I grew up in a household where it was customary to remove your shoes upon entering. To me, it made sense.
I assumed every family preferred not to have gum, spit, mud – and who knows what else – tracked into their homes from the outside.
So, as a high school kid, whenever I forgot to inform friends of the house-entrance protocol, and they walked onto the carpet with their shoes on, my mom would freak out. Hey, if they're not used to doing that in their own homes, I don't blame them for their ignorance.
But there are just some guests whose behavior indicated they did know better.
Curious to hear bizarre anecdotes from strangers online, Redditor alksjs asked:
"What's the weirdest thing a guest has done at your house?"
When alcohol and substances were brought into these homes, disaster struck.
Making A Splash
"Brought alcohol after we told them we don't drink/are a dry house.. ok, minor enough, didn't make a big deal about it... but when they spilled all their red wine on our couch and hid it under a blanket, only for the wife to tell us via text after they left.... that really sucked."
A Hot Mess
"Got a prostitute over. This was years ago when I lived in a share house. My room mate and a friend of his got drunk. My room mate eventually ended up going to bed and he told his friend to sleep on the couch rather than driving home."
"The next morning we woke up and discovered that he'd called up a prostitute. They had sex in the bathroom and left a godawful mess."
"It was a long time before he got invited over again."
– saugoof
Bathroom Paint Job
"My friend's new boyfriend - I'd never met him before - came over with her for dinner. There were 8 of us. He drank a lot. He went to the bathroom before dessert. About 5 minutes after he came back, he spoke to her and she said they needed to go as he wasn't feeling well. They left."
"When the next person went to the bathroom, they came back recoiling in horror. The new boyfriend had puked up his entire dinner - and a vast amount of red wine - all over the bathroom. Everywhere. Walls, floors, all over my full basket of spare toilet rolls."
I cleaned it up. When I next saw my friend, I mentioned it. We had a totally ordinary conversation about it. Later that day, she deleted me on FB and I never saw her again."
"Mystifying."
Makeshift Urinal
"I had a birthday party for my friend at my apartment at the time. Another friend's husband ended up getting drunk and peeing in my hallway. I was like, 'wtf?' 'Well, the bathroom was full and I couldn't make it to a bush in time.'"
"So, the next time he came over, I gifted him a small potted plant with a handmade 'mens room' sign. Told him that now he has his own porta potty."
Snot-Rag Fashion
"This one chick I used to be kinda friends with in middle school came over to my house. We were just sitting on my living room couch watching TV, when she just suddenly out of nowhere lifted the bottom of her shirt up and started blowing her nose into it. She did this like three or four times. I was like, c'mon now, we have tissues in the house and it didn't even occur to you to even ask for one? We're not anti-tissue extremists or anything. The image of that giant snot splotch all over the front of her shirt is seared into my retinas until the end of my days."
Former Flat Earthers Explain What Finally Made Them Come Around | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Science is science. Fact is fact. Truth is truth and simple is simple. These are things we must now attest to in 2021. Can we please all get onboard with wha...Please Don't Make Yourself At Home
Some guests act like they own the place. They need to be shown the door, by force, if necessary.
Sleep Requirement
"Rearranged all the furniture in the guest bedroom so that she could sleep facing north."
The Brown Stains
"My weird neighbour friend once came over for dinner when we were at least 11. I don't know why or how but when I prepared to go to bed that night I discovered poop on the wall at the top-bunk mattress (slept bottom). We also found it smeared on the wall of behind our TV."
"When we asked his mother she just handled it as if it was a totally normal thing to do."
– MoinGuy2
Laundry Time
"My roommate in college had been dating a guy a few years older for several months. She asked if I minded if he spent the weekend and that they'd only be home in the evenings since they had planned to be out and about experiencing the city. I said sure. Guy shows up and he's conversational and nice enough, except instead of an overnight bag, he brings at least 10 huge filled to the brim laundry bags of dirty clothes. He immediately sets up shop in our laundry room and goes to town. Literally does laundry all day and night.
My roommate is visibly upset at this point because dude doesn't want to go hang out as planned. He just wants to watch movies and do laundry. She apologizes and says they'll be out all the next day. No big deal. She wakes me up the next morning and is hysterical. The guy is gone and has taken all of our cleaning supplies and snacks with him. She never heard from again. It was super creepy and bizarre. She prob didn't even know this guys real name and never found out what his end game was. Unless his end game was simply use of a full size washer and dryer."
Unsolicited Makeover
"While we were at work, a couple that were houseguests for a few days rearranged our furniture and artwork."
"They wanted to surprise us when we returned home with their 'excellent taste in decorating.' They sure did!"
The Airborne Pervy Boy
"My cousin use to come over my house alot when I was a teenager. We're 7 months apart so we were pretty close growing up. When we 14/15 years old, he came over once with my aunties friends weird/ annoying son that he was forced to hang out with from time to time. It was 10am and I still had my pj's on, I tell my cousin I'll get dressed real quick and we'll go down the bike tracks soon. I go to my bedroom to change, when I'm in my underwear the weird/annoying boy walks straight in my room like he lived there and looked me up and down with a smile. I went mental, screamed at him and called him a creep. My cousin bolts upstairs after hearing me scream, grabbed the boy by the scruff of his clothes, drags him out of my bedroom and threw him down the stairs, he wasn't seriously hurt but definitely terrified at this point and runs out of the house."
Weird Wanderer
"I had a friend over once and he just wandered around the house, no sitting, no greeting my mom, no nothing, he just walked around the house aimlessly, this was a year ago but it still confuses me to this day."
Missing The Target
"It was my cousin. He came in, took a sh*t in my bedroom (at the middle of the floor), and left. Im still wondering what came through his mind that day."
No Complaints
"Last summer, my parents went on vacation so I was left alone to care for the house and our cat. One of my friends would come over a lot because I always made good food and she wanted to try it. One time when she came over, we ended up having coffee late at night, so she decided to clean my kitchen and bathroom at 12AM. Cleaned the sink, toilet, stove... I didn't ask her to. It was weird. But I didn't mind it."
Pure Insanity
"Pissed in the fridge all over turkey left overs then b!tched the toilet wouldn't flush. His gf at the time then proceeded to beat the sh*t out of him for 'doing it again' with her prosthetic leg."
"Plot twist...I was the guest in their home."
– Syst0us
This Is Your Brain On Drugs
"My homeless, heroin addict, ex brother in law asked if he could do some laundry at my place and I agreed that would be ok as long as he understood this is my home and he's not welcome to hang around. (I have a teenage son I'd rather not expose to heroin, thank you.) One day he texted that he needed to pick up his laundry and I said no problem.""
"He never showed up, so I went to bed around midnight. Turns out after I went to bed, he let himself and his insane girlfriend in and they made themselves at home. Watching TV, taking a shower, eating snacks."
"I woke up to the sounds of a domestic taking place in my living room and a woman screaming for help."
"After dealing with all that and getting them removed from my property, I went to my bathroom where I found the entire bathroom covered in purple hair dye. It was on the floors, sink, the toilet, the mirror, the rugs. Every where!"
"Who comes into a house uninvited after midnight and dyes their hair?!"
"Don't do heroin kids."
Jam Session
"This guy turned my pots and pans into drums and started freestyle singing while all the girls were hitting chairs and harmonising. I never wanted people to leave my place so quickly before."
As I mentioned earlier, having a clean home starts with taking off your shoes after entering.
Growing up with this regimen made me appreciate cleanliness, but it also made me a certifiable germophobe.
So you can imagine how much I cringed when I read about the number of Redditors who've had guests who made their homes an open bathroom space – where excrement, vomit and urine splattered everywhere like in a Jackson Pollock painting.
The takeway? Be mindful of your alcohol intake, who you invite, and say no to drugs. Now, there's the door.
"What companies shamelessly make sh*t products, year after year?"
False Advertising
"Holiday gift basket companies."
"I once felt obliged to buy one from a lady I worked with and it cost around fifty dollars."
"She had a brochure with various baskets and I chose one that was assorted candies and had a decorative wooden rocking horse."
"When it arrived it was just a bag of candy that I could have paid 35 cents for at a gas station."- Artai55a
30 rock gift basket GIFGiphySave A Few Cents For Inferior Quality
"It’s a throwback, but rose art for sure."
"They just decided their destiny was to sit on the shelf next to Crayola and get purchased by folks who are balling on a budget or cheap."
"No goals for product improvement at all."
"Just 'hey, wanna save three bucks?'"- Lucetti
Improvements Unlikely In This Digital Age
"Any printer manufacturer."- gbeegz
"HP printers."
"I have a $600 fancy laser HP printer we got six or seven years ago, and they have succeeded in updating the software to the point that nothing works anymore."
"I used to be able to print over Wi-Fi easily, scan over Wi-Fi, etc and now none of it works."
"I haven't changed any of my network hardware, things are hardwired."
"Also, I used to be able to use aftermarket ink cartridges and the printer has started giving me sh*t about it."
"I really like HP's computers, but their printers are a bunch of bullsh*t."
"Oh and their auto-update software won't go away even though I keep disabling/ removing it, and it installs software updates that breaks the current functions."- Bazirker
It's The Customer Service You Pay For...
"Oracle."
"Products intentionally sh*tty so they can make most of their money selling consulting just to make it, sort of, work."- s-starr
One Reason Sports Should Always Be Played Outside
"EA sports titles."- Stitches_Ito
Even Carrie Bradshaw Doesn't Like Shoe Shopping THAT Much...
"Doc Martens."
"My old pair from 20 years ago are still going strong, any new pair I get craps out after a year."- korar67
Doc Martens Shoes GIF by SORANGiphyScreaming For Ice Cream... And Not In A Good Way...
"Breyers and their 'Frozen Dairy Dessert' nonsense."
"Before 2006, Breyers ice cream was really good!"
"I loved their coffee ice cream!"
"And then they changed their formula and made the mess they have now to the point that they can't even legally call it ice cream anymore."
"Does anyone remember those old Breyers commercials where the kid tries to read the ingredients on an inferior product and struggles to pronounce things like 'mono & diglycerides' and then easily reads Breyers ingredients as 'milk, sugar, and cream?'"
"What a joke."
"Unilever loves to buy brands people trust for quality products and use that trusted brand name to get people to buy lower quality for higher prices."
"It seriously has the same consistency as Cool Whip now."
"And Unilever has the audacity to say that this is what customers asked for!"- akittyafterus
World Cup Wow GIF by FIFAWho Exactly Is His Audience?
"If lockpickinglawyer is anything to go on its lock-companies."- knatten555
Literally Selling Sh*t...
"Home Depot has been selling manure since its founding in 1978."
"In fact, a quick search of the website found they proudly sell over 178 manure products."- atomicscateboard
The Original "Catfishers"...
"Mad Catz got away with murder for years."- Einar_47
Apple Is Listening...
"Samsung appliances."
"F*CK YOUR FIRMWARE UPDATE ON THE FRIDGE!"
"Also those plastic trays keep breaking and are sh*t quality."
"My 1987 Maytag is still cranking the coldest brews on earth and hasn't been serviced ever in its life and sits in a dark room in my basement since he was demoted from the kitchen for being out of fashion by my wife."- zendor666
Customers Weren't Looking For An Authentic "Frontier" Experience...
"Frontier Airlines."
"Sh*t experience, customer service, quality, reliability, comfort, convenience and fees."- Micklikesmonkeys
There are those who always like to give second chances whenever possible.
When it comes to spending a little more money for a more reliable product, however, customers should rightfully be one and done.
Redditor AdonisBlackwood wanted everyone to share about the spooky things they've seen or experienced, so they asked:
"What paranormal activities have you witnessed?"
I hear things in my house.
At all hours.
Whispers. Clangs. Clacks.
And at night... there is a shadow.
Flying Foods
Chef Cooking GIFGiphy"A package of corn tortillas literally jumped off the shelf and onto the floor once at a large grocery store right in front of me. They did not slide nor did they fall. There was no one else around. I thought it was a sign to make enchiladas or something but it was also quite frightening."
_perl_
At Home
"Lights turning off/on. Items flying off of shelves/counters. One time when I was home at night by myself, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and the bottom of one half of my scarf that I had draped over the top of my bathroom door was suspended at a 20-degree angle, including the tassels in midair. At this point, so many things were happening in my apartment (including physical welts down my back) that I was terrified to be in it."
"I ended up getting dressed and going outside the building before I broke down crying and called my grandma to come to pick me up. At a different time, my friend and I were outside the building smoking when we heard what sounded like someone thrashing my apartment. I'm talking chairs being smashed into walls, shelves being tipped over. I was the only person living in the building at the time."
"We raced upstairs to catch whoever it was but not a single thing was moved in my apartment and all the other units were locked (I checked). I never saw a ghost, apparition, shadow, etc. When we first moved in, everyone hated coming into our building. They said it felt off. My ex and I never felt that way at first and thought everyone was exaggerating."
"By the time I moved, I wouldn't speak about ghosts or watch anything remotely paranormal in my apartment. Eventually, I watched the Paranormal Activities at a friend's and cannot describe the chill I felt. Similar things were happening in my own home. Haven't experienced anything like it since I moved."
ElectronicDiscoBeans
Louder & Louder
"Not sure if this is considered paranormal, but when I get fevers as a child, I would always, in my fugue and pain-infused state, hear a man counting in a very deep voice. He would count from 1 and up; as the numbers get larger, the voice gets louder and more intense."
"It started to get less frequent as I grew older and now I do not experience it anymore. I've brushed it aside as a recurring nightmare until only recently, I've learned that my sister would experience the exact same thing when she was younger as well. It's not the scariest thing, but it does send shivers down my spine trying to comprehend this."
Issualave
I Froze
"I work in a cemetery. One evening I stayed late to do some catch-up work. I was taking pictures of some granite samples to have on my phone and had already locked up. I was alone. As I was holding my phone, I heard the doorway to the basement swing open, slam shut, and heard footsteps go down the stairs. I froze."
"I thought for sure someone had come in. I called out to see if it was someone from maintenance. No reply. I got scared because if it wasn’t them someone had broken in. I stayed still for a bit and listened then called out again. Nothing. Finally, I got brave enough to look. No one was there. I peeked down in the basement, empty. All the doors were still locked."
DannyPantsgasm
Face to Face
The Shining Halloween GIF by This GIF Is HauntedGiphy"At least once every couple of years, I'll be walking around the apartment at night, when it's dark, but I can still see enough to get around, and I'll have some shadow/figure type thing suddenly come out of nowhere and get right up in my face, so close that I can feel like I'm breathing on it. It disappears immediately after."
coldshadow31
I am convinced that every home is haunted.
We mortals just have to adjust.
In the Stars
"One night me, my dad, and a friend of his were standing outside watching the stars."
Carl Sagan Space GIF by Feliks Tomasz KonczakowskiGiphy"After a bit of watching, what appeared to be a shooting star made a sudden and sharp 90-degree turn and then kept going for about 15 seconds and then did an equally sharp and sudden 90-degree turn to disappear a few seconds later. We all saw the same thing, but none of us had a good explanation of what we saw."
JonaJonaL
Grandma
"My brother was on the phone once with his gf when she started saying that she could hear some old lady asking my brother for a glass of water. There was nobody around him so he ignored it but she kept on insisting. He hung up the phone and went to check on our grandma who was in her bedroom and found her dead. Fast forward a couple of years, around 11 pm, I was on the phone with a girl when I saw a guy on a bicycle go past (phone was by the windowsill. Same spot as my brother)."
"That's when I noticed she stopped talking and asked her if she was still there. She apologized as she thought I got into trouble. I said no and asked why she said that and she replied with someone was telling me to 'stop talking on the phone, it's late. Go to bed.' I was on my own, everybody in the house was already asleep."
"I asked her if it was an old lady and she said yes. Told her it was my grandma and that the same thing happened to my brother. She started talking about ghosts and stuff so I told her I'm hanging up and bolted into my room."
ghentres
The humanoid shadow figure
"One time I woke up in the middle of the night and I checked my phone to see the time, and then as I was about to lay down and close my eyes I checked in front of me and a huge tall humanoid shadow figure was standing there blocking the view of a broken wall clock and I just started panicking and it still was there after many seconds and eventually it just disappeared after I looked away from it for a second."
AppleIsTheBest124
In the Ravine
"My family's old house backed onto a pretty substantial, forested ravine. I slept on the ground-level floor, and my room was at the back of the house. On 4 separate occasions, over the span of 5 years, I saw a middle-aged man dressed in a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a red hat walk through my room with a dog leash in his hand."
"He would briefly stop at the same spot every time, and look around, then keep walking towards the ravine. I should note that this was fairly new construction in a suburb of a small city, and all that had been there previously was a forest."
"I think he lost his dog in the ravine at some point, and he was there trying to find it."
mikeytruelove
Gettysburg
Whoopi Goldberg Comedy GIFGiphy"I saw a ghost sleeping in the same bed as my brother at a bed-n-breakfast in Gettysburg."
ccottonball
"Gettysburg has such an oppressive heavy feeling in the air. It's absolutely beautiful but it reminds me of the home I grew up in VA in the Bull Run Battlefield."
Chichi_lovesme
The ghosts of war are always in unrest.
Well, most ghosts in general are in unrest.
And they clearly visit often.
Customer service jobs are not for the faint of heart.
Dealing with people at their angriest and rudest does not breed a positive work environment.
Customer service can be a downright toxic job.
And if it's not the customers setting your spirit on fire, it's the companies themselves.
Some companies seem to revel in creating discontent.
That's why these types of jobs have such high turnover.
Redditor Psychological-Name15 wanted the customer service reps out there to give us some truths, so they asked:
"Customer service workers of Reddit, what secret can you reveal from your former company?"
I want to know about the inner workings of Comcast!!
I loathe them!
Oh Dear
Jennifer Lopez Smh GIF by American IdolGiphyI used to work in tech support for Citi Bank. The people working there are not intelligent. My favorite interaction went like this..."
"Banker - How do I type the upside down I?"
"Me - Ma'am, that's an exclamation point."
slappy_mcslapenstein
The Crappy People
"In every CS job I’ve ever had: we will bend over backward to help a nice person. We will expedite any complaint, give maximum compensation, and harass other areas of the business for you."
"We will do the absolute bare minimum to help a shi**y person and if you’re really bad, we will do everything in our power to make sure you get nothing but what you’re legally entitled to and it will be a process to get that."
11catsinahumansuit
"I don’t work in CS but 100% the same for us in IT a nice person will get new stuff while a shi**y person will get questionable secondhand crap that will take 12 months to fix! I will make sure that you wait as long as humanely possible to have anything fixed!"
Sharp-Demand-6614
Go to Holiday Inn
"If you ask for a supervisor calling Marriott you will just get another person who is not a supervisor, but say they are."
cryptnificent
"Yep. I've seen this done numerous times across multiple industries. Usually, it only involves an actual sup if it's a genuine problem or if they want to make a point."
"The last job I had was in towing junk cars. Two of the inside buyers, one male, and one female, would bounce that sup card around constantly. Idk how no one ever put it together. We'd get repeat callers and repeat sellers so I don't know."
ItsBobFromLumbridge
Heartless
"Worked at a contracted call center for Centrelink. The manager told us to deny as many emergency payments as possible and they would back us no matter what. They were actively working towards a culture that despised the callers and churned staff to get heartless right-wingers who hated the poor."
Rizza1122
"I feel ya. My best mate is a quadriplegic. Centrelink denied his disability pension because he wasn’t disabled enough."
Less-Storage
Go to Home Depot
You Are Dumb Patrick Star GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"I worked at Lowes. I didn't know anything about anything in the electrical department yet that's where they put me without any training."
Eattherich187
Not training people is not just a Lowes thing.
There are too many unqualified people doing too many things.
Switcharoo
Drag Race What GIF by TAZOGiphy"Can confirm it's an unwritten policy for deli departments in Coles Supermarkets to change the written expiry dates on their tickets so they can sell out-of-code products at full price."
A Little Sunshine
"I worked at a call center for the billing department of a major internet and cable service provider. We were authorized to give up to $90 credit per customer on their bill but only as a last resort. Always remember to be nice to all customer service workers. You never know just how much they can help with a friendly attitude."
Axel_Dunce
"Former call center employee here. Highly accurate. Use your manners, and well fix your issue. Anything else, just makes us want to take longer, and you won't get a credit. Just because we are authorized, doesn't mean you'll get the credit for being an a**hat. haha. I've been verbally abused a few times for asking them not to swear at me. Lol."
Ok-Ad-7247
LELU
"I worked for a major telco company for many years in something called a ‘LELU’ which stands for Law Enforcement Liaison Unit. This 'unit' is pretty self-explanatory, but it essentially is a team who worked directly with the police/FEDS to monitor people's information for things such as obtaining communications history of call logs, SMS loss, etc."
"However, most importantly, the software we used, we as agents could directly see all your SMS texts, including MMS and their explicit imagery of whatever you were sending. This would include sexting, naked images, family photos, and everything. There were instances where people abused this position by stalking or 'monitoring' their SO’s comings and going’s."
MidniteMischief
Cookies!!
"I worked at a cafe chain called 'The Cookie Man,' 95% of their cookies arrived in cardboard boxes layered with bubble wrap. The last 5% arrived as pre-made dough that we would bake on-site to make the place smell like fresh cookies."
"I also worked at a cupcake shop. It's literally just packet mix that you add eggs and oil to before baking/piping pre-made icing onto. Don't waste your money on these places, 90% of these chain shops are the same and most are severely underpaying their workers (this is for Australia btw). Just purchase some packet mix from the supermarket and call it a day."
Frequent-Selection91
Look in the Back
"I was a Store Manager for a very large grocery chain and I can tell you that 95% of the time when customers complain to the manager, we may be professional and show empathy, and even resolve the problem."
"But then we usually just make fun of or talk crap about the person who complained to the other employees. And when a customer is really rude when we go 'look in the back' for something, we legit just stand around and talk to other employees, and make zero effort to look for the item."
A_Womans_Thoughts
From the Box
Kaitlin Olson Brunch GIF by The MickGiphy"I once worked at 'the area's premiere day spa'; the mimosas were made with Sunny D and not real orange juice, and the wines came out of a box."
SailorVenus23
Sunny D and champagne?!?!
What in the name of Lucifer?
Who does that?!
Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.