Procrastination seems to be one of those things that haunts almost everyone. It creeps up on you at the worst times, whether you have that big essay to write, or laundry to do, that just hangs over your head. Some stories are worse than others, and these Redditors can tell you the worst of the worst.
u/Notyourusualbitch asked: What was your worst "s**t I procrastinated for too long" experience?
A gut punch of guilt.
It was my daughters wedding last year. I still feel sick when I think about it. Nothing went too wrong and she was still happy with it but I seriously dropped the ball on getting the decorations ready, the food. For all the planning we had put into it, it was not the glamorous affair it was going to be.
The day of the wedding my brain completely checked out. Only half of what was planned got done. She just celebrated her 1st anniversary and I still can't think about her wedding without getting a gut punch of guilty. I want a do over.
This is a mood.
I had to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer. I procrastinated it for 12 hours or more.
I have a front loading washer, it spins really fast. Loads come out requiring much less drying time than my old washer. Downside is that things get really compressed and wrinkled, especially when I leave a load in overnight.
I made the mistake of leaving my down comforter in there overnight before drying it. It compressed most of the down into tiny pills and drying it did not reverse the damage. I've washed this thing many times before but I destroyed it this time.
German is HARD!
Right now. As I'm f**king off on Reddit with a German test I have not started studying for occurring in 3 hours and 18 minutes.
EDIT: for the curious, the test went well. Made a few dumb vocabulary mix-ups, but I would estimate my grade between 84-93.
Did this exact same thing in college. Like to the tee including my procrastination being a German test.
I'm pretty sure the only reason I passed German in college is because it was my minor and all the professors were probably so sick of seeing me year after year so my senior year they just passed me so I could get out of their hair.
Oh well it paid off and I sent my final professor flowers and candy for helping me pass that class and hence graduate college.
Definitely overcompensated.
In like grade 6 or 7 when we were doing a unit on probability in math our teacher decided it would be fun to have us all essentially turn the class into a casino so he had us all design games where we weren't allowed to make it rigged so it was impossible to win but the "house" had to win 60% of the time.
It took me forever to come up with a good idea and when I finally did I realized I had procrastinated way too long and I only had 2 nights to finish this project out of the two weeks we had so I completely over compensated.
My dad's a builder so let's just say at a very young age I knew how to use power tools and there was a lot of wood laying around my house. I designed a car racing game that you'd bet on and there were 5 lanes on a wood track about 8 feet long that slopes downhill. I drilled holes in the lanes at the top and there was a board underneath on a hinge that had nails in it. The nails fit through the holes and when you ripped the lower board the nails would retract and release the cars.
The way I accomplished the 60% house win was I hammered 2 of the 5 nails in a little bit farther than the other 3 so those cars would release slightly earlier. I would also mix up the hot wheels cars each time so people wouldn't quite catch on. I had a couple of sports cars and then some heavier ones like a dump truck and a school bus and so the weight difference between the cars gave the illusion of it being completely random.
On presentation day I quickly realized I had completely over engineered this casino game because most other people had just come up with card tricks or some variation on Plinko or Wheel of Fortune.
Senioritis is REAL.
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I studied for my MCAT a few days ago. Not the 3 months recommended, not even 3 weeks, but 3 days before.
There was also a particularly stupid one in high school that cost me. I was in my senior year and deep in senioritis. I slacked off most in my military history class, putting in the bare amount of effort for an easy A. The class had weekly current event papers due. Really simple things, just write a paragraph about some conflict or new piece of tech being revealed in the world. It had the most lenient late policy ever. You could submit stuff months later for credit.
Well I just got super lazy and didn't hand in 3 months worth of current event papers. I waited until the last minute, as grades were being entered and frozen in the system, to sprint out of my gym class, print them at the library and run over to submit them.
And I couldn't. The teacher had locked in grades literal seconds before I opened the door and was getting ready to leave. From an easy A to a D in minutes, when it didn't need to be. Which messed my GPA and put me toward my safety school for college...
If I ever had the chance to redo high school, that'd be on my bucket list.
That's awful.
Not mine, but it still involves me.
My boyfriend was assigned homework at the beginning of the semester in September that was due before Christmas break in December.
He didn't do it despite me reminding him to over the course of those 3 months and instead waited until my birthday (which is December 13th) to cancel my birthday plans and do homework instead. After he promised to make my birthday "the best one ever" (I don't celebrate my birthday because my parents ruined it for me as a kid and eventually didn't allow me to celebrate it any longer, so it's a very tainted day for me).
I hadn't felt that unimportant in a long time.
Don't do it.
I had a very important 12 page paper to write for school. Had to do a lot of research to do for it, think we got like 2 or 3 months to write it. And my dumb a** didn't want to get started until i actually forced myself to.
A WEEK before we had to turn it in. I slept about 20 hours in that whole week (I wrote down how much I slept on a note in my phone somewhere), going two days without any, while having to go to school and I was actually a few minutes late on the day of the deadline because I was printing out the whole thing that morning.
Little bit of advice: Don't be like me.
That's impressive.
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Waited till 1.5 hours before the deadline to write an art theory essay for school. Submitted it with 1 minute to spare and went to bed (it was due at midnight that night.)
One week later, I get my grade back:
96%
And this is why I still do art theory as an elective folks.
Oh man.
I've been wanting to apply to this Web Design course for a year. Applications were from May to the end of this month. Procrastinated and applied only in the end of August.
Course has very little spots left now and I may not get in at all. Apparently it was a first come first serve thing. I feel terrible and desperate and I still don't know what I'm gonna do.
Oops.
That one time I had a coding project that I had a month to finish. In the beginning, I was like "there's a month, I can chill a bit this week". And then it was "Three weeks left. That should be enough time. I'll start tomorrow, let's relax today."
And all of a sudden it was only one week left of a month-long project and I hadn't even decided what I was going to code.
The worst kind of surprise.
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One time a professor emailed us a pdf about 20 pages to read. I thought cool, I can read that on the bus on the way to class that morning.
I open the pdf, and each 'page' was two pages Xeroxed from a book, front and back of each. So all in all it was 80 pages....
That sucks.
The one that comes to mind was college hunting. I was applying to MIT, which requires recommendations from two or three teachers (I remember two, but w/e) as well as some other things. I gave one to the accounting teacher and one to my math teacher. The accounting teacher finished the recommendation reasonably quickly. The math teacher forgot about it until it was too late. I should have recognized he was a piece of garbage, but I also should have been on him to get it done. Waiting till it was too late to ask another teacher crushed me.
I think despondency about not having a real shot at the school I wanted eventually led to my quitting the school I did get in, and everything that's happened since.
Relatable content.
I decided to leave my last class of my degree for an online summer course. I procrastinated it so bad that I withdrew. So I decided to do it online this spring....procrastinated again and withdrew. I talked to my university and I have taken too many semesters off and will have to apply for the program again.
I have a job I love in my field, but f**k this keeps me up at night sometimes. Just one stupid class and I can't seem to do it.
Now THAT'S talent.
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I walked into a second to last class ready to plan my final project. Only to find the project was due right now and I hadn't started. I said I forgot it at home, ran back, and did it while the class was ongoing and managed to still rock a solid B grade.
Amen.
Second year at university. I partied too hard, didn't do any work, left it too late to catch-up. Had to repeat the year.
Then after working for several years, I went back to get a postgrad qualification, procrastinated the written work too long and didn't complete it on time.
Managed to get extensions beyond extensions while working full time but still kept procrastinating.
After a year I eventually had to hold my hands up and admit I hadn't finished the qualification to my employer and had to leave.
That was the worst time of my life.
Depression is a bitch. Imposter syndrome is a b*tch. Perfectionism is a b*tch.
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.