Cast Away, the 2000 American epic survival drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Nick Searcy, was one of Tom Hanks' highest grossing films of all time. And for good reason! This cinematic masterpiece lives on in our hearts forever as an ageless drama. Wilsoooooon!
1. To make himself look like an average out of shape middle aged man Tom Hanks didn't exercise and allowed himself to grow pudgy. Production was then halted for a year so he could lose fifty pounds and grow out his hair for his time spent on the deserted island.
2. Even though they obviously weren't said, actual lines of dialogue were written for Wilson the Volleyball, to help Tom Hanks have a more natural interaction with the inanimate object.
3. When Kelly is copying her dissertation, there is no paper being fed through the copier feeder or any printed pages going into the output tray.
4. Some crew members were left on the island for a few days to survive and learn some skills. They used some of their survival techniques in the movie for the character of Chuck. They were: having trouble lighting a fire, opening a coconut, talking to a volleyball, collecting packages washed up on the beach, and catching fish.
5. To see the island that Cast Away was filmed on, put -17.609277,177.0397 into Google Maps and zoom in all the way on satellite mode. The beach that Tom Hanks writes HELP on and sees from the peak is the eastern most part of Monuriki, Fiji.
6. One of the three volleyballs used in the film was sold in an auction for $18,400.
7. After Chuck Nolan (Tom Hanks) injures his hand and throws the volleyball "Wilson, in the following scenes pay close attention to the (Continued)
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box that the volleyball is in. One scene the box has a visible tear along the top rim of the box; then, before Tom Hanks opens the box to remove "Wilson" another box appears not torn.
8. Contrary to popular belief, FedEx did not pay the filmmakers anything for their presence in the movie. The director has made this clear in a number of interviews. While FedEx was very concerned when they heard about the project, they had no objections to the finished script and offered support during filming, with the company later stating that the movie was very good for FedEx business in general and in overseas markets in particular.
9. Virtually all the sound, including dialog, in the scenes on the island - about an hour and a half of screen time - had to be replaced in post-production. Sound man William B. Kaplan made a valiant attempt at getting usable sound on the island, but the nearby surf made it impossible, given that many of the scenes needed to be very quiet.
10. An early draft of the script had Chuck having two different personalities talking to each other, Good Chuck and Bad Chuck.
11. Most of the nighttime scenes on the island (except the creation of fire scene) were actually shot during the daytime. The darkness and night sky effects were added in post-production.
12. The ending had a bunch of different ways it could have gone. Tom Hanks and the screenwriter worked together to create all the different types of endings that could have happened before they landed on the right one. In an interview, Hanks said, "We did all of those scenarios of what happens to him when he comes back to the world: He was loaded with self pity; he was loaded with Rip Van Winkle, kind of like jeepers creepers, look how small the computers are, all of that kind of stuff. We thought, look, hed probably be (Continued)
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turned into some media celebrity and whats he going to do? Be sitting in the secret square [Hollywood Squares] with Susan Anton right next to him?"
13. Chuck Noland's name can be abbreviated as 'C. Noland' or "see no land".
14. Tom Hanks almost died while he was filming the movie. Before he left the production in Fiji, he received a cut and it got infected. Turns out he had a staph infection in his leg and it almost gave him blood poisoning. Hanks recalled, The doctor said to me, Whats the matter with you, you idiot? You could have died from this thing! And I was like, Oh, I dont know. But they literally had to take out a big chunk of the stuff in my leg. The infection was so severe that Hanks stayed in a hospital for three days. Then we had to shut down production for three weeks because the doctors said, No way is this kid getting in the water.
15. Tom Hanks said that the hardest part of losing so much weight was not eating any French fries for a long time, and the thing that helped him the most in this process was drinking a great deal of coffee every morning.
16. The scene in which Noland is talking with Stan by the fireplace of Stan's home is shot in 1 long take, with the camera rotating slowly around Noland. The shot lasts 3 minutes and 46 seconds.
17. Throughout the film, Tom Hanks has a dark lump above one of his eyebrows. This seems to come and go from scene to scene.
18. The production employed several local Fiji islanders in the surrounding archipelago, including the neighboring Mana Island about a mile away. The locals were allowed to keep some of the supplies and tools as tokens of their help.
19. As the plane hits the water, Chuck falls backward, toward the rear of the plane. This violates the physical law of momentum. In real life, he actually would have (Continued)
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In real life, he actually would have continued traveling forward toward the incoming water.
20. Almost fifteen years after the film's release, Tom Hanks jokingly "reunited" with Wilson the volleyball at a New York Rangers hockey game.
21. When Noland squats on the ground, contemplating an item that has washed up on shore, the shot is composed as an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), reportedly Tom Hanks' favorite film.
22. Some of the 'desert island' footage was shot on the mainland with a highway in the background that had to be removed.
23. In the film, Chuck draws a picture of Kelly (Helen Hunt) on the wall of the cave. In the movie As Good as It Gets (1997), Simon Bishop tells Carol Connelly (also played by Hunt) 'you're the reason cavemen chiseled on walls'.
24. In the scene where Chuck is throwing coconuts at the rock, the sound of the coconut hitting the rock comes after the coconut actually hits it.
25. When Chuck Noland realizes a Russian FedEx van is stuck after being fitted with a parking boot, he immediately wrangles a crew of employees for a makeshift "sort" in the middle of Red Square. A Fed Ex sort is designed to separate packages into zones/trucks based on which part of the country they'll be routed to once they reach the airport. The process is so ingrained in Noland's psyche that even when marooned on the island, he gathers several Fed Ex packages from the ocean that have floated ashore, checks their routing destinations and performs a "sort" right on the beach.
26. When Tom Hanks cuts his hand and loses his temper, he picks up the volleyball with a bloody hand and throws it. When he picks it up, you can see that his (Continued)
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When he picks it up, you can see that his fingers are spread. When you see the handprint that he makes "Wilson" with, you can see that the fingerprints are together and parallel.
27. The paper that Chuck writes his note to Bettina Peterson is stationery from "Arrington Ranch" (a cattle ranch resort) that is the actual house where Chuck leaves the letter.
28. In the beginning of the movie, as the camera tilts down his fireplace,you can see the book "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum.
29. The flight number of the crashed aircraft, FedEx 88, was at the time of filming a real flight number. It operated from Memphis to Penang, Malaysia with stops in between.
30. Castaway led to the creation of Lost, the television show. Lloyd Braun, who was the chairman of ABC Entertainment in the early aughts, wanted a writer to come up with a pitch based on his favorite film from 2000, Cast Away. According to Chicago magazine, in 2003 Chicagoan Jeffrey Lieber was picked to write the pilot for Cast Away-the Series, which centered around eight to 10 characters stranded on a Pacific island. Lieber named the pilot Nowhere, but Braun passed on Liebers script and gave the project to J. J. Abrams, who added the supernatural element to the plot. However, Lieber, the WGA, and the studio went to arbitration in order for Lieber to receive partial credit for creating the show, and he eventually won 60 percent of the created by credit. In 2005, his pilot received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, and for the entire run of the show Lieber was listed in the credits.
31. Early in the movie Kelly gives Chuck a pocket watch for Christmas. She explains her grandfather used the watch on the Southern Pacific (Railroad). This is a foreshadow to (Continued)
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Chuck's later dilemma where he is stranded in the South Pacific.
32. As Chuck attempts to paddle off the island the first time he is wearing his underwear on his head you can clearly see he is wearing "Calvin Klein" underwear. Robert Zemeckis also directed Back to the Future (1985) where Marty McFly's "Calvins" were a running gag.
33. When Chuck is crawling on the floor of the plane to reach the watch, the compartment behind him where the raft was stored, you can see the stairs leading down into the set.
34. Several scenes are in reference to The Prisoner: Many Happy Returns (1967), in which Number Six, after building a makeshift raft to take him from the Village, washes ashore.
35. "Wilson" is the manufacturer of the ball used in the movie. But other Wilsons have played an important role in Tom Hanks life and career. Hanks' wife is actress Rita Wilson. And Hanks' first TV role was "Kip Wilson" in Bosom Buddies (1980).
36. The license plate on Chuck's car reads: KAZ 2AY.
In almost every interaction with a Karen, there will come a point where she (or he) will ask to speak to the manager. They seem to think that if they over others and just act a fool, they can get what they want—but the following managers REFUSED to let these Karens get away with their inconsiderate antics.
I’m Like A Bird
woman in black headphones holding black and silver headphonesPhoto by Charanjeet Dhiman on UnsplashI was the only person on shift, which made me the de facto manager. Five minutes before closing, a woman came in and she was SO angry that we didn't have any decaf coffee. She demanded to speak to the manager. I told her that was me because I was the only one there, and the coffee pots were cleaned for the night because we were closing up shop.
Her reply stunned me. She screamed at me and told me she was going to "find a real manager and get you fired”. She then threw half a cup of cappuccino machine sludge at me, and she was about to jump the counter. I was holding a hammer under the counter thinking, "Don't do it, don't do it”. I picked up the phone like I was about to call the authorities. She then left and I locked the door.
A few seconds later, she came back AND RAN FACE-FIRST INTO THE GLASS DOOR. LIKE A BIRD. What an idiot.
That’s What They Call Owning
This is the best interaction I ever had. This Karen griped about not wanting to pay the price for the services performed on her computer, which was exactly the price quoted when she dropped it off. She demanded to speak to the service manager. I called him from the back.
The service manager listened to her spiel as to how she should get a lower price for an irrelevant, pea-brained reason. The service manager made eye contact with me over her shoulder; I did not react. He then said no, the price quoted was the price that would be charged.
She said that was unacceptable, and she would be complaining to the owner, who was “a good friend” she claimed. There was obviously something she didn’t know. The service manager observed that he was evidently not that good a friend, since “he” was me, the person she was originally speaking to when she asked for the service manager.
Her face was glorious, and made the whole thing worthwhile!
Cheesed Off
This happened while I was serving at Steak 'n Shake. The customer had a coupon for a burger, fries, and a shake for a certain price. On the coupon, it specifically stated that cheese on the burger was a 39-cent upcharge, although it did have a picture of a burger with cheese on it. I was not prepared for her ridiculous tantrum.
This lady THREW A FIT in the dining room that I was treating her unfairly, it was false advertising, etc. I told her I agreed that it was false advertising with the picture, but the text specifically stated the upcharge, and unfortunately, I couldn't do anything about it. Also, the difference was literally cents.
The lady at the next table overheard everything and got up and put 50 cents on the table to cover it. She then said something to the effect of "I'll pay for your darn cheese if you just shut up”.
This ticked the cheese lady off even more. My manager obviously sensed the issue and came out. Took the cheese up charge of the bill. Like what the heck, Karen?
A Slight Overreaction
The staff did not know it at the time, but our ketchup dispenser was empty. A boy, aged 10-ish, was just smashing down on the handle trying to get ketchup, but none was being dispensed. A staff member noticed the kid smashing the ketchup dispenser, so I went out to see what was going on.
"Oh, the ketchup is empty. I'll get a new bag from the kitchen. Give me two minutes and I'll be right back with some new ketchup”. I removed the empty container, took it back to the kitchen, cleaned the dispenser, and placed it in a new bag. When I took it back out to the condiment stand, I was met by a Karen.
K: "WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON?!
Me: "The ketchup was empty, so I replaced the bag”.
K: "WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY?! GO GET YOUR MANAGER!"
Me: "Uhhh, okay. One minute”.
I walked about two meters, turned around, and introduced myself as the manager.
K: "WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON?!
Me: "Ma'am, please lower your voice. The ketchup was empty. I explained to your son that I needed to take it back to the kitchen to refill it”.
K: "NO YOU DIDN'T! I WAS STANDING HERE THE WHOLE TIME. YOU TOOK THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON!"
Me: "Ma'am, please lower your voice. You were not with your son. He was here alone, trying to get ketchup, which was empty”.
K: "DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO! DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH?!"
Me: "Nope. Ma'am, please get your belongings and leave this establishment”.
K: "I WILL NOT LEAVE THIS ESTABLISHMENT! I AM GOING TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN!"
Other patrons were now visibly upset with what they were witnessing. I was so done at that point, so I called the authorities. The Karen gave a statement while the officers question me. I also gave a statement. I couldn’t believe my ears. Karen told them that I struck her son, pushed him out of the way, and moved the ketchup to an area where her son couldn't get access to the ketchup.
I disputed the claim and offered to provide video evidence (with sound) of what actually happened. They watched the video once, thanked me, and walked out to the eating area.
Officer: "Ma'am, does your son has someone who can look after him?"
K: "HIS FATHER IS AT WORK RIGHT NOW!"
Officer: "Okay. You're being placed under arrest for making threats and a false report”.
Cue more yelling, threats, and tears. In the end, she was charged with making the false report (but not the threats), and received a lifetime ban from not just our restaurant, but the entire mall where our restaurant was located.
I felt bad. Not for the Karen, but for her son. He has to live with that...
Do You Know Who I Am?
I used to work in a call center and I had plenty of Karens who wanted to talk to someone above me because they thought the world existed to cater to them. I always went back into their account to review the notes to see what was done.
9 out of 10 times they were given whatever they wanted even if it wasn't justified. It was so stupid—enabling these people's behavior is what gets them feeling so entitled in the first place. I once told a woman if she didn't pay for her services, after 60 days they'd be interrupted. Her response took me aback.
She responded with: "Excuse me? I'm a valued customer and that is not how I will be treated”. or something to that effect. Absolutely ridiculous.
It’s Never Enough
smiling girl in black and white striped shirtPhoto by Julien L on UnsplashOh heck yeah. Buckle up. I worked as a manager at a chain BBQ restaurant which we will call Popular Charlie’s. There was this lady who we called “Nacho Lady”—I’ll get into why. She was that kind of overweight, holistic living, essential oil, serviceman’s wife. The kind of person who talks to her two-year-old daughter like a coherent adult because she’s going to change the world”.
She had all the “Karen” aesthetics to match. We all dreaded her when she came in. We call her Nacho Lady because whenever she comes by, she orders our nachos at our takeout area. No big deal. But she would want everything on the side. Again, no big deal in most situations because I understand that nachos get soggy really easily, especially to-go.
But what some people don’t like or understand is seeing the actual proportions for everything. Two ounces of anything really isn’t that much. That goes for the cheese, chili, beans, nacho sauce, and all the works. Even though it is all proportioned equally, the customer doesn’t like what they see, and that’s when the backlash happens. The Karen moment started happening.
She didn’t like the actual proportions and demanded more, but refused to pay for it. Our takeout specialists were good at standing up for themselves and the rules.
Of course, she didn’t accept it, so she had to speak to a manager. Myself or two others depending on the day. She would also order two kids’ meals, pork sandwiches, and fries. Again, no big deal, but she was very particular about this one as well.
The pork had to be dry (no BBQ sauce) in a separate container. Kids’ buns toasted, which we don’t usually do. The fries had to be dropped off as soon as she walks in the door so they are crispy and fresh for when she takes them all the way home.
Because of her extreme specifications, it got to the point where only a manager was allowed to take her order and only a manager could review the order with her. This was always the most nerve-wracking part because she would sit down at our waiting table in the takeout area, open every single box and inspect everything.
Also, the way she went about was very...Karen. This is when all the issues would happen. The fries were never hot and fresh and crispy enough, and I sent them back to get new ones. There wasn’t enough of portioned pork for the kid’s sandwich, and she demanded more. There was not enough cheese sauce and shredded cheese, and she demanded more. There were not enough tortilla chips, and you know the rest.
The list went on. And to top it all off, she somehow got a hold of a ton of “free kid’s meal” coupons that were blank—meaning no manager signature, dates, or any sort of validation that she got it legitimately. A coupon is…no big deal…but a typical coupon can only be used one at a time with one transaction.
Only, a Karen being a Karen, she demanded we used two out of the giant stack so she gets her kids’ meals for free. This got to the point where things had to be run by the General Manager. Even if it means calling him on his day off. He was a bit of a wimp and always allowed it, but then she started costing us money.
It wasn’t feasible for her to keep coming back and having her as a customer because 9 times out of 10, we would end up having to send stuff back to the kitchen. A lot of waste. My other manager, Billy, was a fierce woman who never let anyone walk over her, she was awesome. She finally stepped up and made a call over the General Manager’s order and 86ed her.
When that moment came, we all huddled in the office and watched the security cameras as Billy ripped her a new one. That was an unforgettable day. I left and got out of the restaurant industry and management because of how horrible that field can be, but I do love that I have a “Karen” story from it.
A Bunch Of Suck Ups
I work at a vacuum repair shop. People don’t pay attention to their vacuum cleaners as much as you'd think. I can't tell you how many times someone comes to pick up their vacuum and says "Oh this one isn't mine" or "Mine didn’t have scratches down the side".
I'd always reply: "I can tell you it is, and it came in with all those scratches on the side". After the first two times it happened to me, we started taking pictures of the unit with serial numbers and customer information. We’d send them home with the serial number and require them to bring it back for pick up. We thought that would fix everything—but we were wrong.
Despite the evidence, I've had a lady close to tears because we didn’t have her vacuum. Even with the pictures, we had of it at drop off, her information, and the matching serial numbers, she wasn’t buying it. Sure, it's a big conspiracy and we just love taking in vacuums and switching all the information around because it's fun. People need to pay more attention.
Having Her Cake And Eating It Too
I used to work part-time at a bakery inside a grocery store. I dealt with my fair share of Karens during this time. Just to paint this picture of how it would work, we had a binder with laminated copies of about 100 different designs the decorators did regularly.
A customer would look through the book, pick a design they wanted, and fill me in on the details of when they wanted it, what size, what flavor, if any color changes were necessary, etc. Our decorators would come in at 7 AM and stay for however long it took to complete their orders.
So usually, they were gone by early- to mid-afternoon. The bakery closed along with the store at 9 PM. One day, maybe around 8:15 or 8:20 pm, a woman comes in and says she needs a cake. I figure she's referring to the cakes sitting in our cooler, which we keep at the ready in case anybody just wants something quick and simple.
So I motion to the cooler and ask her if she sees anything she likes. Then it starts—every retail worker's nightmare. Apparently, I'm a brilliant comedian because she starts laughing, and goes, "No, sweetie, I need a wedding cake”. Alright, no big deal. I grab an order form and take down her information, and then ask what day she needs it.
"Tonight”.
Mind you, the store was closing in ~40 minutes, so even if I could decorate a cake, I wouldn't be able to help her. I tell her that there are no decorators present at the moment, but I could make sure it was ready for her first thing the next morning. She's clearly upset by this but says that'd be fine.
I continue taking her order and ask her what size she'd like. Our bakery was not an upscale joint, and our prices reflect that; just about everything comes in frozen. Our cakes come in a variety of predetermined sizes.
She pulls out her phone and thrusts it in my face, saying "Whatever that is”. When I saw the screen, I nearly burst out laughing. On the screen is a very beautiful cake. Smooth white frosting, 7-8 tiers, decorations made in fondant, and blown sugar.
Before I even continue taking the order and dash her hopes when she sees the finished product, I tell her that that just wouldn't be possible. I didn't mean to offend our decorators, but I told her the truth; most of them were exceptionally gifted home bakers who didn't have formal training in terms of a culinary program or decorating school.
I then politely refer her to a more upscale bakery that I knew of that was more equipped to help her than we were. Then the dreaded six words came. "Can I speak to your manager?" At this point in time, I had been working at that bakery for a little over a year, so I was capable enough to close the department on my own.
As such, I was the only one there. I told her this but offered to leave a note with the customer's name and number so my manager could call her tomorrow. "Fine then. Let me talk to a store manager”. There were anywhere between 1-3 store managers who oversaw the entire grocery store and all its departments on staff a night.
So I go to our phone and page a store manager over to the bakery department. The whole time we're waiting, she's staring daggers into me. A manager I was fairly friendly with came to the counter in a few minutes and asked what the problem was.
I briefed her before she went to talk to the customer. The second we get over there, the customer starts spewing lies about me, saying I was rude and refusing to help her. I tried to defend myself, but the manager just told me to keep doing my closing work out back.
10 minutes later she comes back, shaking her head and rubbing her temples. "That witch was crazy”. The customer service industry is a blast.
Thirsting For A Fight
I work as a server part-time. About a month ago, I had a table consisting of a mother, a father, and their son who was around 10. They seemed like a normal family at first—but the whole experience turned sour very quickly.
After I put their order in and got them drinks, I had to visit my three other tables that were sat a couple of minutes before. I took about five minutes, introducing myself to a party of 10 and getting their orders. Then I walked over to “Karen” from the first family because she was waving at me.
She told me that they needed more water. The cup was still half full, but I told her I would bring it as soon as I could. I then went to my other two tables and got their orders...And that's when it happened. All of a sudden, I heard the Karen screaming at a boy who worked in carryout. I went over and see what was wrong. She was upset because I didn’t get her the water immediately and she then started screaming at me. I ran back and got her a whole pitcher of water because she was clearly thirsty.
She proceeded to scream at me because I didn’t get her a son a refill of Sprite even though they didn’t ask (and his cup was 3/4 of the way full). I apologized and went to get the Sprite while alerting my manager of the issue.
While I was getting another Sprite, her husband got up and started cursing in my manager’s face, about three inches from her. Here's the worst part—they didn’t stop yelling and complaining, so my other manager gave them their meal for free and a gift card.
Mind you, this was all over WATER. It took about three minutes after I told them I’d get them water for them to start going insane. I ended up apologizing to my other tables for the disturbance, but they were very understanding and apologized on behalf of the psychotic family.
I couldn’t help but wonder what happens to their son when he doesn’t do exactly what they want.
Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish
I worked at an outdoor gear place for a while. One incident comes to mind though, which involves an ex-Marine who worked at our store fixing bikes. He had to run to the back to grab a part, and as he was going back to the bike shop on the other side of the store, a customer who was already being pretty loud and aggressive with everyone decided to grab my co-worker by the arm very aggressively and try to spin him around to face him. It worked out horribly for him.
His Marine training kicked in, and the next thing I know the angry customer man is laying in the remains of a display about eight feet away. Of course, he jumps up screaming and yelling that he's going sue us and get my co-worker fired, etc.
The manager comes out, hears the story, looks at the security footage, and tells the customer he is never allowed to grab employees like that. He said that he's welcome to call the authorities if he would like because she's willing to press charges against him for assault, and he was banned from our store.
No one at the store was upset about losing that customer. He was kind of notorious for being a jerk and constantly trying to game our return policy.
Cold Cash
woman prayingPhoto by Ben White on UnsplashI’m not a manager, just a guy who doesn’t put up with stuff. When I was working at the movie theater, I had a woman come in wanting like four movie tickets, which was like $26 or something at the time, and she dumped out a bag of change that wasn’t rolled up or pre-counted.
I asked her if it was counted and she said no. I told her I’m not counting it and that she can step to the side and count it out herself. She threw a fit, saying I had to do it for her. I told her I don’t. That goes back and forth for a minute until she gives out her famous line: “I wanna speak to the manager”.
I just said “no”. She kept demanding and I kept saying no. My manager finally came out because she could hear the woman screaming. She asked what happened and the woman said that I was the rudest employee ever. My manager looked at me and just said, “We are not obligated to count out that large an amount of loose change”.
After she left, the woman kept yelling and I finally told her to go or I’ll gladly call the authorities. I wasn’t actually going to, but it usually scares people straight. She scoffed at me and told me I needed to bag up her money for her. I just told her to have a nice day.
A Magical Appearance
Hoo boy. This brings me back. So, when I was a younger man, I was an assistant manager at Blockbuster Video. For you young'uns out there, before Netflix you would have to go to this place called a video rental store and actually pay money to rent a movie. Once upon a time, they even came on these boxy things called VHS tapes.
So, one day I was working an evening shift, and the phone rang. This woman I'll call Karen was on the other end. She said she got a call earlier in the day about some videos being overdue. She was absolutely livid. I brought up her account on our computer and sure enough, three movies were still out and were due back a week before.
She went ballistic; absolutely screeching at me over the phone that her daughter rented those movies for a sleepover and had returned them. I checked the return bin, but nothing. I even walked out to the floor and check the copies on the shelf to see if maybe it was them. No dice.
Finally, she just screamed at me, accusing me of trying to rip her off. She said she was going to tell her husband, who was an attorney, and he'd sue us all out of existence. I went about the rest of my shift—but I had no idea what was coming. Lo and behold, about an hour later this woman came marching in.
She came right up to the counter and slammed a stack of three VHS tapes on the counter before us, yelling some profanity at the poor clerk. I had witnessed this from the other end when I was checking in returned movies. I looked at the stack of movies and sure enough, they were the ones her daughter had rented and "returned”. But it wasn’t over.
The next day I was also working there and this man in a suit came in. Real friendly guy who asked to speak to management. I walked over to chat with him, and he told me that he was the lawyer. He wanted to apologize for his wife's behavior. I kid you not, he actually said, "We're trying to get her under control. The doctor just prescribed her Xanax”.
It’s Never Enough
I was eating at a cheap, greasy-spoon kind of diner that has been around since the '50s. All the meat is frozen, and pretty much nothing but the coffee and eggs are made fresh. You know what you're getting when you come to this place.
A couple comes in with their two young boys, about six or seven. The mom makes a minor scene about not wanting a booth, but a table. There is an entire wall of booths and multiple tables, but she specifically wants the one in the middle of the room that needs to be bussed since the people that were using it JUST left.
She makes a scene about having to wait for the one busboy handling the entire section to take care of it, even when the manager went and got him to take care of it immediately. At this point, I'm not paying too much attention, but they're sitting literally right next to us.
They order appetizers, steak, shakes for the kids, etc. Their waitress is handling several other tables at the same time—like a third of the floor—and serves some coffee and sliced pie to an elderly couple that came in after the family. Big mistake. Karen throws an absolute hissy fit because "WE WERE HERE FIRST, HOW COME THEY'RE GETTING THEIR ORDERS FIRST?!?!"
The manager comes back out and explains in the most placid tones possible that multiple fried goods and a steak take time to cook, but hot coffee is available all day, and sliced pie is on a display up front so there's no prep time. Karen calms down, but still fumes.
She doesn't allow the boys to get their food (they had a buffet option) until she and the dad's food comes to the table. Once the adult food arrives, Karen just starts tucking in; both boys are just tall enough to see over the edge of the buffet, but not nearly enough to reach tongs or reasonably serve themselves.
A waitress from another section sees them struggling and comes over to help, asking what they want on their plates. Another huge mistake. Karen FLIES to her feet and makes a BIG scene, this time about "How dare you tell my kids what they can and cannot eat! Who do you think you are handling their food?!"
Cue the manager coming out again. The waitress is an older woman, we're talking white hair, and is nearly in tears thinking that she has done something terrible. The manager asks her to go chill in the back a bit while she smooths things over with Karen. Karen now demands balloons (they had them as a special birthday thing) for the kids.
They get balloons, and Karen calms down. The husband and kids are pretty quiet throughout this. The kids seem visibly embarrassed, and the husband is acting like this is pretty normal. The husband's steak comes out last. He's unenthusiastic about it, and Karen calls for the manager A FOURTH TIME to chew her out over the steak being overdone, dry, etc.
They send it back and demand another. Then a third. Let me reiterate; this is a place you go for like, greasy burgers and fries, fish and chips. Steak is on the menu, but realistic expectations and reason mean you're not expecting high quality. You're getting what you pay for.
The manager just kept calm and kept apologizing for their “sub-optimal experience”, but beyond filling minor low-cost demands (for example, the balloons) didn't offer up much. When Karen basically shouted that they would never be coming back, the manager was just like “Sorry to hear that, have a nice night”. An absolute pro.
Onto Bigger, Better Things
I was a manager at Little Caesar's about 15 years ago. I'd typically work three or four closing shifts a week, and then one opening shift. Back then, they ran the $5 pizza thing, but it was typically only on Wednesdays.
Throughout the week, they usually ran "2 pizzas for X dollars" specials. This happened on one of those nights. A male Karen placed an order via phone, and then came to pick it up. I believe he ordered something like a "two pizza" deal, but then wanted bread and sauce when he got there.
Well…he didn't have enough money for the bread and sauce. He only brought enough for the pizza. I told him that I'm sorry and that there was nothing I could do. He looked at me and said angrily, "My kids want that bread”. I repeated to him that there wasn't really much I could do.
I couldn't give away food without it being paid for, as I would get in trouble. Keep in mind, he was there while there were several other customers in the store. Had he been alone, I might have just handed it over. His reaction was otherworldly—He threw an absolute fit, called me several names, and then told me "This isn't over!" and then he left with the pizzas that he paid for.
I found out the next day that he talked to the store manager, and he obviously fabricated quite a bit of the story. The manager then called me at home and screamed me out over the phone. Apparently, I belittled the guy for being “too poor” to afford bread for his kids and I embarrassed him in front of other customers.
In reality, I apologized probably three or four times, and just told him that I would be in trouble if I just start giving stuff away. That was far from all. She decided to write me up for a lack of customer service skills and ended up comping the guy an order of up to $40 to be used whenever he wanted.
He came in the very next day when both the store manager and I were working. I was nothing but pleasant to him even then, and I even apologized if there was a misunderstanding. He still acted like a jerk while I was taking his order. He threw in a few "the customer is always right" mentions and "the younger generation doesn't know how to treat customers”.
Whatever, I'm glad the store manager was there that day—because I had a plan. I made his pizzas very well, then I tossed them, put them onto the oven conveyor, making a slight mess, and then told the store manager that I refuse to work there anymore, especially not for a "has-been who treats her employees like garbage”.
I walked out and told the guy to enjoy his pizza. I worked there for two years. I had a 9-5 manufacturing job a few days later at a small family-owned company right near home. I had no clue that some companies actually treated their employees like human beings until I worked there.
Nothing Comes For Free
I'm not in retail anymore, but I was managing a popular mid-range handbag store. Think "typical Karen bag", about $200-400. Anyway, most customers were fantastic. This one woman, however, was this Shrek-looking large redheaded lady who stomped in and demanded that we repair her 20-year-old bag for FREE.
If we couldn't do that, she demanded that we exchange this old ratty, smelly 20-year-old bag for a brand new one for her. Recently policy changes resulted in new prices for this service, but free repairs had about a one-year warranty on a new bag...not a 20-year-old one. I told her as such.
I was pretty young to have had the role I did, so she, dissatisfied with my answer, asked to speak to a manager. I told her I was the manager and she began turning as red as her hair. She screamed and yelled about how she'll call corporate and never shop here again!
Well, that sounds like a real loss, losing a customer who is too cheap to repair a 20-year-old bag and hasn't bought new from us in just as long. I give her my best customer service grin and say, "I’m so sorry, that’s just the policy”. She demanded the company’s number.
I gave her the customer service line that you can find on Google, unbeknownst to her. She huffed away, forgetting her keys on the counter. She's halfway out and she remembered, turned around, red as a beet. She huffed in my smiling face and snatched the keys off the counter.
It was hilarious. She came back months later, worked with a different person on the team, and didn't even look my way.
Agree To Disagree
a person is using a pos machine in a storePhoto by Simon Kadula on UnsplashThis Karen was trying to return a board game that was open and obviously played without a receipt. I offered store credit, but she wouldn’t take it and asked for my manager. He came up to the counter and discussed the situation with her.
It devolved into the old argument: “Well, in my day the customer was always right”. My manager then cocked his head slightly before shutting her down: “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ve never really subscribed to that theory”. Store credit was given.
Faking It
I’m a former fast food worker reporting about a male Karen. He came through the drive-thru and handed me what I knew to be a fake $100 bill. I knew it was fake, but the process was to make sure the deposit box bill feeder didn't accept it. Well of course it didn't, because it was super fake. Naturally, the male Karen did NOT like what I was insinuating.
So he pulls around and comes inside, yelling and calling me names because I wouldn't take his fake 100. He called for the manager and I bailed to the back because I wanted to leave the twilight zone.
Talking The Talk
Here’s a twist: I had an actual Karen as a manager. She was two-faced, played favorites, and had this annoying nervous laugh she would use at the end of everything she said. As if to punctuate the idiocy of her statement. I think, ha-ha, that we should try it this way, ha-ha. Because it, ha-ha, might, ha-ha, work better. YES!!! She talked just like that.
Aw, Muffin
I love letting Karens scream themselves hoarse for a few minutes, then asked with a completely straight face: "Do you want a cookie?" Then right before their heads exploded, I'd point to the bakery case and say: "It's free! You can have a free cookie while we try to work this out for you”.
Most were too stunned by the switcheroo and ashamed of their overreaction to stay mad even if they declined. For those who accepted, it's even harder to stay mad while munching on a free cookie. Nine times out of 10, I could quickly resolve whatever issue they had by offering a minimal consolation like a gift card or a coupon.
It’s Never Enough
I think the one standout I remember was a few years ago when my company, which was a cell phone provider, gave everyone unlimited data for like three months for no charge. It was essentially a stress test on our network, but everyone was getting free data so it wasn’t like anyone could complain. Or so I thought.
I talked to one lady who had demanded a manager because unlimited phone data wasn’t enough, they wanted unlimited data on their hotspot as well. She then threatened to "get us all fired" because we wouldn’t give her unlimited data through her hotspot, which was actually a feature we didn’t even offer paying customers at the time.
She ranted and raved for a while, and we ended up passing her between like five levels of supervisors before she gave up.
Would You Like Fries With That?
French friesPhoto by Louis Hansel on UnsplashI used to work as a manager at a sandwich shop. Our policy for any pickup orders was to not cook their fries until the customer came in so that they have fresh fries. This is always told to the customer on the phone. I had this one witch call in her order and ask me if I could cook the fries immediately so that she didn’t have to wait for them.
I told her I couldn’t do that because if she doesn’t come in to pick her order up within about five minutes, those fries will be soggy and cold. She seemed to understand this. Well, guess what happened? She ends up showing up about 45 minutes after she placed the order and proceeded to yell at me because her fries weren’t ready.
I explained to her that if I had cooked her fries when she placed the order, they would be very cold and soggy because she took 45 minutes to pick her order up. She didn’t care. She continued to yell at me about how she was a nurse and has no time to wait for the fries.
I told her oh well, you either need to wait for them to cook (which takes literally two minutes to cook) or leave. She waited. What a witch.
Something’s Fishy
I worked at a grocery store in high school, and last summer I came back for it as my summer job. We did this ten-for-$10 deal where we'd have a bunch of stuff sale for a buck a piece, and then the 11th was free.
We were open 24 hours, but all of our sales kicked in at 6 am, and we weren't allowed to change it early in the register, as it's clearly stated on the first page of the flier and in the app—this is important. I'd sometimes work the third shift if they needed someone to fill in.
So we had this woman come in with literally a cart full of tuna at 4 am. There were easily 300-400 of them, as she had just taken the stand-up display boxes off the shelf. Of course, none of them ring up as on sale, and she starts screaming at the girl in front. The girl is explaining that this is how our policy works, and she's yelling about false advertising and how she deserves the price change.
I go up and tried to placate her, and she starts fuming all over again. I zoom in on the bit where it says are prices are only good at 6 am—and she goes PURPLE. “ARE YOU REALLY ARGUING WITH A CUSTOMER RIGHT NOW?!” I tell her I'm not, just pointing out what the ad says and she insists on seeing the manager.
He tells her the same thing the two of us already had, and she screamed about not knowing “Why she even bothered to shop here”. I didn't go back to that job this summer.
What A Dough Head
I’m a kitchen chef in a pizzeria. We occasionally get this lady who orders a pizza and then tries to complain about it in order to get it for free. We always deny her and she always threatens to give us a bad review on Yelp or complains to whoever is unfortunate enough to be on the phone with her.
I can still remember my worst moment dealing with her. One time, she ordered a pizza with gluten-free crust and complained that the crust was “too doughy”, so she demanded it be given to her for free. Gluten-free crusts are as crispy as a cracker when they come out of the oven and are almost the same while we make them.
Even if someone didn’t bake it in the oven beforehand for whatever reason, it’s virtually impossible for it to be doughy. For about a week, all of us would tell each other, “Make sure that it isn’t too doughy” as a joke when we had to make gluten-free pizzas.
Meet Dave
What’s the male version of a Karen? Would it be Dave? I'm going with Dave. So I'm opening a call center offshore, and this customer Dave refuses to speak to anybody who isn't American. I'm American but was working at that site during that project phase, so when the call escalates to me his first question was “Are you in the US”? At that time that was a no—an unacceptable answer for Dave, which flew him into a rage.
He hung up. He spent three hours calling and hanging up. He'd ask to speak to an American, they'd transfer to me, then he'd ask me if I was in the US. Three hours of the same process.
Off The Deep End
One time a Karen tried to return an expensive handbag that had obviously been used. She said I was calling her a liar and her anger escalated as she paced back and forth at the till point. It escalated so quickly.
Karen then proceeded to tell me that she was going to call in some guys to “come after me” after I finish work. Throughout this, I am politely repeating my request that Karen leaves, but in hindsight, I think this must have been rather annoying…as Karen proceeded to grab the bag and launch herself over the till at me in an attempt to hit me with it.
At this point in time, a colleague who was yet to start their shift (and therefore appeared as a customer) was on the shop floor and witnessed it all. They tackled Karen into the wall, knocking down glass shelves that had been displaying around 30 bags. Karen is now a crumpled mess on the floor. Appearing shocked, she stumbles upright and runs away.
Doing What’s Right
selective focus photography of Closed signagePhoto by Evan Wise on UnsplashWork at a Barnes and Noble cafe. About an hour before closing, a Karen comes in and I proceed to take her order. Karen wasn’t a regular, yet she was getting snooty just because I asked her what she'd like and if she wanted it hot or cold.
She tells me in the most condescending way she wants an iced mocha. I go to make the drink. I hand it to her, tell her to have a nice night, and turn around to talk to the two other people at the counter. As we're talking, she shouts at us that it's wrong, and demands we make another drink.
Her complaint was that it was cold and she wanted it warm. Whatever, I apologized and made another one even though the first time I asked her, I held up the clear cup and wrote everything in front of her to verify it was right. Anyway, I grabbed the paper cup and started to make another one.
All the while, she was talking about how young people don't respect anyone, and she kept berating us for talking while working, making fun of personal stuff like the movie we were discussing, how we were dressed, our accents (this is in Alabama and she's obviously not Southern).
After about two minutes of this, I was fed up, so I finished the drink and went to hand it to her. But as she was taking it, she uttered the most triggering words: "I bet you stupid disrespectful kids don’t even know how to spell mocha, especially him”. She then pointed at the one Black barista. I’d had enough. I yanked the drink back out of her hand and threw it in the garbage can like it was a baseball.
I then ripped my apron off, came out from behind the counter, got right in her face, and I really laid it into her. I inform her that her behavior wasn’t something we tolerate, tell her there was a camera above us with sound recording everything, tell her that because she bought a five-dollar drink doesn't give her the right to talk to anyone let alone us that way and ask her who in the heck she thinks she is. But I’m not done yet.
I get even closer and tell her that the store might want her business, but I sure as heck don’t, and she can take her refund and get out. I don't even go to the register, I take five dollars out of my own wallet, some odd cents out of my pocket, back up, and throw it at her feet. I point at the door and tell her to get the heck out of my cafe.
I'm not even a manager but it felt right at the time. The whole time, Karen's eyes are as wide as dinner plates in shock. She sheepishly picks the money off the floor, every cent, gains her voice, and starts screaming at the top of her lungs that we're not getting away with this, she's gonna call corporate and get our useless butts fired, and then she'd find out where we lived, burn our houses down, and hurt every last one of our pets and family members.
And that's not all—once she made it to the doorway, she throws her shoes at us, hitting a display stand of chips.
She leaves and peels out, nearly hitting two people in the parking lot. I pick up the shoes, throw them in the nearest trash can, pick up the chips, calmly put my apron back on, go back behind the counter, and finish what I was saying about the movie.
The other two baristas didn't know what to say and kept warning me about how I'm going to get fired. Nothing ever came of it, no real manager ever talked to me about it, and I never heard from her again. I felt bad about it, as I'd never been that angry and have never gotten that angry since.
It wasn't even what she said to me that set me off, but how she talked to the two that did literally nothing wrong. I realize now I'm not sorry for it and she really deserved to be thrown out of the store. Most of the time it's not worth it to react that way, but man sometimes you just have to stand up to Karens.
In The Privacy Of Your Own Truck
A truly awesome supervisor had my back when I was threatened on the job. I was a pretty meek young lady at the time of this story, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still, but I've grown a bit. The management at this establishment was pretty awesome in general, honestly.
So I was working a truck stop swing shift. It was a hot summer afternoon, and I was on the side dealing with large semi-truck pumps. Note that I actually like this side better since other than the occasional jerk, the truckers are normally more polite than your average general customer, believe it or not.
So one of my co-workers is doing perimeter garbage pickup and comes to the desk to tell me someone is on one of the truck pumps peeing in a bottle. Not in his cab, oh no. This guy is going in full view of RVs with families in them. He is on one of the closer pumps, so it's maybe two minutes at a crawl to get to the bathrooms inside the store.
If he'd been in his truck, who cares, it's not the most disgusting thing someone's done in a truck, trust me. But no, out where God and everyone can see him. As is the procedure when someone is doing something frowned upon at a pump, I get on the PA system for a GENERAL UNTARGETED announcement.
I do not say pump numbers. I do not give descriptions. "I would like to remind all customers there are restrooms inside the store for your convenience, and that you are on camera on the pumps”. Just that. No identifying information. Could have been anybody. Little did I know I just put myself in the line of fire.
Sure enough, about 60 seconds after this, a big guy comes strolling in, belly hanging out of the bottom of his barely fitting tank top, and is SCREAMING at the top of his lungs at me behind the desk: "HOW DARE YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT!? YOU EMBARRASSED ME! I HAVE A BLADDER PROBLEM! YOU MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT LIKE THAT AGAIN AND I’LL MESS YOU UP!"
My supervisor is standing right there. Note that he is about a foot shorter than this trucker and sure as heck, he looks right up at him and says clear as day, "No, you're going to remove yourself from the store immediately”.
The blubbering for a solid 10 seconds was priceless before the guy started flipping us off and yelling that he'd never come back as he left. I never said anything, though I dearly wanted to say that nobody embarrassed him but himself, since nobody would have known who I was talking about if he hadn't screamed it for the whole world.
Oh well. AJ, you're awesome, hope you're doing well. And PSA: Don’t pee in a bottle where everyone can see you, please. I would like to make it clear I understand bladder issues are a thing, and sometimes emergencies are NOW not two minutes from now, but he had a perfectly good truck cab right there with a sleeper unit for all the privacy in the world.
Record Scratch
I was a loss prevention manager at a retail store. Part of my job was to be the “no” guy. If there was a customer we were not able to help and they started becoming hostile, I was the one who went to defuse the situation. That’s because if it escalated, I was the only one certified to touch a customer if it came down to safety and security issues.
At this particular time, a Karen was at guest services with her small child in a shopping cart. Karen was super frustrated with my employee, who was trying to tell her that she could not return the DVD she had purchased for multiple reasons. She didn’t have a receipt, for one. She could have used an ID to return it, however, the DVD was also opened and had a scratch on it as well.
I can already hear her screaming as I approach, so I had an idea of what was going on already. She immediately begins yelling at me about how my employee doesn’t know the store policy and that she just wants to return the DVD. I explained to her that it was not only store policy, but also a copyright law involved since it was an unwrapped, open, and apparently used DVD. Despite all that, she still wouldn't let go.
She said, “Ok well I got home, opened it, and there was a scratch on it, so now what?” I told her in that case within our policy and the law I can of course exchange that for the same item, however, I would have to open it before she leaves so that no laws are broken and she doesn’t try to return it elsewhere.
After more screaming and cursing in front of her child, she finally says, “Fine I don’t want to return it anymore you can just have it!” Then she winds up and frisbees the DVD past my head. Here’s the best part. She leaves kicking and screaming, and about 30 minutes later I get a call from guest services, and it’s the same lady.
This time she says she talked to her husband and there was a misunderstanding, and she would like her DVD back. I “sadly” had to tell her, “I’m sorry ma’am we have already added that to the trash compactor”. If I really wanted to, I could have done something to help her for only $10, but with the way she was acting, there was no way I was doing anything to encourage that behavior.
Driving Me Up The Wall
I was the general manager of a company renting moving trucks. At the time, the equipment we rented consisted of F-150 pickups, E-250 cargo vans, and box trucks from ranging 10 to 26 feet.
The company owns all the box trucks, but the vans and pickups were part of a weird lease deal.
Because of this and the fact that they were more likely to be stolen, we had different rules for those vehicles. A Karen came into my store and requested to rent one of the cargo vans.
"No problem. I need to see your driver's license and a credit card”.
"Oh, no. I just want to pay the $100”.
I already know this is going to suck. If you want to pay cash for a box truck rental, you pay a $100 deposit unless your pre-rental estimate is more. We did once accept cash deposits on the vans, but it was $1,000. This didn't last long. A few months after this story, no cash deposits were accepted for the vans or pickups.
"I'm sorry mam, the vans, and pickups have different rules. I can take a cash deposit but it would be $1,000. Or—" I explained.
"$1,000!!!!! Do I look like I have $1,000 cash on me!?!??" Karen interrupted.
"Or," I continued, "we can authorize a credit card for the estimated rental total”.
"I only have $100 cash,” yelled Karen.
"I understand. I'm sorry, but my system will not let me do that. I can do the 14' box truck with the $100 deposit. It has the same daily rate and is only $0.10 per mile more”. I say this as I gesture toward the box truck outside the window.
"That's too big. We are just moving a couch a few houses away. Just give me the van” Karen says as she slides what, at a glance, does not appear to be $100 worth of small bills across the counter.
I push the cash back to her and again explain that the rental requirements for the vans and pickups differ from the rest of our motorized fleet. This time I print out and highlight the pertinent sections of the differing policies. I emphasize that releasing a vehicle to her without following the policy would result in my immediate termination.
If there haven't been enough flags this far into a conversation, this is my go-to shibboleth to distinguish the desperate from the despicable. Essentially, if I tell you doing a thing will cost me my job and you still insist on it, you are a piece of garbage. Upon failure, I know immediately what to do. I tend to immediately change tact with these people.
No smiles, no friendly service. You get cold, curt responses and if you insist again, I might boot you from my store.
Karen immediately failed. "I don't care about all this. I only want the van. Just take the cash”.
"No”. In my head, I said the word in a way that didn't convey a negative response so much as it implied that I wished Karen found herself underneath a moving bus.
Karen scooped her cash and license from the counter and waddled toward the door in a determined fashion. She threw the door open, stepped one foot out, turned, and yelled, "I'm going to talk to my boyfriend”. She attempted to slam the door but was foiled by the hydraulic damper.
Because she had parked in front of the door instead of a parking spot, I could see her as she approached the open passenger window of the small green sedan she had arrived in. Karen began to yell and gesticulate, arms waving in wild abandon, at the occupant in the passenger seat.
I watched as a new customer crossed the lot, turning his head to avoid eye contact as he passed her on his approach to the door. Once safely inside and the door closed behind him, he stopped, shook his head, and approached the counter.
"Hey man, I just need some propane,” the new customer said. He turned and nodded toward the door. "She's having a day, huh?"
"The fun never stops,” I replied as I reached under the counter for our mobile credit card device. I mentally braced myself for re-entry into Karen's audible radius. Mercifully, I was spared. Her prescribed boyfriend had exited the vehicle and the pair were making their way across the lot near the cargo van.
Seizing the opportunity, I led my new customer out the door and toward our propane dispenser. This consisted of a small area surrounded by yellow-painted steel bollards, a steel pump cabinet, and a vertical 3000-gallon tank extending some 20 feet in the air. The new customer and I stood wordlessly, occasionally casting glances in Karen's direction.
The pump is very loud and generally drowns out conversation anyway. With the new customer's tank filled, I shut down the pump. As he loaded it in his truck, I entered the sale on the handheld device. In the background, Karen is following her boyfriend to look at the 14' box truck I suggested.
The handheld device decided to refuse the sale. Restarting the device took about five minutes so I advised the customer that we should just run it inside. This turned out to be a horrible idea. A commotion from Karen's direction drew our attention as we crossed the lot.
The boyfriend was walking toward the car. Karen was waddling toward the door. A new customer and I made it inside with just enough of a gap to justify not holding the door open. As we reached our respective positions at the counter, Karen erupted through the door. I knew it was about to get crazy.
"I WAS HERE FIRST” she bellowed.
The new customer threw up his hands and backed away from the counter. Karen maneuvered into the space, flashing what could charitably be described as a smile at the other customer and then to me.
"I want to rent the van”. She stated with a tone of forced civility, depositing the cash onto the counter. Ah, the witness gambit. She may be a Karen, but I had already served more than a decade of my sentence in customer service. The assumption that I would suddenly bend to her will now that she had an audience was an amateur move.
Many try it, often raising their voice to attract as much attention as possible. I smile through her and adopt the tone a bank teller would use to inform someone that their account is overdrawn...by several thousand dollars.
"I'm so sorry mam”. I dart my eyes to the new customer and back to ensure he can hear me, "As I explained before, the cargo van requires a $1,000 cash deposit or a valid credit card authorization for the estimated rental amount. The policy is firm and any attempt on my part to circumvent it would result in my termination”.
The new customer raised an eyebrow and I continued, "I am happy and willing to rent the 14' box truck on a $100 deposit. The move you described before should be well within that amount and the remainder would be refunded during the return”.
What ensued was a scene that was painful to endure. Karen, sensing the round was lost, changed strategies for the counter-attack. She began to cry.
"But...but that other truck is too big. I'm scared. Please give me the van” she blubbered through crocodile tears. My riposte was ready immediately. "For the third time, ma’am, I cannot do that. I would lose my job. The box truck is based on the same vehicle chassis and is just as easy to drive. If your boyfriend has a valid license and would be comfortable with it, I can add him as a driver”.
Karen's expression flattened, abandoning the fake crying faster than she had started it.
"Fine”. She grumbled through her teeth.
"Excellent, may I see your driver's license please?"
Karen rummaged through her worn purse, produced the card, held it up for about three-quarters of a second, and thrust it back into the depths from which it came. She smiled like a child in a game of keep away. The new customer rolled his eyes but said nothing.
"I'm sorry, I misspoke. I need to hold the license during the contract process. May I have the card please?"
Determined to achieve new heights of unpleasantness, Karen crossed her arms and barked "WHAT FOR?"
Equally committed to maintaining a contrasting demeanor, I replied, "I need different information at different points in the contract process. I need to hold it for reference. We also inspect the license itself to make sure it’s not fake”. I added that last line with a faint, suggestive, smirk and extended an open hand above the counter.
Karen, looking as if she might try to bite it, instead made a point of slamming her license down on the counter near my hand. She then pulled the card back toward herself before releasing it. I leaned forward and retrieved it.
The rest of the transaction took the form of precisely worded questions, curt responses, and clarifying questions where required. Nearing the end, I gestured to a small display on the credit card machine that was now featuring the breakdown of her rental estimate.
"This is showing the estimated rental charges based on the mileage you told me. The $100 deposit is due at this time”.
Wordlessly, Karen pushed her cash to the center of the counter. I picked it up and sorted it by denomination. My suspicion from before was confirmed. She was short. This was perfect. I counted each and every note with a running total.
"I'm sorry mam, I counted short of $100. Do you have the difference?"
"That's all I have. It's more than the estimate. Just finish this so I can go”.
"Oh, I'm sorry mam. Policy requires the full $100 deposit”. I said this with a smile.
Mount St Karen erupted. She clawed at the now neat stack of cash and pulled it away and screamed.
"I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!" She yelled.
I tugged at my name tag and pointed it at her.
"I am the general manager of this location”.
"GET ME YOUR SUPERVISOR!" The tears were coming back.
"My direct supervisor is not available at this location. His office is 40 miles away. I'm happy to try to resolve any issues, or you may call our corporate number. An operator will take any relevant notes, open a case, and forward it to me for resolution”.
I usually didn't mention that complaints made to corporate about me ultimately get forwarded back to me to resolve. Sure, sometimes someone else might look at it but as far as the company was concerned, problems at my store were my problems. In this case, I found satisfaction in clarifying the situation.
Karen turned to the door and waddled as fast as her legs were able. I let her reach the door before completing my revenge. "Ma’am, your license?" This was a petty move, I admit.
Karen paused before turning and scrambling back toward the counter. I set the card gently in the center and steered my eyes back to the screen. By the time she was on the other side of the door, I was nearly finished filling out the form that black-listed her name and license from our company.
The new customer approached the counter, wide-eyed at the interaction he had the misfortune to witness.
Dropping back into my normal speaking voice, I nodded to him and said, "Sorry, I just need a few seconds to finish this form”.
He returned the nod and leaned against the counter—but we had relaxed too soon. Karen now threw the front door open and screamed.
"YOU WON'T RENT TO ME BECAUSE I'M WHITE AND I'M A WOMAN!"
Forgetting her earlier struggle with the door damper, she repeated her attempt to slam the door and nearly fell. The new customer was unable to suppress a burst of laughter and covered his mouth. Karen steadied herself and waddled to car.
A moment later, we heard the characteristic noise of a starter motor grinding against an already-running engine. This time, I cracked a laugh as well.
Karen's little sedan set off with a pained chirp from one of her tires.
"Oh my God,” exclaimed the new customer, "that lady has problems”.
"Dunno, man. Sorry about the wait”. I replied.
"Do people act like that a lot?" Clearly, this new customer never did time in customer service.
"The fun never stops…”
Not that it matters, but I'm also white. My job had nothing to do with age, race, orientation, or whatever. My job was to take your money. I rented to nearly everyone from everywhere in that job. As long as your poops were in a group, you got what you wanted.
One For The Money
This is one of the best things I've ever seen. So, I worked for a mostly virtual bank. We didn't have branches, but we had what were effectively kiosks at grocery stores, which is where I worked on my own. No doors, and no cash service (you had to go to the ATM just outside the kiosk), but I could help with other things.
A 40-ish-year-old woman came in because her husband had passed a few days earlier and she needed to sort out his accounts. As was not uncommon, she was crying a bunch through the entire process…and I hate the fact that I can't offer her better privacy. I'm right in the main entryway, and everyone walking by can see her.
Anyway, a customer I’ll call Mr. Dimwit goes to my ABM and I guess it took his debit card. He can 100% see that I'm with someone, and 100% see that she's crying. Meanwhile, I'm on the phone talking to one of the departments we need. Nonetheless, he decides to interrupt (by shouting from where he is) and tell me the machine took his card.
This can happen for a few reasons: He could have timed out the transaction, he could have had suspicious activity on his card, or the ABM could be malfunctioning. But, by far, the most common thing is that the guy tried to put a damaged card into the machine—something we had a bunch of signs saying not to do.
I let him know that I can see what happened and get him a new card, but it'd be 30-40 minutes. Then I go back to help the widow. But it wasn’t over. Another customer, Mr. Karen, then goes to the ABM and it takes his card too. He's clearly frustrated, but looks like he's about to leave when Mr. Dimwit walks over to him and says, "Yeah, it did the same me, and he (pointing to me) won't do anything about it".
Again, ABMs take cards all the time. The fact that it took one from someone else doesn't mean I know it needs to be placed as “out of order”, and I'm a bit busy trying to sensitively help a woman whose husband just passed. Mr. Karen doesn't know this, but he can see I'm with someone who's in tears.
But he doesn't care, so he starts yelling and swearing at me. The widow looks awful, and I feel awful for her. So I basically just apologize to the guy, say I'll put a sign saying the machine is out of order, and that I'll be happy to help him when I'm done. He goes off to buy his groceries, and I put a sign-up, apologize to the widow and go back to help her.
A little bit later, Mr. Karen has bought his groceries and is leaving, but decides to stop and yell at me some more. He tells me that I've ruined his day, and then mentions the widow I'm sitting with and says I must be a "totally incompetent idiot” to have upset her that much. Oh boy, this set off a chain reaction. The widow lets out an absolutely primal scream like I've never heard before, gets up, and goes and pushes the guy in the chest.
Not going to lie, what happened next is one of the best things I've ever seen happen. He falls back into his cart and hits the back of his head on the cart. Some of the store employees, including the store manager, come over to help the guy. He tells them "the witch” in my office went crazy and pushed him. And here’s where it peaks.
I cut in with "Dude, you slipped. I know you're embarrassed, but she was sitting in my office the whole time". Mr. Karen just looks at me, then her, and leaves.
The widow asks me if I'll get in trouble for lying to "my manager", and I say I don't really care. I’m a banker at a grocery store, it's not my dream job and I don't work for the store anyway. But when we were done, she went up front and told the manager the truth.
I wasn't there when it happened, but I was told that Mr. Karen came back to complain the next day. One final victory. The manager said he'd reviewed the tapes, which showed he slipped. The guy got angry, the manager told him he'd call the authorities and charge him with trespassing, and he left again.
I was told that by other employees, though; I never heard another word about it from the manager.
Bird Brain
white and red labeled pack on white shelfPhoto by Franki Chamaki on UnsplashYears ago, I was managing a store in a local pet store chain. I was young and often dismissed as a manager. One night a woman walks up to me holding a normal parakeet cage, about $30 and asks me if she buys the cage can we "throw in" extra perches, food, and other accessories?
I politely tell her I can't do that but I can get her a discount if she's buying all those items. She instantly flips her lid and starts reading me the riot act...telling me she works retail and knows I am supposed to do whatever makes the customer happy.
This goes on for a short while, with her never giving me a chance to get a word in. She then sets the cage down and storms out of the store. We all sort of laughed it off, even a few customers who saw it go down were saying things like "I don't know how you deal with people like that”.
About half an hour later, my cashier tells me there is an angry woman on the phone, obviously the same woman, wanting to speak to the manager. I pick up the phone and introduce myself. She immediately starts telling me about her awful experience with the "rude kid" I have working for me.
She rehashes the entire situation with all sorts of embellishments mixed in. I was absolutely shocked—she said that when she approached the "rude kid" he was throwing ferrets into the ferret pen from 10 feet away. She was saying I was playing "ferret basketball". Obviously, this never happened.
She told me that she simply asked if there was a discount for large purchases because she was buying an "expensive parrot cage" and all the necessary supplies for her "expensive parrot" and would be spending well over $500. Again, literally, not a single part of that was true.
But the "rude kid" told her that cheap people don't get discounts and if she can afford a $500 cage and a $2k parrot she can pay full price. The entire time I just let her rant on, trying not to laugh. So I finally tell her I can give her corporate's number. She says no, she just wants me to know what type of people I have working for me and how I (he) should be fired.
I asked who it was and started describing myself. She confirms and I said, "Well ma'am, you might want to take the number for corporate and tell them anyway, because I am the “rude kid” you talked to, none of what you just told me actually happened, and we have 24-hour surveillance cameras in the store. I can pull up the entire ordeal in case my own manager would like to see what really happened”.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Screw you punk!" and slammed down the phone. We didn't actually have cameras, but I knew the bluff was enough. It was quite a satisfying moment. I had many "You are speaking to him" moments in my old career, but that was the best because she was so crazy.
Do Not Touch
I saw an account terminated and their address PERMANENTLY banned from service by a senior Vice President. The lady called in to try to restart her service, then proceeded to complain and ask for management when she was told she couldn't.
I can't even imagine the amount of complaining she had to have done to get to the senior VP level, since even major escalations only get to a level that's like three levels below that. I read the notes, looked at the account,and my eyes widened—she had 6+ service calls every month for 3+ years.
This lady apparently called in almost every day to complain and ask for credits due to her service not working. The address was blocked, and the notes basically said, "This address will never get service again. If this lady somehow gets service from this company again, everybody involved will be fired".
More Than She Bargained For
I was the assistant manager at a large women's clothing store, and we had a woman come in with some items and a gift receipt. Store policy is that item returns with a gift receipt are not given back in cash, they are given in gift cards. Madness ensues.
Karen gets so upset that she is forced to leave, and on her way out, she pulled the ultimate Karen move—she slams the glass door and it shatters. Since we had her information because she left her receipt, she was sent a bill for the door.
Do You Know Who I Am?
Try dealing with Karen when you’re an officer. “Do you know who my husband is?” “You better not touch me. My husband is so and so” Yea ok, well tell me who your husband is on your way to the clinker, lady. Or Karen a military officer’s wife: “My husband is a captain. Where’s my salute?”
Some People
The worst incident happened at a cafe I used to work at. We had a woman with Down Syndrome who worked three days a week. She is very sweet and helpful and one of our family friends. The town I worked in has a huge influx of tourists in the summer, so I'm used to all kinds of people.
A man and his wife came in and ordered a smoothie and an iced americano. Because I was trained as a barista, I'm aware of the difference between an americano and coffee but usually, I use the term "coffee" because I found that a lot of customers didn't know the difference or really care as long as they got their caffeine.
So when I read back the order I said coffee instead of americano. He clarified that it was an Americano and not a brewed coffee. I told him that we only had an espresso machine so it would definitely be an Americano. I made his wife's smoothie and handed it to the woman with Down Syndrome and told her which woman to give it to.
A minute or so later she came back with the smoothie. I asked her what was wrong with it because the woman didn't take it. She said she didn't know, but the woman refused to take it. I took it out to her and asked what was wrong with it. I’m still disgusted at her response. She said straight up that she didn't feel comfortable with my co-worker taking it out, implying her discomfort was because she had special needs.
I firmly told her that she was an employee there and was very competent. I then went to make her husband's drink. I made the iced americano and called his name and said "iced coffee" out of habit. He sat and looked at me, so I said "sir, your drink is ready", already irritated by his wife. He came up and said to me "I ordered an iced americano, not an iced coffee”.
Kind of exhausted by the two, I told him that it was indeed an iced americano. He proceeded to explain to me, the trained barista, the difference between a brewed coffee and an espresso drink...after I had already clarified previously that we only had an espresso. I looked him in the eyes and said firmly "there are two shots of espresso, water, and ice in this cup”.
He then replied with "uh huh" and then had the nerve to ask me if my co-worker with special needs had made it. So I told him (not so nicely) that he could take the drink or not and he could also leave my place of work if he would not treat people with respect. My manager only reprimanded me for swearing during this exchange.
I’m The Only One Who Matters
red and gold theater seatsPhoto by Giusi Borrasi on UnsplashI was a House Manager at a big performing arts venue, and I encountered my worst Karen at a Saturday night showing of The Book of Mormon. I still feel rage when I think about it. Karen’s problem? Just a young man seated in front of her in his standard-size wheelchair (a veteran no less, as I later discovered) and his older parents, who were seated next to him in banquet-style seats.
A bit of background: The banquet seats are what we used when we had mobility requests. We would remove a small, strategically located section of seats to make an empty place for the mobility device, then place the banquet seats for the other ticketed spots.
The venue used those specific seats precisely because they were the exact same height as the theatre seats. Karen didn’t care though! Those people were ruining her view and they needed to go. And no, she wouldn’t move to a no-show seat! Didn’t I know how much money she spent on these tickets??
But when I said I wouldn’t other patrons, who had also bought the expensive tickets, well then how dare I bring up money!! That’s hardly the point!
And on, AND ON she ranted—gesturing wildly, with her designer purse and gold-ringed fingers.
She ranted through the entire 18-minute intermission while I tried to quietly shut her up somehow. It was excruciating. I even had security on standby.
The shrill voice that emanated from her white, toothy maw was a weapon in its own right—enough to make a whistle jealous. The worst part, however, is she was so extremely rude that the family of the man with the wheelchair decided to leave anyway.
I tried SO hard to make other arrangements for them, for free—tickets on another day, or to another show, or even just a refund for that night. They were very kind to me but just wanted to go home. Meanwhile, Karen got to go back in and watch the rest of the show.
Man, screw that entitled witch Karen. I hope she has to leave halfway through every show she ever goes to for the rest of her miserable, unsatisfied life.
Being Extra
The most obnoxious part for me was how tirelessly argumentative Karens are, but yet always about stuff where they're either totally wrong or it just plain does not matter.
"X is supposed to come with strawberries!" X doesn't; Z does though. I can make you Z instead, or add strawberries to X for $8. "No, X is supposed to come with them already”. (Shows them a menu to verify) "I don't know why that says that because X is supposed to come with strawberries”. So do you want me to make X with strawberries then? "X already is supposed to come with strawberries!"
Like lady, I don't know what else to say. You aren't gonna argue your way into being correct. Your options are to say "add strawberries to X" or "make me Z" just pick one, I do not care, and please move to the side while you ponder your options.
A Slice Of Life
I used to work at a cafe/bakery and was there when our manager ripped a Karen a new one. One of my co-workers was about 18 and had a really awful home life. So this lady (about 50) comes in and orders alongside someone who I presume was her friend. My co-worker takes the orders to them.
Overall she was being snippy and demanding with him, but the worst part comes when she picks up her pizza and rips it apart. She then says to him, "This isn't even sliced all the way through, you'd think you'd be able to figure that out by now”. I swear my manager almost came unglued.
I've never seen veins bulge so far out of someone's head before or since. You could tell he was summoning every ounce of his strength not to chew her out right in the middle of the bakery. He immediately kicked both women out and told them they weren't welcome back.
They asked for the owner when he informed them he was the manager, but when the owner finally arrived he concluded that the women were barred as well. They threatened to call the authorities but didn't since we gave them their money back.
I still can't fathom how anyone could be so insensitive.
Nowhere To Go But Down
I’m the head of a complaints department for an international chain, and Karens are basically my bread and butter.
To speak to me, they have to have escalated their concerns through agents, supervisors, and managers, all of whom are empowered to resolve complaints.
Many a time the conversation has gone:
“Unfortunately Karen, we’re not able to meet your expectations. I do hope you find your next visit to be more to your liking”.
“That’s ridiculous, I only want a holiday to the moon and the keys to Atlantis! I want to speak to your manager”.
“I’m the highest level of escalation Karen, that’s our final answer”.
“You’re not the owner of the company, I want to speak to them”.
“No Karen, I’m the highest point of escalation”.
Karen then hangs up and emails the CEO about me and my terrible attitude. The CEO forwards the email to me.
“Hi, Karen,
As per my previous email…”
Pie in The Sky Idea
I am new to retail at Target and got the job because I ran out of cares to give. One day, a lady came into the store and went to the Pizza Hut express. They were out of pan pizzas and closing within a minute of her arrival.
She wasn't convinced and came up to me at self-checkout and asked for a manager. I just shouted "manager" without stopping what I was doing and someone came. She explained that she wasn't convinced that Pizza Hut was out of pan pizzas.
The manager explained that they were. That's when she turned the reddest shade of red and said she didn't believe her. I casually mention that they're closed now anyway, so it doesn't matter. She expresses how much she craves a pan pizza, so a co-worker and I explain that there are at least three pizza places nearby, one of which was a full Pizza Hut, that was still open and served pan pizzas.
She REALLY wanted a Target Pizza Hut Express Pan Pizza, though. But she stormed off, saying she needed to pick up a prescription. None of us had the heart to tell her that the pharmacy closed two hours ago.
I’d Do Anything For Cheese
assorted drinks on white commercial refrigeratorPhoto by Kenny Eliason on UnsplashMy worst Karen was a middle-aged woman who I caught trying to switch price labels around on some blocks of cheese. She found a $5 label for a multipack of chicken (it says chicken on the label) and tried to pull the plastic strip off the shelf to put the new label in place.
When I caught her and asked if she needed any help (pro tip, never outright ask a Karen what they’re doing) she pointed at the blocks of cheese which were $6, and said, “these were $5 the other week”. I politely explained that they were not, it was a different brand of cheese.
She said, “Well why are they in the sale bin then?” They were not.
I again explained that the cheese was not $5 and she walked away muttering to herself. I thought that was that and carried on with my tasks. I was very wrong. I soon heard shouting coming from the till and my staff member rang the management bell.
I headed over, knowing it was her. It was. She was facing him and yelling that “the manager said I could have them for $5!” He was trying to explain that he needed manager authorization for that, so I approached and asked what the problem was. She immediately said, “you’re not the manager!”
I said I was and I had said no such thing about letting her have the cheese for $5. She then said “Listen! I’m a close personal friend of the managers and I…” and I immediately cut in with, “Yeah I’m going to stop you right there. Again, I’m the manager and I’ve never seen you before in my life”. She left the store screeching that she was going to head office about my “incompetence” followed by our security guard.
The next morning there was a round-robin email from other branches in the area about a middle-aged woman trying to sneak a discount on blocks of cheese. She’d gone to every store in the area just to try to get $1 off some cheese!
The Cat Who Ate The Cream
I was working at McDonald's. This old lady would come every day and ask for a small coffee with ten creamers on the side. Ten. Then she would come back after a few minutes and complain that the coffee was cold and demand another one. With 10 more creamers.
We would oblige because she was a regular customer and looked lonely. One day, she came back three times complaining about her coffee. I told her to maybe not put 10 creamers in it if she liked it hot. She started screaming at me and insulting me, saying I was a stupid brat, that I can't make a coffee, that I was rude, the whole shebang.
She then asked for the manager. I don't really know what he told her but from that moment on she was very nice and polite and would only ask for five creamers. Crazy lady.
Look Who It Is
When I managed a movie theater, we had a couple who always came in, I’ll call them Karen and Boss. Boss was called that because he would always say “How you doing today, boss?” and things like that. It got to the point where we would see them purchase their tickets at the box office and we would begin to get their concession order ready right then and there.
They would walk to us and their food items would be ready just the way they liked them. I’d say that’s good service for a regular customer. But even so, Karen always found a reason to complain. Her methods were truly bizarre. Instead of coming to talk to a manager, she would email corporate.
We’d get the forwarded complaint and always have to give them free tickets and concession items. Now, we had another regular customer named Bob. Bob would cook for us, and I mean cook. He’d make full-course, fresh Italian meals. We all loved Bob and he was great to us.
He actually became a really good friend to the general manager and would have him over to his home for dinner too. One day, Karen and Boss walk in and Bob was standing with the general manager talking. The General Manager rolled his eyes and Bob asked him what happened.
The General Manager told him he’s just tired of Karen complaining all the time when we provide them with great customer service. Bob looks to see who it is and tells us it’s his freaking cousin. The General Manager printed the latest email from her to show Bob and Bob ran over and asked her: “What the heck is this?”
Karen never complained to corporate again.
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Storytime! Years and years ago when I was a poor college kid, I worked at a call center. We worked for an insurance company that had royally screwed up thousands of people's insurance, but our job was to take inbound calls for people and basically say that we apologize for the inconvenience but said the company was working to fix the issue, and then do whatever we could for them.
As you might guess, it was not a fun job, especially since the majority of customers were senior citizens calling in because they were having issues getting medication due to the insurance screw-up. Okay, so now onto Mr. Karen.
Mr. Karen calls, automatically screaming about how his medication hasn't been approved and that he cannot afford the cost out of pocket. At first, I don't feel right about thinking about him as Mr. Karen because he had a right to be mad.
But anyhow, I go through my lines of apologizing and trying to rectify the situation for him. None of my offers appeal to him. He was IRATE. After about 15 minutes of back and forth with him, he demands my name and ID number. He is going to have me fired.
I have personally ruined his life, etc. I give him my name. He demands to know my last name as well. I give him my last name, which happens to be a very unique last name. This is where it all changes. He stops. Silence. This old man then stutters, "Are you any relation to *insert very old, famous, yet overshadowed* baseball player? I tell him that yes, I am, he was my great, great, great uncle.
He played in the '20s. This grouchy old man suddenly becomes the sweetest man in the world; completely awestruck to be talking to me. Apparently, he had seen him play when he was a kid (the man was in the late '80s, early '90s in age) and somehow talking to me, a very late relative, put him over the moon.
He went from raging Karen to kid in a candy store in two seconds flat, asking me everything I knew about my great uncle (who, sadly, passed 10 years before I was born). It totally made his day, and mine too.
Of course, after that, he was no longer Mr. Karen, but I thought it would be a nice little story to tell within all the raging lunatic Karen stories...so, there you go...have a nice day.
We Don’t Do That Here, Lady
One of my managers had to explain to a Karen, during a lunch rush, why she couldn't take the onion out of the French onion soup.
The Best Offense Is A Good Defense
person holding black smartphone in carPhoto by Jonathan Cooper on UnsplashI had a raging Karen in the first lane of the drive-thru yelling at me. I just listened and listened, and when she was done I let her sit there a second. Then I said, “Ma'am, you can choke.” Not expecting that answer, she just drove off in shock. It could have gone totally different, but I'm glad it didn't.
Boxing Clever
I work as a mover. One time, we were doing a huge move. As in, two full 26' box trucks of stuff, which was mostly all artwork. I grabbed a painting and the guy says, “Oh that's one of the cheap ones”. Well, the price tag on the back said $50,000. The move was from a huge mansion to an apartment in the city that spanned the whole floor of a building; the elevator opened right to the place.
We get to the unload and it's already dark out. It was a real struggle to pack this stuff. It was all heavy and expensive and the customers were hovering. They tried to get us to not take lunch because they were antsy and wanted to buy us pizza. No way, we needed food and we needed to be away from these people.
So first the woman—a total Karen—says the floor just got redone and we can't put any cardboard boxes on it because the fibers will get stuck in the wood. Then, as we bring in furniture, she is like a little this way, a little more, ok now back. As a mover, we don't normally place the furniture exactly. One guy almost quit during this process—but I had a plan. I said stay on the truck, I'm going to break this lady. First, I piled the cardboard boxes on the window sills. We blocked every single window in the place to the ceiling with boxes.
Then, we filled up the kitchen countertops and piled them to the ceiling also so she would have to undo it all to put the kitchen stuff away. Then, we covered the kitchen floor, then all the bathrooms. Anywhere without wood floors. All the while, every single thing I brought in, where do you want this? Here or here? Little over? Or here? All my crew had already taken breaks, but I kept going and going and going.
Finally, after like 14 hours of this job, I walk in with a dresser and say, where do you want this and she looks around...the place is full, there's stuff everywhere. She stutters for a second and says…screw it, just put it anywhere, I don't care anymore. And that's when I took my break.
Pool Party
I was working at a public pool in my town, and the rules are that you can't bring outside food or drinks into the pool. This rule didn't please Karen, who was very eager to let me know that she had just spent 12 DOLLARS on this coffee from STARBUCKS.
She argues with me by saying that the public pool in the next town over allows it. I keep saying the same rehearsed response, that it’s our policy that outside food and drinks can't come in the pool. I still can’t believe what she did. She dumped the coffee onto our computer, so I called the authorities. They arrested her, and the town prosecuted her to the full extent of the law.
Being Extra
I love the Karens who seem to think extra food is free. You’re not going to go anywhere and get extra meat or queso guacamole for free. I had a couple come in and they got a salad. They asked for extra meat, then queso, then even more queso.
I told them they would be charged for each scoop. She flipped out. She started cussing at me about how it’s wrong and she shouldn’t have to pay for more than one, why must we be so expensive because the other location does not do this? But I had the perfect reply.
I gave her a big smile and let her know I am the general manager of that store, so I knew she did not get that treatment there. Sorry, extra food is not free. She then started screaming for a corporate number and the store owner.
I told her I couldn’t give out people’s private numbers and told her to leave. She is now banned from both stores. She did put in a complaint…but guess who sees them and makes return calls? Me. She hung up on me when I called.
Going In Circles
I was talking to a customer over the phone. After going back and forth on an issue we couldn't help with, the customer said something to the effect of, "Well that's not good enough”. Being fed up at this point, I simply said, "Well, you not liking the answer doesn't mean the answer changes”.
She snapped, "That's really unprofessional”, And I said, "You thinking it's unprofessional also doesn't change the answer”. And then she said, "Let me talk with your manager”. That's when I executed my mic drop.
To which I got to say, "I am the manager, we're going in circles. If you'd like you can email me you can, in which case I'll review your complaint to determine if it needs to be escalated”. She was not happy when she hung up.
What is it that makes people confess their deepest, darkest sins to millions of strangers on Reddit? While we may not know the answer, we do know that the following confessions run the gamut from funny to salacious to nasty nightmare fuel. In fact, you might want an Ouija board to send some of these skeletons back to the closets from whence they came.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
On one autumn day when I was 11, I was told to take out the trash. As I was doing this, I noticed the box of matches next to our grill. Since it was fall, I burned a small pile of old leaves for a couple of minutes and then stomped on them to put out the fire. Unbeknownst to me, all that did was push the embers right next to our house.
The next thing I knew, the house went up the flames. It was terrifying—but that wasn’t the worst of it. The firefighters put out the fire and the house insurance covered the damages, but the authorities were very curious about how it started. They suspected someone jumped to the fence and lit up the leaves to burn our house down.
Unfortunately, this caused my parents to think someone was out to get us. Scared for our lives, they decided to move elsewhere. They lost their well-paying jobs and they lost a lot of money on the sale of the house. For the next solid seven years, we lived in stress and poverty. My parents still do not know that I’m the reason they had to live like that.
Lucky Break
I got busted with a lot of computers from my work—about $25,000 worth—and pleaded guilty to grand theft. The authorities spelled my name wrong and put down the wrong birthday. I also never gave them my license or social security number. I just kept saying, “I don’t remember it” over and over during my 90-day incarceration.
That was 34 years ago. Every few years, I still do background checks on my name and I’d be lying if I said that my heart doesn’t race each and every time I do it. Nope. Still not there.
You Do You
I recently quit my job to become a stripper—and it’s had a surprising side effect. First, the only person who knows this is my husband. I have more quality time with my family, I am more financially stable, I’ve gotten into better shape, and I don’t have to worry about budgets or bills as much. If we need something in the house, it can go on the monthly or the weekly lists depending on severity.
If my husband wants a new project, I can give him his guy time. If my kid is sick, I can afford the medicine. I don’t have to worry about money, and neither does my family. During my own childhood, I would agonize over whether we had food, electricity, heat, or tampons. It feels good to be able to provide for my family.
Hate The Game, Not The Player, Right?
I have managed to create a facade that makes it appear as if I have worked full-time on the project I was assigned to but it actually takes only me half of the time. It was tricky but I have managed to organize things in a way that allows me to do anything except my work at the office. On home office days I mostly play video games.
Whenever I get asked how my work is going, I lie to make it look like I am fully swamped with my work and the schedules and deadlines, etc. A side effect of this was that I got really good at lying and could deceive anyone about nearly anything and most people would actually believe it. I’ve been doing this for two years now.
If my coworkers or boss ever found out that I get paid for a full-time job while only working roughly 20 hours a week, I’d get fired immediately. Additionally, I live in a small town, and getting caught would totally ruin my reputation and any chances at a potential new job. I also just want to say that I don’t feel bad about my behavior at all.
The Sweet Smell Of Revenge
person walking beside Golden retriever on the streetPhoto by Andriyko Podilnyk on UnsplashWhen I was around age 10, I was walking home with my dog when he cut the corner and walked diagonally through the yard of this super-mean old lady who lived at the end of our street. She was in her yard at the time tending to some really fancy-looking rosebushes. All of a sudden she sprayed my dog all over with some kind of insecticide or fertilizer.
I should mention that my dog was a very friendly golden retriever who didn’t even go near her and certainly didn’t do anything threatening. I couldn’t believe that she sprayed him with whatever chemical she was using on her roses. I ran back home with the dog and immediately hosed him off. He coughed a bunch but seemed OK.
I didn’t tell my parents because I somehow thought that I was going to get into trouble for letting the dog walk in her yard. I’m glad I didn’t tell them, though, because I decided to get revenge. That night I snuck downstairs, out the half-bath window, and down the street to her yard. Once there, I cut down every single rose bush I could get my hands on.
Putting In The Work
I’ve kept this on the down low, but I used to have a drinking problem. I went to detox, rehab, and an aftercare program. Then I went into a halfway house and finally my own apartment in another state, which made things easier. I’m 31 and, honestly, it sucks. I want to break free from lying and hiding, but things always get uncomfortable if I let anyone know about my journey.
It’s really tough because I believe that anyone I tell will judge me and not want to talk to me. This just makes it easier to lie. Not to mention, lying has worked pretty well so far, so why fix what’s not broken? Unfortunately, I also understand how all of this not only hangs over my head but can also eventually catch up to me. I’m just stuck in the middle, I guess.
What Happens On Vacation Stays On Vacation
I was on a holiday in China, visiting some cousins, and was out riding my bike. It was about 9:30 pm. I turned left, crashed into a stack of trash cans, and got my leg stuck in some hole. I looked down into the alley that I had been about to enter and could see a guy wearing about five face masks, all adjusted so that they covered his identity completely.
It was actually quite comical, and I almost laughed out loud, but by that point, my leg was really starting to hurt. The masked man had a giant, ruler-sized blade and was pointing it at another person’s neck. He was an older man with what I swear was the longest scarf I have ever seen in my life. I just sat there staring as they yelled at each other in Chinese.
Apparently, the old scarf guy owed the masked man a ton of money. I must have made some sort of noise at that moment because they both suddenly turned toward me in a bit of a panic. The masked man shoved the scarf guy to the ground, glared at me, gave me the finger, and bolted into the night.
Just What The Doctor Ordered
After weeks of unbearable cramping and bleeding, I found out at the gyno that my ex gave me chlamydia. I was tested prior to us getting together and I didn’t sleep with anyone in between then so I knew it was him. I also found out that a few people he had slept with prior to me had it. He kept blaming me and saying some messed up stuff and we ended up breaking up.
I had known that the relationship had almost run its course anyway, so that didn’t really hit me hard, but a lot of the things he said to me toward the end did. Anyway, I picked up the antibiotics for the both of us. My best friend had taken them before and told me that they give you a horrid stomachache and the worst diarrhea imaginable.
And they definitely did. I decided to wait a couple of days until I was off work and could stay home to take them. I was pooping every five minutes all day long. When I gave the antibiotics to my ex, I was feeling extra petty that day and told him that he should take the antibiotics before work in the morning because I had taken them at night and they had me so wired I was up all night. I genuinely hope he pooped himself at work.
Road Trip Gone Wrong
When I was in my 20s, I went on a cross-country road trip in an RV just for fun. I would just drive from town to town eating food and checking out cool stores and places. Livin’ the dream, right? It was a fun way to spend the summer. Well, it would have been—if I hadn’t done something stupid in one of the towns I visited.
I don’t know why, but when I was in one of the stores, I took something that was worth a lot of money. I was caught, cuffed, and jammed in the back of a squad car. On my way to wherever it is they take you, the cop got called to something urgent. He left me locked in the back of the car (with the AC on, what a guy) and went into a business.
I tested the door handle for kicks and it wasn’t locked. I got out of the car and ran a couple of streets over to my RV. I got into it and was able to pull one of my hands out of the cuffs. I started up the RV and drove out of town. I had never given them my name and, luckily, I had left my wallet and cell phone in my RV.
They recovered the item I took but had no way of identifying me. Thankfully, I have never heard anything else about it since.
A Very Difficult Decision
toddler's walking on the seashore with adultPhoto by Guillaume de Germain on UnsplashWhen I was 17 and pregnant for the second time, I decided to give the second child up for adoption. I was so scared and I already had a child who was a little over a year old. I didn’t even get to see my son after he was born. I spent the next two weeks bawling. That’s when I made a devastating realization. I had to take him back.
I had to go to this poor woman’s house and get him. Seeing her heartbroken face was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. In my heart, my heartbreak was worse. Maybe that makes me selfish but he came from my body and I couldn’t imagine a world without him. When I got home, my mom kicked me out and had my stuff on the lawn.
I ended up getting my act together and working 80 hours a week to support myself and my babies. It felt got to figure out my life. My son is now 23 and amazing. I don’t regret my choice at all, but I live in fear of my kids somehow finding this out. I don’t want them to ever know, especially my son. I’m afraid he will think I didn’t want him.
Hot For Teacher
I make good money writing adult short stories—but that’s not the shocking part of my secret. One of my recurring characters is based on one of my professors at university. He recently came across one of my stories and recognized my writing. I couldn’t believe it when he actually sent it to me, offering corrections and tips. He knew it was based on him. He knew I have a thing for him. We ended up hooking up.
Catch Me If You Can
After a semester of community college, I ended up working as a summer intern at a job where even the most junior positions require a minimum of two university degrees. I was given this unpaid position for six weeks as a favor to a friend of mine. And let me just say, I was super-grateful at the time, even though I didn’t know what the future would hold.
I’ve now been at the company for more than 30 years. I’ve risen up the ranks to increasingly complex positions with additional responsibilities. I now supervise people with multiple university degrees and each of them with a wealth and breadth of knowledge in complex subjects where any mistakes will have dire personal, professional, and corporate consequences.
I’ve won multiple regional and national awards for achievements in my field and I’m often called on to mentor younger employees who have more letters and abbreviations after their names than my doctor has. But there’s something that none of them know.
I don’t even have my high school diploma. Nobody has ever asked me about my education.
Time To Face The Music
In my first year of high school, we had a music competition. I think this was an attempt to get kids to not drop the subject when they got to choose which subjects they’d take. I entered the composition category and fully intended to make my own song. I was into techno at the time and was trying to learn tracker-style music sequencing software.
I procrastinated and didn’t have anything worthwhile, so I ended up submitting one of the demo tracks that came with the software. The night of the contest, I discovered that the only other entry was from a couple of special-needs students who just played the same two chords over and over. I was too scared to drop out because it would mean owning up to my plagiarism.
Needless to say, I won the category, but I felt pretty awful about it. To make things worse, the music teacher played the whole song for the class and tried really hard to get me to take music as one of my exam subjects.
Blood Is Not Thicker Than Money
I found out about a year ago that after my dad perished, the will named me as the primary heir to his small accumulation of wealth. I was 15 at the time. My parents were divorced at the time and my mom arranged to have all of his life savings put away until I was 18. The problem was I never received any of that money—and the reason why was twisted.
I found out that my mom secretly hid the money from the family and lied and said he barely left us anything. She ended up buying our family house outright with the cash that was meant to go to me and my brother. She also bought herself some nice jewelry and went on a couple of holidays. For a while, I considered getting a lawyer, but I decided to play dumb about everything.
If it got out that she had done this, it would totally tear the family apart again. So now I’m a broke 23-year-old saving up for my own house penny by penny all while knowing for a fact that there’s about $450,000 that should have been mine. My close friend is married to a lawyer and he reviewed my case and my evidence.
The lawyer said that if I took this to court it would be a slam dunk and over and done within a couple of months. I won’t do that to my brother and I won’t do that to my family. But I still have a plan. When I’m 30 and starting a family, I will sit her down and tell her she can quietly work out a plan with me to give me what is rightfully mine.
For now, she actually thinks she’s fooled me. She even goes so far as to lie and complain about mortgage payments. I don’t hate her, I just feel sorry for her. You have to be twisted up inside to do that to your own son and daughter, but here we are. I sincerely hope the lie eats her up at night.
The Truth Is Out There
man sitting on sofaPhoto by Kelly Sikkema on UnsplashWhen I was a teenager, I had a horrible compulsive lying problem. My “stories” controlled my whole life and I completely ruined most relationships before they even got started. Not to mention, my lying made me worse in the head because I bottled up my feelings for many years. Thankfully, I have recently been getting therapy and meds—but there’s been a dark side to my progress.
As part of the healing process, I chose to upend my life by admitting the truth to those I lied to. Some don’t talk to me anymore, which I can understand. It felt good and also horrible, to tell the truth. If you have a similar issue, please talk to someone. Sometimes I still get the urge to lie, but now after I lie, I throw my shame on the table and correct myself.
Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
A couple of my old roommates decided it would be funny to trash my room while I was on holiday in Vegas. I came home to find pizza stuck on the walls, stained sheets, wet toilet paper stuck to the ceiling, and about four unflushed bowel movements in my en suite toilet. It was definitely not the homecoming I had expected.
Being a rather quiet and non-confrontational man, I laughed all of this off, but on the inside, I began planning. I decided to get them where it hurt. So, when they were out one night, I peed into their orange juice. The next morning at breakfast, I happily watched them dig into it. To this day, no one knows about this.
Kids Are Cruel
I used to get bullied because of severe eczema on my face. I had no eyebrows and my skin was very flaky and red, which earned me the nickname “Alligator Girl”. I am now on medication, which has made me totally unrecognizable. My glow-up has given me a bit of imposter syndrome and I have experienced some pretty privilege. I live in fear of people finding out about my unattractive past.
Coming Clean
I was an addict in my 20s. I’ve been clean for nine years, and no one I work with, or associate with at this point in my life (besides my wife, kids, and immediate family), knows that 10 years ago I was an unrecognizable shell of who I am now. It definitely wasn’t easy, and I still have a lot of baggage from that time of my life.
The hardest part was cutting out all the people that I had been “friends” with (AKA using buddies) for almost a decade. As soon as I stopped using, they quit hanging around.
Take The Money And Run?
I’m a trauma surgery nurse and I found a devious loophole in my job. I’m now making almost as much as some of the doctors. I basically work smarter, not harder. My coworkers, and even my boss, don’t know. My boss just adds up the hours but never sees the amount I’m paid—only the payroll department knows what I’m actually making.
What I’m doing is kind of hard to explain, but nothing I’m doing is against the law. We have about 3,000 employees at my hospital and I’m a casual call employee. I pick up trauma shifts from traveling nurses, but I’ll charge them $100 to 200 a shift for picking it up. They get paid so much that they are happy to pay me that.
As permanent employees, they get paid double to work a trauma shift, plus a bonus and multiple differentials. Since I’m casual call, I get a 15% differential that other employees don’t get. Then I get extra because of my master’s (even though I’m doing a regular RN’s job and not a master’s level job). All of that then doubles when I work a trauma shift.
In 2022, I only worked for about 25 hours per week. My other coworkers, in the same position, working 40 hours per week, make a quarter of what I make for four times the work. If the other nurses find out, no one will want to work full time and the administration will reconfigure how I’m paid. I’m going to quietly ride this out for as long as possible.
Small Slip, Big Consequences
white ceramic mug filled with coffeePhoto by Nathan Dumlao on UnsplashI’ve never told anyone this, not even my therapist, and it’s my biggest regret. This happened over five years ago and it still haunts me that I was even capable of this. My girlfriend was talking about breaking up with me after we had been together for five years. The next day, she said she was just in a mood and told me she loves me and that I should forget about that conversation.
We had makeup nookie. But I had an intrusive thought: “If you get her pregnant, she’ll stay”. I quickly realized I’d made a horrible mistake.
The next morning, I slipped the morning-after pill into her coffee. I didn’t feel like too much of a terrible person because she had always been adamant that under no circumstances did she want a child until she had finished law school. But I was in for a surprise. She still got pregnant. It was a nightmare.
She wanted an abortion. I paid for everything, held her hand the whole way through, and helped her however I could. We broke up a few years later, but it was unrelated to the unwanted pregnancy. I still feel like an absolute jerk whenever I think about what I did to her, and what it ultimately resulted in. I want to say I was a naive young adult, but I had already graduated college by then, and I was fully aware that what I did was against the law.
I’m aware that what I did was monstrous, and I have to live with that every day. I want to say that I had no clue what I was thinking, but I absolutely do, and that terrifies me. If I could take it back I would. While she was emotionally, verbally, and even sometimes physically abusive to me, she 100% didn’t deserve that trauma.
The Heart Wants What It Wants
During COVID, I got so bored during lockdown that I made a Selena Gomez stan account on Twitter. I had a cute anime profile pic and everything. All my mutuals thought I was their babygirl. The funny part is that I’m also a truck driver who looks like a lumberjack and an oil rig worker. In other words, I’ve held my masculinity to high standards, so if this ever gets out…
Putting In The (Self) Work
I am not actually in therapy. Not because I don’t believe it doesn’t work or help me. I am 25 and have spent more than 16 of those years with different therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists dissecting and analyzing my thoughts and feelings. The problem is that my parents don’t accept any form of self-discovery unless they think it comes from a professional.
I have grown more in the past two years from being 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away from them and just writing down and processing my feelings than I have from any doctor they’ve sent me to. So I came up with a plan to fool them.
My parents never acknowledged my growth until I started falsely using the phrase “my therapist told me to”…
Ever since I started doing that they have had nothing but praise for how hard I’ve been working on myself and how much better I’m doing. They have finally understood things I’ve been trying to explain for almost a decade just because I told them that my therapist said it instead of me.
It isn’t costing any of us any money but if they found out they would definitely freak out.
Snitches Get Stitches
I shared a physics class with twin brothers who were disruptive, nasty, and sociopathic. When they finished school, they were often in and out of prison. One of them even served time for trying to bump off some guy. One time, these brothers burned all of the trees on a sacred plot of land near where I lived.
I knew it was them. One of them took a reel of phosphorus from the school lab. They’d been fascinated with it since we had done an experiment earlier in the week. The authorities knew that the fire had been started with a reel of phosphorus tape. I told the principal. If the twins ever found out that I did this, I hate to think what they’d do to me—even 25 years later.
Thankfully, they’ll never know and I spend the majority of my time in two different countries anyway. so even if they did find out somehow—oh, let’s face it, they wouldn’t be smart enough to find me. Law enforcement was able to prove that it was them and they confessed. Their excuse? They wanted to see how fast it would all burn.
By The Seat Of Their Pants
This happened to me on the job when I was working as a paramedic. We were on the way to a chest pain patient and I suddenly had an intense need to pass gas. There was no way I could hold it in. That’s when disaster struck. Unfortunately, my bottom burp added some weight and color to my white trousers. Since we were on the way to a job, though, there was nothing I could do.
So, during the whole job, I made sure to keep myself turned in a way that ensured no one was ever behind me, including my colleagues, the patient, his wife and son, and later on the hospital personnel. I wore my jacket tied around my hips like an idiot as well. It all worked quite well, but, wow, was that a tough moment.
Cheating Hearts
shallow photography of man hugging woman outdoorsPhoto by freestocks on UnsplashI had a very romantic affair with an older married man. It was awesome. I had known this man for a few years and he was very handsome for his age. He was in his 50s and I was 32. He took care of himself and was exceptional in the bedroom. He would whisk me away to different countries and was always a complete gentleman.
I do not condone sleeping with married men or women, and would never do it again. In my defense, he was a good stress release from the abusive on-again-off-again relationship I had with my ex. His wife was an annoying and emotionally abusive Karen, but I believe they’re trying marriage counseling at the moment. Did I mention that he is a politician?
From Side Hustle To Main Gig
I was recently fired from one of my jobs because they found out I share naughty content on an online subscription service. I told my husband that I was let go because I stood up for myself in front of the wrong people, which was an incident I had been reprimanded for the day before. I paid for my kids' Christmas with that money and I plan to continue so that I can make up for the lost income stream.
Take To The Grave
My father caught my grandfather cheating on my grandmother in the 1990s. For reasons unknown, the lady in question revealed their 40-year affair and gave my father picture proof that she had been dating my grandfather since the 1950s. My grandfather was violent when he was younger, so my father decided to keep the affair a secret to protect my grandmother—but he still used it to his advantage.
My father threatened to show the picture to my grandmother if his father ever became aggressive again. Unfortunately, my father passed before he had the chance to tell her the truth. My grandparents are still married, and this secret would do some crazy damage to our family today—especially since my grandfather now has dementia, and would ironically be blissfully unaware of it all.
Secret Shopper
Almost 20 years ago, when I was about nine years old, I used my mom’s credit card information to buy some toys from a random website. The site was obviously 100% fake but I was a kid and didn’t know much about anything at the time. The next day, my mom freaked out when she found out that there was a $500 transaction she didn’t make.
The people at her bank wanted to look at my computer, but, thankfully, she told them that I couldn’t have done it because I didn’t know anything about credit cards or online shopping. Just a few days before my little mistake, she had been traveling, so to this day, she believes that someone in Perú had taken her credit card information.
Secret Snacker
I had food intolerance until I hit puberty. For the first 13 years of my life, I could only eat chicken, potatoes, rice, beans, and bread. I was not allowed to eat anything else—and no spices either. So every time there was an event or a party, I would bring my own chips and that was all that I was allowed to eat.
Eventually, though, I would eat what the other kids were eating. From there it developed to taking banned foods from the supermarket so that I could them out myself. I did this for many years until the doctor told me I no longer have food allergies. If I had been caught back then it would have backfired pretty hard on me.
Prom Crashers
woman in blue sleeveless dress wearing blue and white floral tiaraPhoto by Todd Cravens on UnsplashWhen I was a senior in high school, I went to prom with a group of friends. I had bought a single ticket, not a couple’s ticket. One of my friends knew a guy who wanted to go to our prom but couldn’t because he went to a different high school, so I let him walk in next to me and pretended he was my date. Thankfully, nobody looked closely enough at my ticket to realize it wasn’t for two people.
You Can’t Pray A Lie
In my junior year of high school, I had to write a six-page paper on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ugh. During Spring Break, I found out that my sister had the same assignment two years prior. I asked if I could use her paper, which she had got a 91% on, and she told me it was fine as long as I denied that she had anything to do with it if I got caught.
So I changed about 30 words to better fit my writing style, updated the MLA format to the present (it had changed slightly in those two years), and copied it into a new document (in case the metadata was ever looked into). I ended up getting a 99% on it and aced the course. My sister, to this day, still claims I owe her one.
Unexpected Consequences
A year ago, my secret would have been “people finding out that I’m bi”. I lived 36 years of my life as a hetero man with a wife and two kids. Denying that part of my identity did me no favors. In March, I came out to my partner of 16 years. It did not go well. My already fragile marriage was ruined. I may have lost my wife but I didn’t lose anyone else.
My daughters, father, mother—everyone that mattered understood and accepted me. I now have a new partner who loves and accepts me for who I am. I was able to keep the house and I get to co-parent our beautiful girls. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. This won’t work for everyone, but sometimes it’s healthier, to be honest.
Savage
I used to get along with most of my coworkers, but not this one particular person. To say I hated her would be an understatement. This one time, she took her wedding ring off and left it on her desk at work. What I did next was absolutely heinous.
I found it and sold it for gold at the pawn shop. Unfortunately, I only got like $60 bucks for it.
Which Witch Is Which
My mother-in-law is hyper-Christian and very anti-LGBTQ+. She is very proud of her relation to a Salem witch trials judge. I am married to her amazing son and his parents have no idea that I’m bi, agnostic-ish, and a witch. My husband knows this and totally supports me but she has no clue. I occasionally attend Bible study with her for the gossip and connections.
All In The Family
women's black shirtPhoto by Ignat Kushanrev on UnsplashLast Christmas I learned that my older sister and I are technically only half-sisters. My sister’s biological father tried to start a relationship with my mom that resulted in a pregnancy and ultimately didn’t work out. That biological father is in heaven now and I didn’t probe into his identity or his demise in case it was painful for my mom.
My mom raised my sister as a widow at my grandmother’s house during the 80s. When she met my father in the 90s, they really clicked. Shortly after, they got married, moved into a new house, and had me. My mom told me to never call my sister my half-sister and just pretend that all of this doesn’t matter. If anyone asks about the 10-year age gap, I just tell them that it’s a long story.
Adult-ish
I feel like I’m pretending to be an adult every day. I do not, whatsoever, feel like an adult. I work 40 to 50 hours a week for a multinational manufacturer in a very fast-paced environment, people come to me for answers all day, I own a vehicle and have my own place, and people say things like “You always have your act together” and “You’re so responsible”. But there’s something that they don’t know.
I have bills and responsibilities like every other functioning adult out there, but it feels like I’m pretending. The absolute truth? Ninety percent of the time I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I Google everything. I am incredibly awkward when I talk to people. I feel like I’m just this kid running around playing dress-up with a bunch of real adults.
An Unbreakable Bond
In 2013, it was my first semester of college. I had an anthropology class at 8:30 am and I’m not exactly a morning person. Apparently, this girl I sat next to wasn’t either. It was one of those things where we just saw each other and knew because we were both absolute zombies. We had an unspoken bond: “No one else will understand how much we want to sleep, so let’s just hang with each other”.
We stayed pretty true to that, too. We’d often go for food after class, so, understandably, we got close. But we were both super-religious and thought every form of attraction was some kind of sin. So, as close as we got, we were always kind of awkward with each other. When we got an assignment to go do interviews, it felt natural to go with each other and just help out.
So, we got mine done pretty early in the semester but hers took a bit more planning. We had to drive about two hours to this mountain city where her grandfather lived to talk to him. I didn’t drive at the time, so we took her car. There was about three months’ worth of romantic tension built up between us by then, so the drive was slightly uncomfortable.
Once the interview was completed, we had dinner in a small pub. It was about dusk, and both of us said that we wanted to wander into the forest for a bit before heading back. Just to take in the atmosphere for a while, you know? So we parked by the side of the road and went down into the trees. It was extremely beautiful.
We lived in the desert, where most of the vegetation we were used to was a few palm trees here and there but this was amazing. No sound from the city, no smog from the cars, just people, trees, and silence. She ended up brushing up against me to get past some roots, but in a way that felt almost deliberate. I tested it back by brushing up against her at times when I didn't necessarily need to.
We finally decided to say “screw it” to all our pious fears and just decided to have fun.
I wasn't a virgin at that point, but I had made a lot of really dumb decisions up to that moment, which was why I was as religious as I was. She was a virgin, despite being a few years older than me. There was that feeling that it would last forever and that we would always belong to each other.
Afterward, during our walk of shame to her car, things were obviously awkward. Now, the drive back home was uncomfortable for pretty much the opposite reason as when we were headed up there. The silence gave me a lot of time to think, though. I decided that I was just gonna tell her exactly how much I loved her. Except I chickened out and didn’t say anything.
I don't know why I didn't tell her. I guess because I was freshly 18 and have always been kinda bad with people. It was Friday and I knew I’d see her again on Monday—that would be my moment. Monday came, and I was excited and nervous. I even dressed better than I normally do. She didn't show. We usually didn't question when the other person didn't show, so I didn't think much of it.
When she missed the whole week, I started getting concerned. I tried texting and calling her, but no replies. She missed a second week. That Friday I asked the professor. Turns out, he had just got the news and was going to tell the class before he began the lecture. On the Sunday after our forest escapade, she’d been in a car accident and didn’t make it.
For a while, I didn’t react. I didn’t believe it.
I didn't know anything about her family outside of her grandfather, so I used what I could to find her family. I showed up at her brother’s work. He could see that I was pretty shaken as I spoke, and I could see that he was getting kind of agitated, so we decided to wait until his shift was over to talk. He told me about how happy she was in the days before the accident.
He said that she’d been pretty depressed, but had just started to get out of her room more, was getting along with her parents, and was generally more fun to be around. Then he told me that someone had been driving while inebriated and hit her from behind, wrapping her car around a tree. That was what did it. That was the moment that I really felt the impact.
For days I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t WANT to do anything. I failed all but one class that semester. My entire life was basically falling apart. Through all of it, I never really told my parents, friends, or anyone. All they knew was that I was in a pretty bad place.
I’ve had a few attempts at relationships since, but it was hard for me to not feel guilty whenever I got close to someone because I was still in love with her.
I got rid of my belief in God and His “plan”, because how could I justify her senseless demise at the hands of some irresponsible jerk? Since then, I’ve met someone else who has helped me get over my grief. I’ve been pretty open about my baggage, as she was about hers. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with my existential awareness too, I guess. So I’m in a much healthier place overall.
Sometimes They Start Young
I accidentally took a bag of shredded cheese from the store. I was seven or eight months pregnant and I had my two-year-old with me. He was sitting in the seat part of the shopping cart. I gave him the bag of cheese to play with and didn’t realize that he somehow ended up sitting on it. As I was loading my groceries and putting him into his car seat, I saw the contraband.
For about two seconds I considered going back into the store to pay for it. I then realized that I was completely OK with being an outlaw. I was also way too tired to walk back into the store at that point. Sixteen years later I’m still sleeping well at night. I now realize why my mom NEVER took us to the store. I’m one of seven kids, so it was her only alone time.
Nightmare Come True
This happened when I was in the 8th grade. We were taking standardized tests (STAAR, I think) and, as someone who’s both shy and has selective mutism, I’ve never been able to raise my hand in class. Anyway, I had to pee. Badly. There were still about 20 minutes left before the bell would ring, so I figured I could make it. Big mistake.
The pee just started and I could NOT stop it. I just sat there in the classroom, sitting in my own pee, which was also running down my legs. I didn’t move until the bell rang, and everyone left. This one girl I didn’t know stood at the door and really tried to get me to leave. I think she knew what I did and was trying to make fun of me.
Once everyone was out, my teacher asked what was wrong. I started to cry and told her that I had an accident. She told me to wait there, and then she went and got two other teachers. The three of them literally guarded me in the hallway so no one would see my wet jeans as I went to the office.
They gave me a change of pants and I went home. I would just like to give a shout-out to those teachers because, honestly, I’m sure there are teachers out there who have just sent me to the office and not guarded me to save me from the immense embarrassment and ridicule that would have come from getting caught with wet pants.
Potluck Hack
brown wooden spoonPhoto by Jason Tuinstra on UnsplashWhenever I’m cooking for people or bringing something to a potluck, I put a little more than double the amount of salt called for in the recipes. This means I never have to bring home leftovers because the dishes are scraped clean. Yes, my super-secret confession is salt. I don’t want to get the stink eye from my health-conscious friends.
Well, That Was Unexpected
When my sister was going through a mental health crisis she decided to spill all of my secrets to our family and friends. She resented the fact that I was trying to convince her to get help and she felt that exposing me would take the heat off of her. She was trying to deflect attention from herself and if she was going down, she was going to take me with her.
She exposed a lifetime’s worth of sins and regrets that I would change if I could go back in time. Nothing I did was against the law, but some people would consider it immoral. It was very personal stuff that I never wanted to share. Well, everybody knows now! It opened up conversations that I never intended to have with our family.
I offered to have an open dialogue with our family and answer any questions but no one cared. Well, my sister’s plan completely backfired on her.
In fact, I received love and support while she’s been completely ostracized by most of our family. They found her behavior to be self-righteous and deplorable. Being found out didn’t ruin me, it freed me.
Time To Embrace Neurodiversity
I am autistic with hyper emotionalism and near-savant level “hobbies”, which I never tell anyone I am good at. I hate the way my brain is because it has driven so many people away from me. All my life, my mom has told me that she is thankful that she and my dad had me because I’m so difficult that anyone else would have bumped me off.
She says that they love me for my issues and difficulties and cried with me when I couldn’t handle the feelings or sensory stimulation I had. I hate it. I just wish I was normal. I don’t want the IQ or the “Oh wow, you must be a genius”! No, I just have a brain malformation that makes it seem like I’m a genius on an IQ test.
When I have been put in a social situation without my medication, I’ve been called crazy, weird, a bad friend, and egotistical because I can’t stop talking about my specific “hobbies”. My secret is that sometimes I tell people I have Borderline Personality Disorder because I’d rather have people think that I have something that can be fixed.
It sucks that this is actually who I am and I’m just a screwed-up person. The only people who have ever loved me for all my weirdness and craziness, other than my mom, are my spouse and her daughter. Somehow, they just think my weirdness is endearing. They’re amazing actually. I just don’t like to embarrass them and stuff.
The Bad Old Days
Back in the 90s, when I was about six or seven years old, I was abruptly woken up by my mom saying that two kids from my class were at our front door with their mothers. They had told their moms that our teacher had inappropriately touched them and they wanted to speak to everyone in the class before going to the authorities.
That night, my mom asked me if our teacher had ever done anything to me and I told her no. She was so relieved. I will never forget how terrified she was right up until I said no. My dad was with me when I gave my statement to the authorities and I again said nothing happened. I lied. I was just so terrified of getting into trouble and upsetting my parents.
The case went to court and the teacher was found not guilty as there was no evidence. Mind you, this was a long time ago when kids were not believed as easily as they are now. I have spent the past 27 years of my life keeping this secret and trying to block out most of the memories.
Before the accusations, this teacher had wanted to take me and two other girls on a weekend trip to a nature reserve. Thank God my mom refused. I have vague memories, but I always wondered if my testimony would have made a difference. Am I the reason he never went to prison? I am terrified he went after more victims because I stayed silent.
Blame COVID
My husband and I were kept apart for two years during the mess that was the pandemic. During this time I was also waiting for my Green Card which meant that I couldn’t visit him. He came over to visit me once during the two years, and I noticed that he had a dating app on his phone. I decided to sneak a peek into his phone.
I checked his messages and I could see that he had been talking to a woman on there. It was obvious from the messages that they had met up and done the deed. From what I could tell, they only did it once and there weren’t a whole lot of messages after that. I’ve never confronted him about it and I don’t really want to.
Since I’ve been in the US, he’s been super attentive and loving. As far as I can tell there are no dating apps on his phone or computer. I feel that if I told him I know, or told any friends or family, they would push for me to leave him and think I was an idiot if I didn’t. We have a baby boy now and I would never want to disrupt our lives over a meaningless one-night stand.
Get Thee To Therapy
a person in a hospital bed with an ivPhoto by Olga Kononenko on UnsplashThere’s a big gap on my resume—and the reason why is seriously twisted. My wife and I tried to end our lives together and wound up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I don’t know if it would ruin our lives if it became public, but it would complicate things. After the first month of caring about our mental health, our close family went back to the mindset of “If I can't see your mental illness, it’s not a true illness”.
The Cat’s Out Of The Bag
When I was five, I would regularly get the family cat to attack my little sister when she was in her baby walker device. I hated her and I wanted to get rid of her, so I tried to get the cat to get rid of her.
Ultimately, the cat just ended up scratching at her feet and my parents got rid of the cat. They gave it to one of their friends.
Misplacing The Blame
Once, in high school, I got really sloshed and secretly took a dump in a friend’s car. The consequences were disturbing.
He ended up being so convinced that his girlfriend did the dirty deed that he ended up breaking up with her over it.
