There are moments in our lives where we think something is a REALLY good idea. In these moments, you feel like you have it all together, and that your plan is foolproof. Unfortunately, when reality hits, you quickly realize that your idea was actually really freaking stupid. Just listen to these Redditors, as they tell you the stories of how their genius plans went to sh*t.
u/Persondynamo2222 asked: What is your best "Well that backfired." story?
Ouch!
When I was a kid at summer camp, I once attached some skyrockets to one of those balsa wood gliders. I tossed it out toward the lake after lighting the rockets and it flew normally for a few seconds until the rockets kicked in. It shot straight up, looped over our heads, and landed right on one of the councilors.
No bug juice for me that night.
It literally backfired.
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Decided to burn some newspaper outside in a toilet I had just replaced, because I didn't want risking the grass catching on fire.
Well, heat caused toilet to explode, sending burning newspaper everywhere.
Grass caught on fire.
So much for taking the high road.
Trying to shake hands with my bully, thinking this would diffuse the situation. Got punched in the throat.
And while I don't advocate it, this is why people assault their bullies in the middle of lunch by slamming a bunch bunch of books behind their head into the table.
Not such a smart idea.
In my first apartment I had a bag vacuum (as opposed to a canister vacuum), and the bag was full. I had no replacement bags, so I used painter's tape to attach a Walmart bag. I thought I was frugal genius, and patted myself on the back as I switched it on.
Didn't work at all. Almost immediately the bag blew right off, and a bunch of dirt blew all over the place... all the dirt that was stuck in the vacuum since the previous bag was full.
Ow, right in the feels.
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Had friends at a lunch table who always made fun of this girl who sat by herself. I invited her to our table one day because I felt bad for her.
Yup, you can see where this is going.
She immediately and 100% replaced me, and they all realized it was even more awesome to make fun of me. Jokes on them, I got to eat lunch with my civics teacher after that.
So it goes.
Hired for a position I was overqualified for.
Over performed.
Asked for a promotion.
Fired.
Was probably the right decision.
A girl I knew dated a guy I was also friends with. Really sweet, doting guy, not the best looking, but a really lovely lad. I went on a night out with his girlfriend, my partner at the time and his friend Jay. We drank and danced etc and at the end of the night, my friend and Jay were kissing.
We spoke the next day and she swore it was a one-off but ended up meeting him twice after that so I told her if she didn't tell her partner, I would as he was my friend too and didn't deserve it. In the end I told him and he thanked me. Then she spoke to him, cried a river and managed to talk him round into forgiving her and falling out with me.
Been a few years since and neither one spoke to me since. They're still together but I don't know how he can trust her.
A bad flight.
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Sitting on an airplane doing a crossword puzzle. My pen stopped writing, so I snapped it up and down a couple of times. Ahhhh, pen works again.
Guy beside me starts freaking out and yelling for the stewardess. I look over at him and see a thin line of black ink running from the left shoulder of his crisp, starched white shirt to the right hip of his pants.
I pretended like I had been asleep, and he blamed some random kid across the aisle.
The airline gave him a voucher or something to pay for the dry cleaning.
Poor dad.
I was skiing with my dad on high slope on a windy day. It was slippery and I fell. Unable to stop, I descended about 100 meters on my butt before stopping. I was still a little shocked trying to stand up when my dad stopped right before me to mock me.
But it's still slippy and he fell. And he descended 100 meters on his behind before stopping.
It was hilarious.
That's just an accident waiting to happen.
This actually happened to my teacher, she entered an axe throwing competition and while winding up before throwing, it was behind her head. When she threw it she hit the back of her head with the handle. She knocked herself out and the blade of the axe almost sliced her head.
They clearly weren't thinking.
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When I was a kid, I wanted to use our little bush outside as a slingshot. I put a pretty big rock on the end of the tall shrub, pulled it back, and let go.
I didn't see it go forward, it went up instead. I decided to run a few feet backwards to get out of the way. It landed directly on top of my head.
Don't play with fire.
This is why kids shouldn't play with fire. I was 7ish, living in a duplex community at the end of a cul de sac. One side was empty lots that boarded a canyon there was a huge pepper tree all the neighbor kids liked to hang under. One day a couch appeared, the couch pretty quickly got silly and moldy even in the summer it was cooler and damp under the tree which is the main reason we liked it. I quickly got the idea to burn the couch. Little fire couch is gone shade spot is back to it's cool calm glory.
Now this was early 80's so that couch was from the 70's maybe the 60's. The cushion foam, actually solid state rocket fuel. The moment we set the corner of one cushion on fire it was out of control. Flipping it over to smoother it just gave it access to the cotton batting. That couch went up in seconds, and all the leaves and old dead pepper corns during and popping. The fire spread to the tree, the field it was in bone dry.
We barely got down into the canyon before getting engulfed. The fire spread to the entire empty lot, spread to almost cashing a house down the way on fire. They got the canyon out before it got too far, they had to stop the trolly for a few hours. No copters but it was close.
Uhhhh....
I almost forgot, when I was a freshman in college I had a hard time befriending other girls. I decided the best approach would be to find out who every girl on my hall was attracted to and get very close to them. I thought the girls in my hall would be impressed and ask me to show them how to do the same or ask me to become their mentor.
That's not what happened. They hated me and did everything they could to put me down and isolate me. It does make more sense to me now though.
Bad kitty!
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One of my cats is afraid of the other one. The other is a viper cat. They were between my room and the hallway, and I tried to close the door to try to separate them.
Both cats leaped at each other and I was caught in the middle. Got one leg stretched like crazy and some were kind of deep.
Don't bite off more than you can chew.
1 month into a new job I volunteered to do a special project to impress my new boss. It turned out to be way more complicated than I thought it would be. 2 months later I had made 0 progress and was fired for not doing enough.
That same week my roommate moved out and I had to start paying his portion of the rent.