It's no secret that women are often objectified by creepy men. But some of these men, specifically those known as "incels", or "involuntary celibates". The stereotypical incel is a fedora-wearing neck-bearded creature, but the incel culture can be hiding in any man's brain. And that's friggin' terrifying.
MetaphoricalProverbasked: Women of Reddit, have you ever had a run in with an Incel? If so, what happened?
That's horrible.
"Met one in college. He seemed normal at the time although we rarely talked. Had literally one class together.
He friend requested me on Facebook and I accepted. Soon after he asked me out on Facebook and I rejected him. He started staring at me in the one class we had together and followed me around a lot.
One day I got a text from my mom telling me I should check my Facebook. I maybe looked at it once a day at the time.
He had commented on every single post I made, every picture, anything on my wall. Literally everything he could. Every comment was different too, but all some variation of how I'm a slut. How all I'm good for is to please a man and produce his offspring... if he finds me worthy.
He planned it out well I think I because the semester ended the week before. Which was good for me I guess, didn't have to see him anymore.
I blocked him then deleted my Facebook. I was rarely using it anyway. He put so much effort into those comments, hundreds of them. Just weird."
What a huge red flag.
Giphy"I started chatting with him on Tinder, about an hour later I run into a friend of mine and we decide to grab a beer together. I tell the guy cause I was still chatting with him and he explodes.
Goes on a huge rant about how if I have a straight male friend I should just sleep with him then since the only reason a straight single man would be friends with a girl is to sleep with her. Also that if we were dating he'd never let me have male friends cause they'd just want to sleep with me. Noped out of that one pretty fast."
Big yikes.
"I met a guy online who turned out to be an incel. We chatted casually for maybe a month, nothing sexual, just friendship as we had a hobby in common we were discussing. One day he asked me to check his dating profile for him. Hoping that a woman's perspective would tell him why he wasn't getting any messages. I didn't mind as he'd been polite up until this point. But I didn't read that this was his way of flirting with me.
I just told him his bio was far too long. It was the longest profile on a dating website I'd ever seen. It would have been pages and pages of paragraphs if you printed it out. I just said it's easier to read if you shorten it and make it about the lasting impression you want a woman to have of you. And I sent him an example since I knew about his hobbies. I just wrote something like, "I like philosophy, debating and discussing psychology" and leave it at that instead of discussing every topic in detail and what you like and don't like about them.
Also, his page was filled with more negatives than positives. Paragraphs upon paragraphs about what he found unattractive in women. His standards were ridiculously high. They couldn't have had any previous relationships. No tattoos. Can't be into hobbies he doesn't like. He accused anyone who didn't like his hobbies of being stupid and he thought other people were all 'vapid and shallow for only caring about looks'. Also, he required a woman to have a very specific body and face type.
When I told him maybe he should cut this part out and stick to what traits he likes in a woman...he suddenly flipped. Out of nowhere. He'd shown no sign of craziness before he asked me about his dating profile. Suddenly he starts ranting about how women don't want him but he's a catch. And if I wasn't such a bitch, I wouldn't be single. And he could show me a good time if I learned to be more passive and not speak my mind as much.
I told him to calm down and he wouldn't. He sent me pages and pages and pages of hateful, venomous messages about hating women for not seeing how intelligent and insightful he was and how I would be single forever if I didn't take his offer to date him because he could 'improve' me by making me more alluring to other men.
I tried to give him another chance but my message was drowned out by the paragraphs he sent me over the course of a few hours. So I blocked him on Skype and his original account that we spoke on on another platform disappeared the very next day. Never heard of him since."
Nope, he was definitely an incel.
"This was over a decade ago now, I think. But, at the very least, he was pretty convinced that women were the issue.
The issue was that he was obese. And unwashed. And looked exactly the way you think an incel would. We got along very well and I tried to get past all that, but you can't force attraction.
Basically, we hung out alone once and it was pretty much a disaster. Awkward, uncomfortable. Smelly. Anwyay, after that, I tried to diplomatically let him down. He basically told me I was a slut, tried to rake my name through the mud, and cut me out of his life.
So, yeah. Pretty much a paint by numbers."
Where do these men even come from?
Giphy"I went on a date with one about six months ago. It was so, so uncomfortable. He was asking me what I was looking for in a relationship, and the conversation went something like this. M represents me, and D will represent him.
D: So, do you know what you're looking for?
M: I'm new to the state, so I think that for now I just want to go out a bit and meet new people. I'm the commitment type, though, and I'm not at all opposed to finding something serious. What about you?
D: Well, uh, I don't really think I want a girlfriend, you know? I don't want to feel smothered. I mean, sex is nice, of course, but... I just like hooking up. I hooked up with some girls this summer and the sex was fun.
M: Ah. Yeah, I'm not really the hook-up type. I feel like healthy relationships are pretty balanced and no one needs to feel smothered. But I can see how going out with no strings attached could be a good time.
D: Yeah. I really just like sex, like any other dude, yanno? I don't need a girlfriend. Of course, there are the times that I see a stupid couple holding hands and being all cute, and that makes me mad, of course. I don't like seeing it flaunted like that.
I kind of froze at that point. It's difficult to explain the tone of voice he used when he said that last thing, but it made me uneasy. I could see the anger/hatred in his eyes and he went from casually conversing to seriously mad. And he kept saying "of course," like everyone felt the same way, or like he was trying to gauge if I felt similarly.
Needless to say, I never went out with the guy again. I met my now-boyfriend two days later and we've run into D together while on campus (D and I go to college together). Every time, D glares at me and shoots my boyfriend dirty looks.
Edit: I realize that he said he was screwing girls, which would make him not an Incel, by definition. But he seemed to be lying about the sex, and the way that he spoke about his anger toward couples/women with boyfriends made it really clear that he had an Incel-like mindset."
Holy crap.
"This was freshman year of high school and I swear I have about a hundred stories on this one boy. Let's call him blue (because his hair used to be blue).
So I first met blue on a bus ride to a field trip where we were visiting a local college to go through a "practice" course. He and I were both put into the computer programming course, so we spent the whole day together. He seemed like a pretty chill dude, so I invited him to come hang out with my friends at the football game that night. No big deal, right?
Well, he arrives and jokes about how he told his parents we were on a date. I cut him off right there and clarify I invited him to hang out, I did not ask him on a date. He shrugs and continues the story. His father apparently asked if he should bring condoms and his mom asked if I was spending the night. Oooookay now this feels awkward. I emphasized once again we were not in a relationship, I did not ask him out, and nothing was happening tonight. He agreed.
So a small bump in the road, but I still don't feel comfortable around him. To get away for a bit, I offer to go wait in line for snacks while everyone else watches the game. He offers to go with me to "keep me safe": yeah, no. I try to talk one of my girlfriends into helping me leave alone, but she thinks he's cute for me and tells us both to go. Yaaaaay.
So he and I are walking to the snack bar, my friends money in hand (they were paying for their own snacks, I was just going to wait for them) and he's following. As we get close to the stand, a cute girl walks by and he very obviously checks her out. I honestly don't care, but it's what he says that made me cringe.
"Damn, I'd rape that."
I immediately go off on him, that that's not funny, that he's a high schooler and should know better, that some jokes are funny but that's a bit far. He is shocked saying. "What? I do you first!" Apparently he thought I was jealous or something? I give him the money and tell him to order for our friends, I'm leaving. He keeps trying to get me to stay, but I'm just done. He then offers to drive me home, which is a BIG hell no at this point! You just made a joke about raping me I am NOT having you drive me home ALONE after that!!!
It gets worse.
For about a month, he would follow me to my gym class, wait for me to walk into the girls locker room, and then go to his class. After I realized this was a common occurrence, I talked to a mutual friend of ours, and then it stopped. Don't have confirmation, but I'm assuming our mutual friend (let's call him pink for his fav color) told blue I knew and he stopped.
Skip to sophomore year, when us three are all in a club together. Pink keeps trying to set me and blue up together, and it's making me really uncomfortable. Blue and I are in a different club together where I compete and he is taking pictures for the yearbook. Turns out almost all the pictures he took were of me. Creepy.
What was weird was he found a crappy homemade ring in the hallways apparently? With a heart charm as the charm of the ring. He snuck it in my bag with a note of "just thinking of you" and it just weirded me out.
This was when I decided "okay so we just can't be friends." So I cut myself off from him, but not from everyone else in our group. Meet black, a kind of emo chick I used to be friends with and at one point dated blue. She came over to my house to hang out, and he texted her 52 times and called 7 times in the span of the 3 hours we hung out, because apparently blue didn't "trust me". They broke up later when he came out as gay. Weird.
LITERALLY A DAY LATER he comes up to me and asks me out. I ask him I thought he was gay: nope. Apparently that was his excuse to break up with black, and he blew up her phone in hopes that I would be the one to pick up the line. DUDE.
Then I moved at the end of sophomore year. I was finally going to be away from blue, or so I thought. Though I still liked pink and black, those friendships disintegrated when I stopped hanging out with blue because they sided with blue. Whatever, like I care.
Because I moved I made it so he couldn't contact me at all: blocked his account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, everything I could. Kept his number in my phone but named it "Don't Answer" so I'd know it was him. I thought I was rid of him.
Cut to January. At this point I haven't seen them for 8 months. The ahole hacked into my Facebook hoping I wouldn't notice. For a solid hour I was "in a relationship" with him, he was unblocked, and he had posted a picture of him on my account titled "I love my honey ♥️" LIKE WTF???
Gladly this was late at night and I was up studying, so I had gotten an email about logging into a new device on my phone. Instantly changed everything back, deleted and cleared everything, and changed my password on everything. I was not about to have this happen on another account.
Is this an incel? Or just a stalker? Or a creep? Whatever he's categorized as, it's f**king creepy. He never did the classic break down at being rejected, he just... Never took rejection."
Logic.
"He said sexism in the workplace wasn't real. Then proceeded to give an example of a person being denied a role because of their gender.
"Women aren't discriminated against in the workforce. We had a lady put in her resume at our construction company and the workers wanted to hire her but the boss didn't end up hiring her because his wife would be jealous".
Yeah the cognitive dissonance hurt my head."
Trust no incel.
Giphy"It happened more frequently in my younger years say late teens/early twenties. Almost, exclusively online. I used to be one of those "super nice-but-actually pushover-y" girls and gave everyone the time of day to at least chat and small talk, now I do not 100% because of incel run-ins.
Worst run-in I've had was a boy, after agreeing to exchange phone numbers (I don't know why I did) would call/text sometimes as early as 7 am...I never answered and eventually got pissed off and told him to stop calling me. He was WAY too obsessive and I barely knew the guy. He later threatened to post my social media pictures and phone number on craigslist and back-page on the casual sex ads. No idea if he ever did but for weeks, almost months would text just "$" and say nothing else.
So men, if you approach a lady and she seems short & snotty with you like she has her guard up she's probably actually a really cool girl but has had one or two really disturbing run-ins with an incel so she's protecting herself from the trouble. We all watch too many episodes of Dateline to play around with that. Incels seem to make life a little more shitty for everybody even other men, sadly.
I can't tell you if I ever ran into one in real life but I know I have. I'm 100% sure I did but it was completely non-memorable and I can't say I even notice them in passing. Maybe that's why they get so upset with people. It seems like a sad life but they make it impossible to feel sorry for them. Poor."
RUN.
"I dated a guy who became an incel after we had been dating for 7 months. It was my first time dating anyone so I was ~nervous to do any thing major ya know~ He was a virgin as well and made me very clear of this fact anytime things were a little bit romantic.
One night we got in an argument about the definition of consent and how I wasn't sure if I wanted to have kids one day.
He said, "Hypothetically, if a man and a woman were to get married, and the husband wanted kids and the wife didn't, isn't it the wife's duty to provide the husband with a child even if she doesn't want one?"
I told him no it would be rape to make a woman forcefully have a child she does not want. This made him extremely angry and he stormed off. He then texted me later that night around 9pm asking if he could call me. I had work the next morning and knew this would be a long call so I asked if it could wait until the next day. He said it couldn't wait and that he needed to say something tonight. I asked him if he could text it to me, thinking it would be a paragraph or something. I could not have been more wrong.
I woke up at 4am to a text from him. It was so long that it couldn't be read in messages and had to be opened in notes. It turns out this "text" was a 9 page long essay describing how my thoughts were completely wrong and how I needed to allow him to screw me whenever he asked and how it was my duty as a woman to bear him children.
I broke up with him the next day I was so appalled. He was obviously very mad at me for deciding I didn't want to have sex with a guy who viewed me as just a 'baby maker'."
NOPE.
"I've had a few, but the worst interaction I've ever had, personally, was with a dude named Brandon. He was friends with some of my friends, I don't think anyone actually liked him but they felt bad for him so they let him hang around.
He developed an obsession with me and would message me on every platform of social media he could, wrote "fanfic" about us (which was VERY inappropriate and made me 10/10 uncomfortable) and eventually started messaging me about all the ways he wanted to assault me. I blocked him but he always found a way to keep harassing me.
I ended up moving out of state for other reasons, but after that it died down, thankfully."
Terrifying.
"This is before they started calling themselves incels -- or maybe before we knew they did -- but this dude hit all the markers.
High school. I made the mistake of being polite to him. Not flirty, not overly friendly -- just basic kindness. "Hi, how are you today, sorry to hear that" kindness. He spewed their typical hateful, self-pitying nonsense at me before I knew better than to sympathize with him.
When I told him I wasn't interested in a romantic relationship, he terrorized and stalked me for years, showing up at my work and extra curriculars and threatening to do me bodily harm. He made up truly insane stories about a made-up "childhood romance," harassed my friends, tried to isolate me from them. He made my high school experience a living hell. It didn't stop until I got a restraining order, and he still tried to indirectly contact me for a while. I was afraid for years after graduation that he'd show up and kill me at work.
A decade later, he found my professional e-mail and apologized. It was short, to-the-point, polite, and sounded like a therapist had helped him write it. (I doubt I was the only woman he did this to over the years.)
I agonized over replying because part of me was afraid it would just reignite his obsession. Ultimately, I sent him a similarly short "thank you for saying that, I wish you well" note and never replied to his follow-up message.
He hasn't contacted me again, so I do believe he's changed, or is trying to change. But I never made the mistake of giving too much kindness to an abuser and/or psychopath of that particular strain again."
"Nice guys" are almost as bad.
"Are incels the same as niceguys? I think maybe they are different... somehow. Anyway, I was once tricked into a helping a niceguy.
Backstory. Am a girl, and in college I had a crush on this guy, and because of this I offered to tutor him in one of his classes that I had already taken. It was... a short lived crush. Because after tutoring him I discovered that he was dumber than a box of rocks. Like... so, SO dumb. But I had committed and I was kind of in his same friend group, so I also learned that he was highly religious (another way we were totally incompatible), and he was totally into another girl in this friend group. So I gave up my crush.
We graduated. Or, well, I did. Some time later he messages me on Facebook, all heartbroken and shit. Apparently he had managed to get together with this girl, and had even slept with her (despite being, you know, MEGA Christian) but she had broken up with him. And he was so upset, why didn't she like a nice guy like him, he had a dream sent from God where he saw them getting married, it was meant to be. And would I please reach out to her for him? This was a little before everyone was woke about this shit, so my dumb ass did it. It's one of the things I regret having done in my life.
So I reach out to her and ask her how she is and then bring the conversation around to him. She tells me that he's basically fucking stalking her. Like this dude's been creepily driving by her house to see if she's home. I was like oh damn, ok, btw he asked me to talk to you for him, sorry.
I forget what I told him after that, but I was washing my hands of it. I wish there was a better ending, but I was mortified that I had acted as his agent and bothered this poor girl.
Bonus: I didn't defriend him on Facebook until he got pissy that he got a ticket for parking in the fire lane. It was "just for a few minutes" and didn't give a single shit that, you know, people could have DIED IN A FIRE because his dumb ass was in the way.
Also he had IBS and I eat way too much chili, so that's another way this was never gonna work."
At least he grew up.
"I'm a male, but I used to be an incel.
In high school I would ask out a bunch of girls (one I asked on Facebook) and each time I got rejected I would yell at them for not giving me a chance. I would stalk them and message them constantly, even using Words with Friends to message them. I would threaten to kill myself because of how angered and depressed I was, but also using it as a way to get someone to reply back to me.
I'm horrified by what I used to be, I hate reliving my past. I really want to apologize to the women I tormented, but also feel like it's best I leave them alone. This is one skeleton I have in my closet that I want to be burned and buried."
Ugh.
Giphy"A guy I met on tinder before I started dating my boyfriend.
He knew a creepy amount about me, or guessed a lot of stuff correctly (height, bra size to a T, etc.) that a random stranger wouldn't know. And one of his pick up lines were "I hope you don't mind I have a huge cock."
But I was young, inexperienced and so I disregarded his creepiness.
We were supposed to meet up, but it was the same day I was supposed to go on a date with my now boyfriend, so I had to tell him that I wasn't able to meet him.
The guy lost his shit on me, the usual "fucking shallow bitch" and "all women are the same" and how he was so sick and tired of women doing this to him. It got really intense, and I was wigged out. It was the first, and last, time I experienced something like that."
We hope he gave them their money.
"I was friends with one in college. He thought he was the coolest, hottest guy ever, and would resort to pathetic tactics to picking up chicks, including getting a puppy and walking it around campus solely so girls might come up and talk to him.
A friend of ours took him to a bar and the guy started crying because no girls were coming up and talking to him. Before that time, he had bet us $300 that he could "go to any bar in this town and pick up a chick". Our friend set him up on a date with a friend of his, and the dude was creepy and rude the entire time."
Big yikes.
He didn't seem like an incel while we were talking a few days before our date, but he also used fake/heavily altered pictures so that says a lot. Arranged to go to a bar and maybe get something to eat if I was feeling happy to after a long day of work.
That didn't happen...met at the bar and he said he wanted to take me somewhere better which I was happy to do, turns out we were headed to his place. I objected and said "oh I'm really hungry could we just go somewhere to eat instead" and turned out he had a plan for us to make food and smoke together. I wasn't getting super weird vibes from him so I thought he probably had good intentions and it was a fairly easily place to get away from need be.
Went in, and I felt very uncomfortable (bear in mind he looked NOTHING like his pictures and was acting like I was his girlfriend, we matched on tinder like a week before), so uncomfortable in fact that I didn't look him in the eye even once the whole night. Strange note: his entire place was like a Doctor Who museum...bed sheets, pillows, posters, figurines, dolls, and costume pieces. That gave me some vibes.
Anyways, he made a pie while I awkwardly stood in the kitchen corner and watched him trying to impress me and saying "we should do this together a few times a week, you will really love this" and awkwardly laughing in response. Had we been in a relationship and he looked/acted any way he had online I'd have loved it, but he was a stranger...also I have coeliac disease and refrain from animal products for my health so couldn't eat it..smelt like soap but he tried.
We sat and watched Doctor Who (what a surprise) for 5 hours while smoking, which would be fine with me but whenever I got a message he would ask who it was and would move progressively closer to me and look at my phone. He also got a little carried away (?) with smoking. Now I can hold myself pretty well with weed, and I don't think he expected that at all. A few joints in and he was a mess. The pie he was trying to eat was just crumbling and falling on the floor which he sort of mushed in the carpet trying to pick up, and he was saying shit like "why aren't you high yet" "you need to smoke more you should have passed out by now" at that point I was freaked out. Called a taxi and left, he had passed out when I had left.
I said the next day thank you for the evening but I didn't want to see him again, tried to guilt trip me with how much money he put towards smoke and food and drinks (I never actually agreed previous to that evening to what happened that night, I thought we were gonna get chips) and how he deserved compensation (you can guess what he meant). I turned him down as gently as I could. He got my Tinder account banned, showed a screenshot of me pissing around saying something t along the lines that I'm 13 as evidence (I'm not and my pictures made that pretty obvious) but yeah, said if I was on Tinder going in dates I should follow though with the arrangement (there was literally no dirty talk) and that I shouldn't be on tinder if I was just going to use people for freebies and take away what they deserved. I never responded to him.
Every couple weeks for MONTHS I got a message from him, usually responding to something I post or just a picture of a random thing (no dick pics thank GOD), which I ghost and are usually met with some very threatening angry emojis and a "what did I do to deserve this". Blocked him, problem solved. Still pissed about my Tinder account though."
Employees At Fancy Hotels Divulge Their Best Secrets
Reddit user akumamatata8080 asked: 'People who work at super fancy hotels, what kind of stuff happens that management doesn’t want people to know about?'
Most of us who have not worked in hospitality have dreamed of having a nice getaway for a weekend, or staying in a top-rated hotel, and relaxing in one of its best suites.
But those who have worked in hospitality are ready to point out some of the unexpected features and oddities that circulate around these fancier accommodations.
Redditor akumamatata8080 asked:
"People who work at super fancy hotels, what kind of stuff happens that management doesn't want people to know about?"
Cross-Contamination
"During housekeeping, hotels use different colored cloths to wipe your drinking glasses, cutlery, toilets, and sinks to avoid contamination. They just didn’t bother separating these cloths after wiping and moving to the next room."
- curry-sauce
The Secret Lives of Guests
"I did valet at an upscale hotel in Southern Florida, and the number of times I parked luxury vehicles with drugs haphazardly or precariously stowed in obvious places always blew me away."
"Not surprisingly, those guests were great tippers as they learned who to trust."
- lazerayfraser
Attention to Detail
"We take notes on your reservation profile. Everything from anniversary information to favorite cocktails and foods. We add notes to pass along to other staff."
- dez_navi
Four-Legged Stowaways
"$2k per night and this place has a serious rat problem."
- prof_dynamite
"Could be worse. My hotel has silly rats."
- snapwillow
What in the Mortuary
"It's pretty common to have a dead guest. There's a standard procedure for it and we take care of it quietly."
- Why_am_I_here033
Casino Funds
"I have a pretty interesting one. We know criminal enterprises have funded casinos in the past. I worked at Revel Casino (now Ocean) in Atlantic City before and after its opening."
"One thing they kept mentioning in our onboarding was that the triads were funding the casino. I thought it was super strange that these execs were just openly telling brand new hires."
- hornet_Critical
Like-New Beds
"I only work as a housekeeper at a regular four-star Hotel, but probably about 25% of people either bleed or leave s**t stains on the beds. It's truly atrocious how disgusting people are, especially when they know someone else is cleaning it up. Even the wealthier guests."
"And the best tippers are the cleanest people."
"If someone fully s**t on the bed and used towels to wipe, drank heavily and puked on the carpet in multiple places, and clogged the toilet, that person will not tip at all."
"But the person who barely used the full bed and didn't use the shower at all and was super clean and polite, now that's a good tipper."
- kpo987
Endless Supply of Gossip
"We turn a blind eye to drug dealers more often than you think. They hardly complain and usually pre-pay huge bonds happily. Also, we don't give a s**t if you're having an affair."
- NotTheGary_JustGary
Odd Celebrity Stories
"I worked cooking at an ultra-exclusive resort in Utah ($3k-$12k/night)."
"Nothing that exciting happened in my year there. I found a bottle in the tallboy (large fridge) labeled 'Kristen Belle's Breastmilk. DO NOT USE.'"
"I had put in my two weeks' notice and was really drunk on a day off, and made a post on Facebook about how Gordon Ramsay was coming and I hoped he wasn't filming 'Kitchen Nightmares' with us. I was fired within 24 hours, lol (laughing out loud). I did get to cook fish tacos for him and his family, though, and I heard he complimented the dinner kitchen crew directly (partially open kitchen), which is cool."
- OM3N1R
Poor Cruise Care
"A good friend of mine is a pilot. It's his first professional job. He flies an air ambulance. It's not typically picking up unstable patients in need of urgent care. More like repositioning stable patients."
"The vast majority of people he flies come from the cruise ship industry. If you get sick or injured on a cruise ship, they will dump you at the next port. It doesn't matter if the port doesn't have the kind of medical help you need. They just need you off the ship."
"It very well is up to you to arrange a private flight with medical crew to reposition you from Tobago to Tampa to get the medical help you really need."
- DoctFaustus
Collecting Stories
"We had an entire wing of the hotel infested with bedbugs. They just move through the walls from one room to the next. We waged a war of attrition that took years, and cost a lot of money, but we never stopped renting the rooms."
"We had one old guy though who was rich, divorced several times over, he just retired in the hotel. He had a room on the ground level right around the corner from the hotel bar. I don't know what he paid for it, but it wasn't cheap, and he furnished his own room."
"Everyone on staff knew his habits, knew his drink, knew when to leave him alone or when he wanted to chat. The funniest thing was, after he passed, he'd pre-booked his memorial at a totally different hotel. He liked his privacy, I guess. RIP, Hal."
- machuitzil
Bed Bug Horror Stories
"I worked cheap hotels and this is super common; even heat treating rooms professionally and quarantining nearby rooms they would always pop up somewhere weeks later through an air duct."
"When I check in to any motel or hotel, the first thing I do before bringing my bag in is lift the mattress and check the seams for bed bugs or blood spots. You can learn how from Youtube if you don't get first-hand experience."
"The crazy thing is if they spent a few thousand to bag every mattress they'd cut down on it significantly."
- galkasmash
Wild Stories
"I worked in room service at a very chic hotel in Miami. One guest requested that a specific waitress (not a room service worker) always deliver him food. Not exactly sure what went on in there, but he tipped her with a big bag of weed each time, which she would promptly bring back to share with the room service staff."
"I can confirm that the concierge will get you WHATEVER you want..."
"We had a local couple, who were staying with us to avoid being served for a lawsuit. We weren't allowed to say that they were staying there. The police eventually showed up for them."
"There were several times when guests would come to the front desk claiming the maids had stolen something from their room. They would be irate, demanding we call the police. Every. Single. Time. They found the item either in their luggage or car or their travel companions had moved/packed the item."
"One gentleman claimed that he forgot his very expensive camera in his room. My manager pulled up a video that showed him packing up his car, placing the camera on top of the car, and driving off without realizing it."
- SnarkyVamp
Questionable Christmas Bonus
"I used to work in accounts receivable for a couple of luxury hotels that were owned by the same LLC. We would open blocks of rooms for GENERIC SPORTS SEASON about eight months in advance."
"Due to high demand, these reservations had to be a two-day FRI, SAT stay. The payment was made in full (450-800 depending on room type). Refunds were available only if you canceled a month before the arrival date."
"When I first started in the position, I discovered $63,000 worth of reservations that had been canceled on time but were never refunded."
"I showed it to my manager, an absolutely incompetent woman who couldn't check in a guest if she needed to, she got back to me after discussing it with one of the owners."
"I can't remember how exactly she put it but I was told to just forget the matter and not to mention it to anyone. I got a $500 dollar cash Christmas bonus that year."
- Weirda**mustache
Secret Security
"Not a hotel employee, but associated with a popular convention that everyone would recognize."
"The convention attendees get so out of control that the hotel will only host the convention if they have a private security force."
"Since the private security isn't law enforcement or licensed, they do pretty much whatever it takes to keep trouble out of the public eye. Mostly it's locking people up in rooms or escorting them out of town, but they can get rough at times."
"But none of the convention attendees know they are there and the hotel staff pretends they don't see them. Even those who run afoul of them don't know exactly who it was that grabbed them."
- rusty0123
While everyone might think that staying at a fancy hotel would be great fun, it may not be such an enjoyable experience for those who work there. With all kinds of questionable behaviors performed by guests, not to mention the messes that need to be cleaned up, that fancy hotel may not feel so fancy for very long.
While we may not all enjoy studying history, we all have certain types of stories that interest us, and one that seems to catch everyone's attention are the hard-to-believe, almost far-fetched tales.
Interestingly enough, history is full of these stories, leaving many to believe that reality is truly stranger than fiction.
Redditor ThrowAwayMyLife2341 asked:
"What are some events in recorded history that are extremely hard to believe, but without a doubt actually happened?"
Second Chance Flight
"My colleague was on the plane to Hawaii where the entire top of the plane ripped off… they flew the rest of the way without any overhead."
"They landed and everyone walked off. It's absolutely insane to see the pictures. Talk about being given a second chance."
- SkydivingSquid
Running Late for the Olympics
"In 1908, Russia showed up 12 days late to the Olympics because the world switched calendars while they did not."
- drailCA
"To accommodate the Russian team, some events were rescheduled so that the Russian athletes could participate. This led to a longer duration for those Olympics, which lasted from April 27 to October 31, making it the longest Olympic Games in history."
- parkerjh
An Inescapable War
"The Battle of Bull Run, one of the first battles of the US Civil War, occurred on and around Wilmer McClean's farm in Northern Virginia. Not wanting to live surrounded by war, McClean and his family moved to Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia."
"The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse was the last significant battle between Union and Confederate forces. The Confederates signed the surrender order in Wilmer's sitting room."
"It is said that the Civil War started on Wilmer's farm and ended in his sitting room."
- csudebate
History of Bombings
"There was a Japanese man called Tsutomu Yamaguchi who was on his way to work in Hiroshima in 1945, when he saw falling through the sky, two miles from where he stood, what ultimately turned out to be the atomic bomb."
"He had just enough time to take cover in a ditch as the bomb detonated and miraculously he survived. Somehow the Hiroshima train station was still operational and so Yamaguchi, battered, bombed and bruised, decided to board a train to his family home so he could recover... in Nagasaki."
"Three days later, Yamaguchi was called into work to explain what he saw, which he did. At work, as he began to tell the story of what happened, the second bomb dropped."
"It was the reinforced concrete walls around him that saved him this time, and Yamaguchi quickly ran to find his wife and son. Ground temperatures in the city reached 4,000°C and radioactive rain poured down."
"The family's home was destroyed, but Yamaguchi's wife and son had thankfully been out shopping - looking for burn ointment for Yamaguchi, when the bomb fell, and they'd survived."
"Despite this ordeal of having survived two nuclear explosions and subsequent radiation exposure, Yamaguchi went on to live till 93 yrs of age. He died in 2010 after being recognized by the Japanese government as a 'nijyuu hibakusha,' or 'twice-bombed person.'"
- Voodizzy_
A Monumental Fall
"Nicholas Alkemade fell 18,000 feet without a parachute from a burning plane in 1944 and suffered no serious injury."
- hazps
"I see how the snow cover helped but how he didn’t get skewered by pine trees or break a single bone is shocking."
- switchbladeeatworld
"Imagine what he was thinking when he got up from that fall. What kind of crazy thoughts were running through his head."
- Lankey_Craig
"'Yeah, no one is gonna believe this one.'"
- Pennywise626
"Germans almost didn't, after finding him in just a flight suit but no parachute. They initially pegged him as a spy who'd been dropped behind their lines and had stashed his chute and gear. As such, he was likely to be executed."
"Except Alkemade was so insistent his captors went and found the wreckage of his aircraft, with the burnt remains of his chute stashed behind his gun position. Germans told him the news and shared vodka with him to celebrate."
- JohnnyJohnCowboyMan
Mass Dance in France
"That time everyone died of a dancing sickness where they danced themselves to death in France. Mass hysteria."
- DavinaCole
"St. Vitus’ Dance, as it is called, still doesn’t have a definitely known cause."
"New research as of 2021 shows Sydenham chorea as the most likely cause."
- ENFJPLinguaphile
The Return of the Sun
"The Battle of Halys."
"In roughly 6th century BC, the Medes and the Lydians were at war. The war had lasted for six years and climaxed at the Battle of Halys."
"During the battle, a solar eclipse began. Both sides believed that the Gods were angry at their long and bloody war, and were taking the sun away from them."
"They declared peace that day, and the sun was returned. But yeah, a war ended because of a solar eclipse."
- TheRogueBear
A Spicy Battle
"The Nutmeg Wars. The Dutch and the English went to war THREE times over nutmeg, which at the time was only known to grow on one South Pacific island."
- missoularedhead
Entertaining Prisoners
"Theodore Roosevelt found his boat was stolen. So he built a new boat, tracked the thieves down, and arrested them."
"He then proceeded to walk them multiple days, without sleeping, so they could receive a trial instead of just shooting them on the spot."
"It was in the middle of a harsh winter so he didn’t handcuff them (for fear they’d get frostbite), so instead, he just kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy with a gun trained on them the whole trek."
- Another_Road
"That's only the twenty-second most Teddy thing I've ever read, but a new one, which makes me love it."
- Beard_of_Valor
"I am always half convinced that Teddy Roosevelt was not a real person. No one could have been that absolutely wild and done that many things, but there is just too much overwhelming proof."
- LeSilverKitsune
Christmas Day 1914
"Christmas day 1914. The truce on the WW1 battlefields."
"It shows the humanity inside everyone, but they were able to wake up the next day and go straight back to war, kill the men that they’d spent a sincere day with."
- PotterWhoLock01
Honoring Everyone's Dead
"I can't remember where I saw/heard the story of Christmas Day 1914 (I think from the BBC), but I believe from one of the last-living Tommys, who said that whilst they were forced to start shooting at each other, the majority of shots intentionally missed, from both sides of no man's land."
"I believe it was also the same man who said, in reference to Remembrance Day, to also remember the Germans. That stuck with me. They were like our lads; sent out to fight a war for war's sake, forced to do unspeakable things to other men because some higher-up told them they had to."
- The_Gene_Genie
"Australia is a bit like this with regard to the Turks on ANZAC Day."
"One of the main ceremonies is reading the letter from Turkish commander and later founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk:"
"'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours...'"
"'You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons, as well.'"
- Zebidee
The Medical Church
"In 1944, during the allied invasion of France, 2 American paramedics, Ken Moore and Robert Wright, 101st Airborne, saved around 80 soldiers of both sides, allied and axis. They set themselves up in a church, had only what was in their first aid kits and medic bags, and had a strict no-gun policy."
"The church was almost destroyed by a mortar shell, but it didn’t go off. It was almost destroyed again, due to friendly fire. Ken Moore would risk his life by venturing out of the church and finding injured soldiers, and both medics stayed behind at the church, even though the rest of their forces had to retreat. Wright took on the responsibility of looking after the soldiers."
"The church still stands in Angoville-au-Plain, France, the blood-stained pews are still there, and a broken tile from the mortar shell was never fixed, to honor the legacy of these men."
"This is very simplified, and probably inaccurate in a few ways, but it is still an incredible story."
- JustACanadianGuy07
A Lack of Perspective
"In 1903, The New York Times published an article about flying machines. They stated that it would take the combined efforts of all Mathematicians and mechanics 1-to-10 million years for powered flight to be achieved."
"Anyway, about nine weeks later, the Wright brothers achieved powered flight for the first time."
"They were also overly cynical after. In 1910 they said that flight would only ever be for billionaires, of course, we had commercial flights by around the 60s achievable for many."
- Joe_PM2804
The Year Without Summer
"1816, The Year Without Summer."
- theassassintherapist
"I'm a big classic horror fan, so I'm kinda glad this happened. Indirectly lead to Mary Shelley writing 'Frankenstein.'"
- UniversalHammer71
An Astronomical Life Cycle
"Halley's Comet appeared in the sky when Mark Twain was born in 1835."
"The comet moves in a seventy-five or seventy-six-year orbit, and, as it neared Earth once again, Twain said, 'I came in with Halley’s Comet and I expect to go out with it.'"
"Sure enough, he died on April 21, 1910, just as the comet made its next pass within sight of Earth."
- SuvenPan
While history may not be everyone's favorite subject, it'd be really hard to believe if someone didn't find at least one of these hard-to-believe occurrences interesting.
Anyone raising children can attest to the difficult challenges involved with being a parent.
And despite every intention of getting it right by doing the best job they can, not everyone is a perfect at being mom or dad.
Hopefully, people will be able to look back on their childhood and recognize that everything their folks did for them was all out of love.
If only that was the case.
Unfortunately, there are those who were never meant to be parents and have scarred their children with bad memories.
Curious to hear from strangers about their experiences growing up, Redditor Deviant55 asked:
"What is something that your parents did that you will never forgive them for?"
Emotional scars run deep for the Redditors here sharing their horrific stories.
Staged Christmas Robbery
"Close to Christmas when I was around 10/11 years old, I was home alone when there was a knock on the door. I answered and it was one of my mum's acquaintances."
"He told me that he'd spoken to my mum and needed to come in to pick some stuff up, so off he went upstairs and proceeded to steal all of the Christmas presents that were destined to be placed under the tree for my brother, sister and I on Christmas morning."
"I was oblivious to what the stuff that needed to be picked up was."
"Mum comes home 30 minutes later, asks if anybody came round whilst she was out."
"Proud as punch I say 'yup, Craig came round and picked the stuff up you told him about.'"
"YOU LET HIM IN THE HOUSE?!?"
'oh crap'
"Mum runs upstairs...."
'he's stolen all of your Christmas presents, you'll have nothing for Christmas now!'
"High drama, anger and profound guilt filled the entire house for the remainder of the night and a while after."
"About 6 months later I overheard a conversation I shouldn't have and figured out that there were no Christmas presents to start with, the whole thing was a setup."
"The household budget didn't stretch to maintaining existence, sating a rampaging heroin addiction AND Christmas presents."
"So yeah, my mum concocted a perfect plan to hide the lack of Christmas presents, remove herself from any perceived blame and let a 10 year old boy think that he had ruined Christmas."
"Those were the days!"
– greenear_1
Losing A Pet
"My mum sold my dog while I was at work. When I came home and was looking for them she told me that someone came to see him today and that they loved and took him. He went to a good home, but I never got to even say goodbye."
– Fenrizian
A Recurring Ailmemt
"My mom left my bro and I behind to go be a methhead while lying to people about having cancer. I've confronted her, told her to show proof of the cancer. Nothing. She gets cancer every five to ten years without going to the doctors."
– ShazBishop
Forced To Referee
"Probably that I ended up being the mediator between my mom and dad as they went through a divorce and one side was being frustrating to communicate with than the other."
"So I in part had to act as a go between information and nagging them to communicate for stuff like medical bills and insurance and school payment stuff from 7-15 or so."
– Hellsoul0
Warning: These involve stories of abuse.
Step-parent get a bad rap because of these unfit parental figures.
Fake Public Persona
"Similar situation. Mom remarried a verbally and physically abusive DBag. The real kicker is him being a teacher at the local High School and loved by the community. He would choke us and throw us around and tell us we would amount to nothing. Even his own children."
"My mom wouldn’t really do anything about it and we complained to my dad. It really messed me and my brother up mentally. Drove us both into deep depression and anxiety as we got into high school. I ended up being a lot bigger than my step dad and he eventually stopped acting that way because I started standing up to him. Now he is pretty chill but I’ll never forgive him for that, or my Mom. My Mom denies denies denies that it was her fault."
– yaboymilky
These examples only reflect a small number of traumatic experiences contributed by Redditors who were brave enough to share their stories.
There were several hundred more examples, showing that it was not uncommon for people to grow up in unloving households.
Hopefully, they have each found a way to find peace and recognize their courage as they realized they were not alone in their trauma based on this emotional thread.
Be it for clothes, household appliances, or food, sometimes you know you can be one hundred percent confident with certain brands or companies when shopping that you will be getting a quality product.
Unfortunately, this goes both ways.
Some companies have a reputation for exclusively selling and manufacturing low-quality products.
One would think that these companies might reflect on poor sales and bad customer feedback, and attempt to improve their brand with each passing year.
Unfortunately, even if they still get items on the shelf, reviews on Amazon and elsewhere still seem to remain at two stars or less.
"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
Who 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.