Reddit user "Whatever12112" asked:
"What is the craziest thing you've heard while eavesdropping?"
To borrow a phrase from my 5-year-old nephew as shouted at the rest of his cousins: "YOU PEOPLE NEED THERAPY!"
Seriously. You do. All of us do. We live in a world with THIS.
We're gonna break this down into two categories - though I'm honestly not sure what to call them. Let's go with Messy and Messier - but this time in a mature audience kind of way.
We'll start with messy.
This Doesn't Bode Well
Giphy"I overheard the photographer for the wedding I was at say 'I took 4 edibles before this and have no idea what I'm doing.' I have no idea how the pics turned out, but there was definitely cause for concern." - Ebony_Aardvark
The Camel Giraffe
"Ok, once in college I heard these morons at the next table:"
"1: I need cigarettes"
"2: what do you smoke?"
"1: I usually smoke Camels"
"2: oh you mean the ones with the giraffe on the box?"
"1: yup!"
"Yes. That was something I heard in undergrad. That was pretty much the whole convo."
"Dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life…." - AelizaW
That's Abuse - Not Romance
No Way What GIF by NBCGiphy"Cute young woman in the bus, a ballet dancer, to her friend:"
" 'Yeah so he got a restraining order against me. So unfair. Yeah I hit him with a bar, but you know, he should have fought back. I wouldn't have minded.' " - LaoBa
"Yeah, there's something wrong with that woman." - Cobrawine66
What Wouldn't Jesus Do?
I Will Survive Jesus GIF by hoppipGiphy"Religious girl threatened to gut a guy because he threw away a bible she put in his backpack to make him 'gayn't'
"For those lucky enough not to know, 'gayn't' means someone who WAS gay who is now NOT gay. The homophobic hellspawn wanted the dude to change his sexual orientation to straight and then threatened to kill him when he threw away a book he never wanted." - Risu-Mies
The Rich Kids
High School Flirt GIF by reactionseditorGiphy"I was in high school and kind of introverted and unpopular, and I pretty much became invisible to people if I sat and quietly read a book."
"So one time this happened while we were all sitting around during PE (I think maybe we were picking our next unit? Something that involved a lot of waiting in the bleachers, anyway.) A group of the school's wealthiest and most popular kids was sitting not far from me and just started telling wild sex and drug stories."
"And I realized that the rich kids weren't actually better behaved than the "burnout" crowd or the "bad" kids that were always in trouble--they just had more money to clean up their mistakes." - greeneyedwench
"HUGE mood. The wild sh*t I heard during senior year statistics..."
"The best one was probably 'No thanks, I quit smoking on Monday. I only do ecstasy now.' "
"Other tidbits from the same girl include, 'You don't know what it's like to get your stomach pumped' and 'I always know when someone is gay, I can smell it on them.' (the last while I sat directly beside her, attracting no notice despite presumably giving off some kind of gay pheromone.)"
"Honorary mention to the two guys who were trying to decide if putting alcohol up your butt made you gay or not, while one casually licked his fingers, dipped them into a baggie of protein powder, and ate it raw." - Briggsnotmyers
These Are The Worst Job Interviews Ever | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Alright, time to get physical. Let's move on to "Messier - but in a mature audience kind of way"
Just ... yeah...
Back In My Day
dj khaled sip GIF by Apple MusicGiphy"I overheard some old guy say 'there was none of this vajayjay eating back in my day.' " - VaginaChina
"And that's why his wife's tennis lessons always seemed to run late..." - Orange_Kid
"DJ Khaled isn't that old." - monettegia
A Kinky Game
phone GIFGiphy"I wasn't purposely eavesdropping. On two occasions, I arrived at work to find intimate conversations between an independent contractor I employed and his wife as voicemail messages on my work phone."
"They were really graphic."
"If there had been only one of these, I might have considered it something akin to a butt dial. But I suspected they were playing some kind of kinky game with me."
"The guy has since died, so I'll never know." - DWright_5
So... now that we're all uncomfortable, let's get out there and have a great day, okay?? lol.
In this case, eavesdropping was funny. But that isn't always so. There are times when we eavesdrop and end up hearing something that makes us want to wash our ears out with Clorox (don't do this, please).
Here are some of those stories. Appropriate_Ad_8637 asked:
What's the most f*cked up thing you've heard eavesdropping?
Eavesdropping at the wrong time can end up changing your entire view of a person. And then it’s all over.
Valid question.
“Ex thought I was sleeping. She went out on the back patio which was under my master bedroom window that was open. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but overheard her talking to her friend about how they were both sleeping with an old man for money and pills."
“Were you the old man...?"
The 90's were wack.
music video loop GIFGiphy“Back in the 90's you could pick up cordless phone calls with an ordinary scanner from Radio Shack. That's how I found out the guy living one floor below me was dealing meth.
Also routinely heard peoples' credit card numbers, sex chats, all that stuff. It was crazy.”
Some parents should not be parents.
“From an open window when I was 19, I overheard my Mom telling my Dad she raised a loser. That still hurts years later.”
“My parents openly talked sh*t about me to family members even if I was around my whole life. Then they wonder why I never bring my son to visit for holidays or anything. I never want to see them again.”
Oh, the things you learn about people through eavesdropping.
I don’t even know what to say to this one.
“I was in line behind two older women at a restaurant maybe 5-6 years ago.
One says "hey, did you hear about so-and-sos son?"
The other says "no, what happened?"
She replies "he ran off and joined ISIS"
What was crazy was they seemed so casual about it. Like that wasn't a crazy thing to hear about your friend's son."
Honestly? Iconic.
Oh My God Yes GIF by A Little Late With Lilly SinghGiphy“Was at a bar, went to the bathroom, and passed a woman talking into a pay phone. She said the greatest sentence I have ever heard. This was over two decades ago, and I still remember it, clear as day:
"Yeah, well every d*ck I suck puts your daughter through college."
I have seriously used that as an example of perfect characterization. You learn her whole life's story in one sentence. It's brilliant.”
Yikes!!!
“Yeah, so a friend of mine got his aunt pregnant.
It went like:
Buddy: "Are you sure? I mean, mom is going to be pissed if she finds out. No no no, I'll go with you. For real, we can't see each other again? Wait, no, we can just go away...together, you know. No this it's not wrong. I love you. Please don't."
From what I can surmise is that his aunt was on her way to get an abortion or something and that she's going to leave.”
People Who Made A Lot Of Money From Something Totally Random | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Sounds like a very bad day.
“Years ago I walked by a dude on the street. Visibly frustrated, he was on his phone talking to either his boss, or a friend...who knows.
"...And then it got all caught in the gears, just torn apart, jesus christ blood and guts everywhere! Right in front of the kids! what a bad day to – no, I didn't clean it up! I was late for my dad's funeral!"
I can’t even believe what I’m reading for some of these. Imagine how the people hearing this in real life felt.
I mean, she has a point.
love & hip hop lhhmia GIF by VH1Giphy“I work nights right next to a bar. The conversation that's stuck with me the most was when someone's baby mama found them and started a one-sided shouting match outside the window.
She said something along the lines of, "you've got a million dollars in your bank account and still can't take care of your kids." Saw her running and screaming at him as he got in his car and drove off.”
Well, that’s one way to do it.
“Overheard a doctor I worked for tell a patient to get a pack of Camels and chain smoke the entire thing. He was a pulmonologist (lung doctor) so I had to ask.
The patient he was talking to had a cough for six months, no treatment was helping. She called the next day, said she coughed up a giant ball of phlegm after all that smoking and her cough was gone. Serial chest X-rays showed no active disease. The doctor said he learned this "treatment method" in Canada back in the 60's.”
Poor guy.
Beck Bennett Drinking GIF by Saturday Night LiveGiphy“At a bar a few years ago outside on the covered patio with all the other smokers. One of those places that pumps the music on the patio so loud you can hardly speak to the person next to you. A couple on the other side of the patio were yelling to each other really animated, probably because they couldn't hear anything. When suddenly the beat drops and she yells at the top of her lungs "I just don't love you anymore" and the entire crowd turns to look at them shook.
I seen that poor guy the rest of the night sitting at that table in the corner where he got dumped and everyone heard.”
Rude.
“So I had to rent a car the other month. Went to return it but they were closed on the weekends and no drop box or anything
So I call and explain that I could have returned the car sat morning and saved myself 100 bucks but them being closed stopped that.
The receptionist gets the manager and she okays the refund, great says goodbye and attempts to hang up the phone. But didn't.
She then starts talking to the receptionist about how she didn't want to refund me but didn't want to deal with the situation as I was probably an a**hole who would escalate it up the chain and complain to corporate and she didn't want the negativity.”
Should’ve listened.
“My uncle talking about burning down our family cabin and stabbing his wife…I told my parents and they thought it was just the words of a senile old man. He did in fact burn down the cabin, and he tried to kill his wife. He was at least unsuccessful at murder but he's now locked up somewhere. My family didn't tell anyone that it was him that burned it down so they could get the insurance, as he also owned part of the property.”
Doesn’t work like that.
meditation aura GIF by NETFLIXGiphy“Two 20 something guys in a Dollar Tree were talking about a mutual friend and the one of them was saying how the guy said, "You can think yourself well from any illness, it's all in your head. You don't need medications." (Paraphrasing a bit but yeah, it really was a "think yourself healthy, don't use medications or see doctors" conversation.) I couldn't help muttering "What an idiot" as I walked past because, well, the dude's an idiot. They must've heard me because the second dude started praising their mutual friend as a genius. I just laughed.
Yeah, really try to think yourself well from cancer instead of doing chemo, boys, see how well that works out for you.”
Awkward….
“I wasn't really eavesdropping as it was a loud conversation in an employee break room that I just wasn't apart of. Some elderly coworkers of mine were talking about ringtones and one said something along the lines of, "I don't really use a ringtone; I just keep my phone on vibrate. That way it feels nice if I'm sitting on it."
Maybe this should be a lesson to all of us- to mind our own d*mn business. Because we really don’t need to overhear our roommates conversation about what her date smelled like (Mountain Dew and cigarettes). True story.
Also, watch what you say in public. You never know what’ll end up on Reddit.
What follows is a good reminder that we should be careful of the things we say about people when we assume they are in deep sleep.
Curious to hear about strangers online, Redditor KingHanma asked:
"What's the Worst thing you've overheard while pretending to be asleep?"
Parents disclosed life-changing news in private. Or so they thought.
Matrimonial Miss
"I was 12 and my dad (Single Dad) telling his so called 'Friend' (Female) who was at the time living with us, 'Should we tell him that we are married?'"
"So this was my father's second wife and they really were married. I confronted my dad the next day and he had hid the fact from me for a month. I was super disturbed about what was happening around me. It did not work out between them and they ended up getting a divorce. So yayyyy."
"I was 15. I was at my sister's house babysitting my nephew and was asleep on the couch when she and her husband got home at about 2 am. The phone rang. It woke me but I lay there pretending to be asleep as I listened to her answer it. I heard her say, 'What!? Oh my god! Oh my god!'"
"She hung up and said to her husband, 'That was my dad. Diablo [my horse] got out of the pasture and went into the road. He got hit by a car and killed. How am I going to tell him?"
"I said, 'I already know.'"
"That was 45 years ago. It still hurts."
Alarms are better to wake up to than the following:
Hypocritical Parents
"My anti-drug parents drunk as sh*t and on a drug binge. Got up to pee at like 6am when the noise finally stopped and there had to be $200 worth of drugs on my kitchen table."
"We lived in a small, one-story house. There's no way anyone could've slept through their BS."
"And my mom still cries when I talk about weed."
The Confirmation
"He's not asleep."
– AyamXII
"My mom once woke me up to tell me to go to sleep."
"I was asleep. She said my name and shook me, which woke me up, and then she told me to go to sleep."
How She Really Feels
"My step mom talking sh*t about me to my dad when I was a kid."
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
The Warning
"Roommate talking to another roommate about how he deserves to have sex with this girl that he's close friends with and how mad he was that she kept not sleeping with him so he planned on inviting her over soon and getting her wasted and taking advantage of her. I found the girl online and warned her."
Rude Awakening
"When I was a kid, a friend and I were both gymnasts, but at different studios."
"She invited me over for an Open Gym Sleepover, which is like when 30 kids all sleep over at the gym with very little supervision, running and jumping on equipment like trampolines, vaults, ropes, balance beams, and parallel bars. God bless the 90's, we had a blast."
"Now the guy who ran this gym, I had a weird feeling about. My parents once had me try out for a team at his gym, and he inspected my body with his hands. It was in full sight of everyone, including my mother, but it was just weird. My mother later told me she was too stunned to object in the moment. He kept touching my butt and telling me to tighten my 'butt' (glutes), which I didn't understand. He kept doing it repeatedly."
"Anyway, at the sleepover, I lay down next to my friend but stayed awake. I saw Coach Hands stepping quietly between the sleeping girls, taking flash photographs. When he came over to do it to me&my friend, I made eye contact with him during the flash. He quickly went away and stopped taking pictures."
"The next morning, he pulled me into his office with a female coach (his wife?) and explained to me that the photos were for promotional purposes. He even had a little poster board made up. I didn't really beleive him, but at that age (10) I didn't really understand how dangerous he could have been. I never talked to an adult about it, just my friends, and we were all🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️"
I was never in a situation where I overheard someone talking smack about me, but I did have the misfortune of "sleeping" in a hotel suite with friends who hooked up in the bed next to me.
A group of about 20 of my college friends pooled money together to ring in the new year in a posh hotel. Of course, there was alcohol. Plenty of it.
I passed out early as I'm a lightweight, but then I woke up to moaning sounds next to me. I was paralyzed – torn between drawing attention to myself by high-tailing it out of the room or pretending to be asleep and enduring the sloppy sounds.
I decided to ring in the new year by choosing the latter, and I still regret my horrible decision. Happy new year to me.
I've lost track of the amount of times I've been asked outrageously idiotic questions. I have literally been frozen in disbelief. Sometimes I get asked if I'm having a stroke. I'm not, I'm just paralyzed with shock. Let's see who can relate...
Ask Nemo
finding dory GIFGiphy"How do fish breathe when they are eating cabbage underwater?"
"Coming from the new guy in the class to the bio professor in HS."
- kayra551
Oh Girl...
"A girl in my class genuinely thought the sun was the size of a basket ball and "the stars" were the size of golf balls. She failed to grasp how heliocentricity worked despite being shown a model and having it explained to her very slowly and deliberately."
"She failed to understand indoor plumbing and seemed to believe that some water just naturally existed in a state of "hot" since she expressed agitation at the tap water being cold and asked if "anyone can refill the hot water or something." She sincerely believed that all cats were female and all dogs were male, no she didn't have an explanation for how they reproduced and implied it happened via divine means despite the fact that she wasn't religious."
"She didn't understand how wages or loans worked and genuinely thought people could just withdraw as much money as they wanted from the ATM and that poor people were just too lazy to go to the ATM. She said something new this dumb every week, these are just some of the more memorable ones. Oh, and she was around 15-16 at the time."
Up Where?
"Was star gazing with a mate one night out camping. He said dead serious (and sober) "do you think there are like, other planets up there floating around in space?" I didn't know how to reply."
"You sure he didn't mean other planets with life similar to ours? Surely someone can't be that stupid."
- Coltyn03
In the Bed
"Used to work maintenance for college student housing. Every unit has its own parking directly off the street in front of it. Tenant complains he has 6 yeti coolers stolen. I say "oh no, how terrible. Those clever criminals, however did they break into your home? I never noticed a work order for a broken door or window here?" Tenant: "... uh... they were in my truckbed..."
People Explain The Worst Thing That's Ever Happened To Them On Their Birthday
Deep Breathes
best friends vegan GIF by Mercy For AnimalsGiphy"Cow is the only animal which not only inhales, but also exhales oxygen."
"--Rekha Arya (Minister of Animal Husbandry, Uttarakhand, India, 2018)"
"Edit: There are quite a lot of dumb comments made by politicians but I chose this one because it is not as problematic yet definitely very stupid."
I don't even know where to begin. I'm again frozen in my shooketh state. How do human beings survive with every breathe we take? It's a miracle we've made it this far. Shall we continue?
SNL
Scared Saturday Night Live GIF by HULUGiphyMy wife : "What day is Saturday night live on?"
- Eenvy
Hot and Cold
"The sun is cold, otherwise the universe would be super hot."
"Relative to the rest of the universe, sure. Relative to other stars, my understanding is that the sun isn't particularly hot (not particularly cold either, I believe it falls somewhere in the middle if you are comparing how hot all stars are.)".
- Tie_Jay
Holed Up
"I don't believe in outer space. If there was outer space all our air would be gone." My new neighbor said this awhile back. I GTFO and have been avoiding him ever since."
"My grandfather was opposed to NASA because they were, apparently, "poking holes in the atmosphere."
And Toes?
josh holloway sawyer GIF by The Paley Center for MediaGiphy"If someone loses their finger, their child will be born without a finger."
Oxygen Use
"My gf said she had to keep refilling her fishbowl (which is in direct sunlight all day) with water because the fish kept drinking the water."
- xSerebii
"They do use up the oxygen in the water."
- sarcalom
When 40...
"I had this 40-year-old woman come into work and say that she wanted to return a small bottle of hand soap. I asked her if anything was wrong with it, to which she said:
"Well, it says on the bottle that it's foaming hand soap, and I looked inside and there is no foam. So I want to return it."
I had to take a second to see if she was pulling my leg. She wasn't."
"I explained to her how foaming hand soap worked and she seemed so surprised. Then she left with the soap. That was the first customer I ever had working there."
Why so Sad?
"One of my old managers was asking me why the nurses were so unhappy, as they liked to confide in me. I pointed out that the company was short staffed, so the nurses had a HUGE workload in a very emotional intense specialty and it had been that way for almost 8 months (pre-covid)."
"They were also getting paid less than the area norm. She then said "I think of my job like my marriage. People should stick out the tough times and wait to see if it gets better!". Ummm no. Mind you this woman had just bought a brand new house and Tesla on her salary and constantly dropped the ball on the patients I sent her."
In the Sky
Art Moon GIFGiphy"The moon can't be in the sky when the sun is up." -Kindergarten teacher.
"Literally saying this standing so the moon was in the sky behind them."
"Guess when I realized adults can be hopelessly clueless."
Oh Josh
"If you save 20 cents a day for a year, you'll save over $1000. I'm so doing that!". He was reading something on Facebook.
"Overheard two coworkers chatting about this. I had to stop them and say "if you multiply $1 by 365, the amount of days in a year, how much money would you have, Josh?"
"Josh is gullible. Don't be like Josh."
That Germany Trip
"We were traveling through Germany by bus. Every now and then we would come across a sign saying "AUSFAHRT", meaning exit of a highway. After riding on that highway for a good hour or so (and seeing many of these signs), some girl thought she would make a clever remark and went: Damn what's up with this Ausfahrt city, it's huge!!! Everyone who heard it facepalmed and she did as well when we explained."
- ieff8
Indy Don't Know
Harrison Ford GIFGiphy"My uncle cited Indiana Jones movies as proof that the world was going to end in 2012. He was dead serious and I began to question what genes I was born with."
Not in My Country
"There are no gay people in my country." Very intelligent person, never expressed any homophobia at any other occasion, and actually was involved in the gay-straight alliance and similar projects at my high school. I don't want to be the person that says "they're not bigoted because they have friends from x group" but this person had several gay friends. They were just convinced however that for some reason, there were no gay people at all in the country they were raised in."
Gimmes the Citrus
hip hop squares eating GIF by VH1Giphy"Grapefruit shrinks fat."
"I asked well why are there fat people. She said oh because they probably don't like grapefruit. I said, people would eat dog crap if it shrunk fat!!"
I really thought I had heard it all in my days as a waiter, but life never ceases to amaze. I tell you if you really want to hear some nonsense that will follow you forever, work as a waiter for one week. You'll never see people the same way again. I gotta get earplugs.
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Those who work behind bars meet people from all walks of life and hear a variety of unusual anecdotes.
I never worked as a bartender, but I know they get an earful from babbling patrons who have had one too many to drink.
Curious to hear about the wild life stories shared at bars, Reddit xXSlimi_Gacha009 asked:
"Bartenders of reddit, what was the weirdest/craziest thing you have overheard while making someone's drink?"
Attention Seekers
Patrons say the darnedest things.
Bobby
"The first restaurant/bar i worked in I was only serving but I frequently was in the section right next to the bar. One day I was busy serving a large group, but the restaurant was mostly empty and a guy behind me at the bar said 'you wanna pet my parrot?' my initial reaction was the same as if a stranger had just come up behind me and touched my shoulders but when I turned around... It really was a guy with a parrot on his shoulder. The parrots name was Bobby and yes both me and the bartender pet him 😂"
– Midiblye
Sales Pitch
"I was tending bar during an extremely busy happy hour. The place was mobbed and super noisy. Suddenly, a guy sitting at the bar stands up and announces 'Ladies and gentlemen of the bar, I represent the Acme meat company and we carry a full line of high quality...'. The entire bar goes silent while he continues to do his sales pitch at full volume. For some reason he decided that this was a great time and place to hustle up some business. My manager sprinted over to him and told him knock it off and that kind of thing wasn't allowed in here. So he sat down and resumed drinking."
Favorite A**hole Bartender
"Regular of mine who I hadn't seen in awhile was sitting at the bar when I came in for a shift change."
"I came in the back way and noticed he had crutches leaning against the bar."
"Recently in the news someone hadn't had their shotgun properly secured in their truck and it went off..."
"So I jokingly say, 'you're that f'king idiot who blew off his leg arent you?'"
"The whole bar gets quiet and everyone is mean mugging me."
"My regular starts laughing..."
"Yeah, it was him. I had no idea. I didn't apologize, because as his favorite a**hole bartender those comments were expected of me."
"Poor guy was only 20 couple and blew his leg off close to the hip. No idea how he survived."
Murder Plot
"I was a bartender for about two weeks (filling in for a relative who owned a bar and went on his honeymoon)."
"I heard a guy talking to a woman about murdering her husband. I called the cops, but these patrons were gone before they showed up. This was before cameras, so I just gave my story and that was it."
"Not long after, my uncle calls me saying the cops are looking for me. They interview me about the couple. Apparently, the guy was a hitman for hire and the woman was trying to get some insurance money. She got busted."
"It was actually an episode of 'Forensic Files' back when that was on TV. I remember watching the episode and they said something like 'the couple was overheard discussing the murder in a bar.' I was kind of upset that they didn't mention me. Lol. I was hoping for, 'The awesome bartender overheard them, but couldn't really tell us much. He also pointed at the male in the photo lineup and asked 'Is this him?' as if he was unsure. What a f"king dope.'"
"Edit 1: I spent half of the day reading the descriptions of every episode that's streaming on Netflix and watching the ones that seemed relevant. I didn't figure it out and I'm sorry, but I just don't know which episode it was. I recorded it on a VHS tape years ago, but don't know where that is either. I'm moving, so if I come across it, I'll edit this and let everyone know which one it was."
"Edit 2: As I recall, the hitman wasn't a professional by any means. I think the episode said he was just a local junkie who'd pretty much do anything for his next fix."
– Myzyri
Extremely Random
The following conversations were undoubtedly head-turners.
Poop-Blocked
"From a woman to her friend, 'I don't know about you but I just can't poop in a pink bathroom.'"
Proud Pecker
"Someone was boasting about his 'Very small penis! VERY TINY! LIKE MICRO!' he proceeds to lower his pants and show it to his friend 🤷♀️"
Couples
Passions are inflamed where alcohol is in the mix.
Ferris Wheel Payment
"A married couple in their fifties arguing how they were going to explain the fact they couldn't pay the remainder of the 3 million euro bill for a Ferris wheel they'd ordered 18 months ago, already put a million deposit on, and who's collection was due at 8am the following morning."
That's Amore
"Man and woman is sitting at the bar. She starts crying and says 'I just want us to have something special'. The guy looked her dead in the eyes and said 'we do have something special, we have sex. We are both married'. 10 minutes later they are making out and she's rubbing him over his pants. I loved slow Wednesdays."
I'm a cheap date.
So whenever I'm halfway through my first – and usually ONLY – glass of cab sav at a bar, I know I'm talking in a stream of consciousness and volunteering embarrassing personal information.
Once, I confided to all the patrons and staff at a bar in Barcelona, France, about my embarrassing college experience. And I apparently gave a wild performance when the DJ played Prince's "Kiss."
I'm still searching this subReddit to see if any of the comments might be referring to me.