the table next to ours looked at me and I could see from their faces that they felt sorry for me, because his insulting jokes didn't stop and he said them loud enough for everyone to hear.
I had no self-confidence back then so I just mumbled some bullsh*t excuse why I had to go home, got up and left.
Like half an hour later he called me, crying, because he had crashed his car - which he mentioned earlier was his one true love and his only hobby - into a tree. Nothing had happened to him but his car was so demolished that it couldn't be repaired.
Karma For My Ears
I'm from Denmark and I used to ride the bus 50ish minutes everyday to get to and from work. One day two people got on the bus a few stops after me: a rather large woman and a smaller man, both of them greenlanders (which becomes relevant later). I'm not sure what their relationship was - may have been mother and son, may have been a couple or something else.
As mentioned, the woman is rather large so she can't quite fit in the regular seats (which honestly is fair, there's not much legspace in our busses) so instead she sits in the middle portion of the bus where there are a few seats that are usually reserved for people with disabilities.
After a few minutes of driving she for some reason just kind of starts shouting? Not sure why or what and the man with her doesn't really do anything about it. I just turn the volume of my music up a bit and ignore it.
As we get closer to the city and more people enter the bus she starts bothering a lot of the people close to her, even going as far as to shouting at a girl who was exciting the bus (again, not sure exactly what she was shouting). Finally this older lady walks up to her and asks her firmly- but politely - to please keep her voice down. Upon hearing this she just kind of flips out and screams something along the lines of: "IS IT JUST BECAUSE I'M FROM GREENLAND? YOU FUCKING RACIST!" So the older lady just kind of backs off. At this point no one really wants to do anything about the shouting woman in the bus, and the mood is a bit tense in the bus.
A few more minutes pass as people enter and exit the bus, shouting lady still doing her thing, but then a ticket inspector enters the bus. He goes down the aisle between the seats and check the tickets and when he gets to her it turns out that she has no ticket. Her and the man with her are then asked to leave the bus with the ticket inspector and surely had to pay a fine for that.
Of course I have no idea what was going on and why she was shouting, but she was bothering so many people that it was so satisfying to watch her at least having to pay a fine for not purchasing a ticket.
Karma For The Bill
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I often bring junk cars to a scrap processing yard and I did one of the workers there a favor and sold him a good running car for very cheap. he didn't have the extra $200 to pay so I told him it was ok and to get it to me another day. Well he went to ask his boss for an advance on his check to pay me sooner than later. (he gets by paycheck to paycheck) well his boss wasn't having it for some reason and instantly went off on him and completely humiliated him in front of everyone when he was only trying to right by me and my business. About 10 minutes later a HUGE tractor trailer misinterpreted the turn on to the scale and took out his bosses car completely tearing through the metal of his car from front to back damaging his doors fenders and mirrors and windows finally ripping his front bumper off completely. The worker I sold the car to right after says "what a shame, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy." You could see the blood boiling in his bosses face.
Karma That Would Make Macauley Culkin Proud
In 1988 when I was 8 and my brother was 10, we were flying from Florida to Arizona for the holidays by ourselves. Because we were kids flying solo, we were sat first on the plane. My bro and I are seated in the middle and window seats. A man in his 70's or so comes down the aisle and sits down in the aisle seat in our row. He hems and haws for a moment and starts aggressively pushing the stewardess call button. The stewardess comes over and he proceeds to go into a rant about how he paid good money for his seat and doesn't want to sit next to children. The stewardess asks him if we've bothered him and he says no. She tries to accommodate him by finding him another seat. He flat out refuses to move because again, he paid good money for this seat! The stewardess says "no problem, sir". It's a packed plane (holidays) so she says "Guess what kids! You're moving to first class!" The old guy starts saying "well, I'll move to first class, that's not a problem." The stewardess promptly says "no no no sir, you paid good money for this seat. You can stay right here." We moved to first class and it was tubular.
Sometimes Karma IS My Parent
That'd have to be me witnessing it with my Dad - he's wiring in a fridge and it doesn't have a fuse, so he puts a fuse in which might be too low in amps, he isn't sure what it was supposed to have in it, a fuse which predictably, blows and trips the breaker.
So, he grabs a piece of wire and uses that. Keep in mind that at this particular time I just passed an electronics and computing course, so I say to him "If that wasn't because the ampage was too low on the fuse and instead the fuse was right but something in the fridge is broken, instead of blowing a fuse it'll blow up the fridge instead because that wire won't melt like a fuse would".
Nah, he says, following by those iconic words "I know what I'm doing". I argue with him - pointing out there's a reasonable chance this thing will just blow if you turn it on, check what fuse it was supposed to have and get one of those.
He's adamant, this'll be fine he says, "I know what I'm doing".
The circuit breaker isn't too far away from the kitchen, I can see in through the door which the fridge is by if I look down the hallway.
Switch it all back on he says.
I saw the puff of smoke and flash of light from where I was stood, along with the sizeable "bang" that came from the bottom of the fridge.
Karma In A Court Of Law
This still makes me smile (something I've posted before, maybe from an old account).
When I was in university I took the bus to and from school every day (~1hr each way). The bus terminal for our suburb was at the end of my street through a path and on top of a big big hill down which you had to drive with all the other traffic to get into the city.
Get on the bus, the bus rolls up to the red light to wait for the green to pull out onto the main road.
Light turns green, bus starts to pull out. Suddenly the driver slams on the brakes, everyone lurches forward hard, and the driver lays on the horn.
As I look up I see this big ass silver Cadillac blasting through the red light. What's worse, the woman driving was this dyed-blonde-hair prissy 60s woman in a red power suit who simply flips the bus driver off without even looking and barrels down the hill.
The bus driver curses her out loud and we carry on.
Now, at the bottom of this hill the police often set up speed traps because they can catch people coming out of a curve on the road on the hill, people tend to go way over the limit in morning rush hour.
Guess who got caught?
The bus driver pulls the bus over by the speed trap and beckons a police officer who comes into the entry part of the bus. The bus driver says, "It still illegal to run red lights in this province?"
To which the cop replies, "Sure is. Did she?"
Bus driver, "Ohhh yeah."
The cop hands her his card and says, "Well here's my card, get in touch and if you're willing to come into court and testify we can tack that on as well."
And the bus driver says, "Honey. I get paid to go to court - I'll see you there."
And no joke, the whole bus erupted in applause.
We could have driven over an IED on the way to school that day and I still would have called it a good day.