People Break Down The Workplace Mishaps That Should Have Gotten Them Fired But Didn't
In any line of work, we all have made our share of minor mistakes that were acknowledged with a slap on the wrist.
Work mistakes are one thing. Intentionally committing a transgression while on the clock is another.
I had a performer friend who was in high-demand and seized every opportunity to book more work, even though she was under contract with me in a show.
It was during the holiday season when there was a high volume of one-off gigs. She called in sick for the weekend and used her sick hours so as not to miss out on a full paycheck.
Lo-and-behold, the stage managers discovered during our matinee that she was not sick at all. But it appeared she had given birth.
To Jesus Christ.
There, on live television in the stage management office, was my friend dressed as Mary – the mother of Jesus – in a televised live nativity scene.
Although her dishonesty was a cardinal sin in the theater world, she was not terminated because our company was short of performers who were already on approved vacations or were legitimately ill.
Redditor pieter2501 wondered if people have ever pulled a fast one at work and got away with it.
They asked:
"What thing did you do that should have gotten you fired, but didn't?"
Idiot Foreman
"I called my general foreman a f'king idiot for doing something. I don't remember what it was but the safety foreman called me and apparently I was right to call him out because what he did was an osha violation or something."
On The Company's Dime
"For my last buisness trip, I booked myself not into the usual mediocre 2star-bed-'n'-breakfast our company wants us to book, but into a nice 5star-Wellness-Resort with daily 5-course dinners, free access to a large spa, and a complimentary 45-minute massage."
"I payed with our company credit card, fully expecting to get into trouble (although I actually didn't expect to get fired). When billing called to have me explain what I was thinking, I explained that, due to the fact that dinner was included in the rate, we were able to save on additional expenses. The guy literally said 'Oh, well, that's fair, I guess!' and hung up on me. I haven't heard anyting from them (nor from my boss) since, so I guess everything's fine...."
Close Call
"I constantly clocked in late, took 1-2 hour lunch breaks, and left early."
"My boss finally caught on and told me to come into his office later that afternoon to presumably reprimand me and/or fire me."
"But before he got the chance to, his boss came into his office and fired him."
"Funny Looking Backpack"
"My company once helped provide technical support for a local high school's back to school event. I left a piece of equipment roughly the size of a football that comes in it's own portable backpack on the athletic field. That piece of equipment costs $45,000. We didn't know it was missing until we drove the hour back to headquarters and all had dinner. I drove back down at about 10 PM to look for it with the help of police and couldn't find anything. I cried myself to sleep after getting back around 2 AM."
"At 8 AM our company got a call from an older lady who said she 'found a funny looking backpack' with our logo on the football field and took it home since no one was there and asked what time would work best to drop it off at our facility."
"I think the fact that it was found is the only reason I remained employed."
– MDVAME
Dirty Drawing
"To protect each other from cooties, my office installed plexi glass around our desks. I found out that you can use dry erase markers on them and wrote little notes to my colleague, which erased just fine. I joked, 'Watch, I'll write a dumb note and it won't erase.'"
"At the end of a long day, I was foolin around and drew a naked lady fully expecting to be able to erase it. It did not."
"I made sure the marker was indeed dry erase, it was the same plexi glass I had marked on before. For some reason this one just didn't come off. I was panicking and NOTHING worked. How could I even explain this to my boss?"
"Eventually, I remembered that Mr.Clean's Magic Eraser took off the 5 year old permanent marker drawing that I put on my mom's cabinets as a kid. That finally got the scandalous drawing off. I swear I would've been fired."
Toddlers And Pink Eye
"I worked in daycare. If your child had pink eye they were sent home and not allowed back for a couple days or until it went away. This really bothered some parents."
"We sent one child home with pink eye and his mother was pretty pissed at us. Whatever rules are rules."
"Next day at drop off, she has this kid wearing a damn eye patch. Tells me I'm not allowed to touch it. It was pretty flimsy and if you know toddlers you know it wasn't going to last. So as soon as she hands me her kid I lift up his eye patch and bam, pink eye."
"She's livid and starts yelling at me. My supervisor gets involved, I'm pretty sure I was going to get fired. But I didn't somehow. Just got chewed out pretty bad."
"There were numerous steps I should've taken instead of lifting up his eye patch right infront of his mother. But when you're getting minimum wage to change dirty diapers and keep little suicide machines alive you just don't care."
The Day After
"I've definitely turned up to work bagged up after a few too many on Friday night turning up twitching like a bird and sh*t."
"In college, I once went to work not realizing I was still drunk from the night before. Back when I was young and desperately wanted to appear cool, I had a party trick of doing rows of flaming 151 shots, guaranteed to impress and give you alcohol poisoning."
"At work, I started to open up the store around 7am, tripped over a box, and apparently just passed out and stayed in that exact spot until my next coworker came in to find me laying there around 8am. This was a cool coworker who just laughed about it and helped me finish opening up real quick before the boss man came."
Singing Cockroaches
"I was doing programming for kids at the library and the summer theme was bug-related. Remembering a charming movie that involved bugs, I gathered all the kids together and put on the movie... Joe's Apartment. (If you've never heard of it, it's a fairly innocuous rom-com plot with a ton of swearing. One of the running jokes is that a character is in a band called "SH*T.")"
"The library was in a super conservative neighborhood and if even one child had told their parents I could have been in a world of trouble. However they all thought it was hilarious and didn't rat me out."
Free Popcorn!
"I worked at a movie theater and would give free stuff to people who i randomly liked everyday on the cash register. Probably tens of thousands in lost profit because of me."
Better Drunk
"When I work for an auto parts store I would drink on the job daily. The manager even knew but wouldn't fire me because me drunk was better than half the people there.""Please Don't Stay With Us"
"I worked at a reservation center for a large hotel chain."
"A lady called to stay in a small town. As it happens, it was my hometown. She wanted to book the suite at the hotel for her honeymoon."
"I told her not to. That it was nice, but not for an occasion like that. That they would be disappointed. I recommended a much better, locally ran, hotel that was way better for a honeymoon."
"If my boss had heard that call, me recommending another hotel... I'd have been gone that day."
"THEN..."
"About two weeks later, she called back and asked to speak to me. Which wasn't that uncommon. Usually it was to thank you. This time too. She was so happy. The hotel I had sent her to was exactly what she had hoped for. She said her and her husband looked at the suite at the chain's hotel that I talked them out of and she agreed that they would have been pissed."
"I'm lucky that my boss never heard any part of either of those calls, lol"
Dealing With A Boozy Patron
"When I was a server there was this lady that came in on the busiest day of the week, that was intolerably impatient. When I went to run her tables food, the cook told me they had dropped her entire plate and were making another one. When I went to tell her this she got all in a huff so I asked her if she wanted me to scrape the food off the floor and give it to her instead. She lost it, demanded to talk to my manager, didn't tip etc. My manager said she reeked of booze at 8am so I just got a slap on the wrist for being rude to the customer."
– carch20
Never Mess With A Nerd
"I was a pizza delivery driver right out of high school. Our pizza place had a contract to deliver pizza to the school cafeterias. So I delivered to the local Middle School and a group of cool kids were out front talking sh*t. On the way back out the little bastards kept talking sh*t. So I lunged at one of them with my fist raised up and he screamed and jumped back. I walked away laughing, got in my car, flipped them off and drove away. When I got back to the store my manager was waiting for me, I denied everything, blamed the kids, and kept my job. As a real adult I know I should have done nothing, but I was so sick of stupid sh**ty pre teens thinking they were big tough guys and I had seen them bullying nerd folk before, nerds are my people."
The Big Bang Incident
"Made a dry ice bomb that exploded in my coworkers hand."
"I work with icecream at a theme park and we use dry ice for a lot of the carts. It was close to closing and there was a crate full of the stuff next to our table in the little warehouse we work out of and pretty much everybody was working just outside or in the office. So we decide we're going to put dry ice in a bottle and seal it up and throw it into our giant walk-in cooler."
"I took a bottle of water, he drank half of it and I scooped out some of the dry ice with a paper cup and whacked it against the table to try and break it up because it likes to stick together. Start pouring it in until we have a pretty decent bottle of smoke going and he seals it up. I slide open the door of the cooler and he starts shaking the bottle."
"Suddenly there's a BANG and me and this dude are staring at eachother with everything in a 2 meter radius covered in a fine mist of water. We bust out laughing, he looks at his hand and points to it bleeding and we laugh harder. Uncontrollable, jovial laughter. People start walking in from outside to investigate the bang, and then the managers came out of the office from the opposite side of the building. So it's me, this other guy everything is slightly wet and we're still laughing like idiots. The manager on duty asked what happened and we couldn't even answer her. We just start trying to put words together but we're still losing our sh*t too much to make any sense."
"She pulls me into the office and makes me write a statement on the situation while they bandaged his hand up and I wrote that we were working and I heard an explosion and we were covered in water and that I had no idea what was going on. They swapped us out and he said the bottle must have fallen in because his water bottle was missing from the table and he had no clue how the explosion happened, but his hand was on the same side as the dry ice. We walked free, no discipline. She knew we were full of sh*t, but HR said the story made sense. I still am not sure how they let us get away with it."
People Who Don't Get To Know Their Neighbors Explain Why
Reddit user pandaocean168 asked: 'People who don’t get buddy-buddy with your neighbors, why?'
The Bible instructs us to "love thy neighbor as thyself".
Whether or not you are a practicing Christian, it is still wise to treat your neighbors with respect, and maintain a good relationship.
For some people, doing so is quite easy, as they end become close friends with their neighbors.
While others might remain friendly with their neighbors, but wouldn't go so far as to call them friends.
Then there are those who don't have any relationship with their neighbors, good or bad, possibly not even knowing their names.
"People who don’t get buddy-buddy with your neighbors, why?"
Classic Conditioning
"I was raised in an area where we had no neighbors."
"Now living in a neighborhood it drives me crazy to be outside working in the yard with people on all sides."
"I miss privacy."- Best_Fondant_3027
Friendly, But Not Friends
"I'm friendly with all my neighbors but I'm not trying to hang out with them."
"I don’t have any cool neighbors I can relate to on a personal level other than the fact we live in the same area."- ibetyouranerd
"I'm not against it, but none of them seem interested in more than a 'hey' head nod."
"Which I'm okay with."- Toastybunzz
seth rogen film GIF by NEIGHBORSGiphyIf The Chemistry Isn't There...
"Unless my neighbors are really cool, and we have a good amount in common, I wanna keep the relationship to just waves, how do you do’s, and hey your house is on fire."
"I’m here for pleasantries and emergencies only… I don't need to hang out with you."- Mundane_Tour_3215
"Why would I want to?"
"The only thing I have in common with any of them is that we live on the same block."- great_auks
It's A Generational Thing...
"My neighbors are either half my age of thrice my age."- BarefootBestseller
Baby Boomers Dancing GIFGiphyNo One Likes A Gossip...
"Neighbors next to us and directly across the street gossiped about other neighbors within a few days of us moving to the neighborhood and meeting them."
"Like heavy stuff about affairs, sexual preferences, mental health issues, arguments, etc."
"Also, one of the neighbor’s kids is a disrespectful drama queen."
"I try to steer my kids away from interacting with this kid, but they live next door."- PhatBitty862
My House, My Rules...
"Why would I?"
"My home is the one place I am not required to interact with others."
"I don't want to be bothered and I don't want to bother."
"I'll be friendly if I pass by them or something but I'm not going out of my way to befriend them simply because they live near me."- LunaMay196
Cultural Thing
"I live in Sweden."
"We don't do that here."- SweetWodka420
Sweden Flag Sport GIF by xponentialdesignGiphyYou See Them Every Day...
"Same reason you don't date someone from work."- dudeab1des
"Separation of church and state."
"I have friends, and those friends have to text me to see if I'm home."- Doyce_7
Just Human Nature
"What do I look like? Some sort of extrovert?"- heyitsvonage
Season 5 April GIF by Parks and RecreationGiphyQuality Over Quantity
"I try to get buddy-buddy with as few people as possible IRL."
"I like to live a simple life, and new connections beget new obligations."- Tylensus
Quite The Assortment Of Characters
"One is incredibly reclusive so I leave her alone and one has more faces than the town hall clock so I stay tf away the others are pretty ok though."- Banana_boof
No one should feel obligated to become friends with their neighbors.
On the flip side though, no one should be averse to it either.
After all, when you click, you click, and when you don't...
Well, you get the picture.
Over the years, I've gotten a little more adventurous with my menu options.
I recently added pepper a decade ago.
I've also been dabbling in hot sauces as of late.
But I am bias against a lot of food.
My stomach is a coward.
And I'm ok with that.
Redditor Judgemental_Squirrel wanted to hear about the foods that turn many people's stomachs, so they asked:
"What food aren't you eating even if it was free?"
Cow. Cow tongue. Cow stomach.
Why in the world?
Not that I don't eat steak but... I can't even think about it.
Not even with a free tank...
Sushi Ew GIF by Sealed With A GIFGiphy"Gas station sushi."
kirinmay
"For sushi use the 200-mile rule. If there isn't a body of water where the fish could have been caught recently, it's probably a bad idea. I wouldn't even get fresh sushi in Kansas unless I caught the fish myself."
Bahnd
Just Bland
"Shark fin."
Podzilla07
"I attended a wedding and the family paid for the food at an after-wedding dinner. I didn't know what it was, I didn't learn of the immorality behind it until after, that being said, it wasn't remarkable in any way and is in no way worth what they do to the sharks."
xfocalinx
"Not defending shark fin's soup, it's pretty bad the way it's prepared but where have you been eating it that it's bland? I'm Asian so I've eaten it at a bunch of weddings, its standout feature is how rich it is both in taste and texture."
LoreCriticizer
WHAT?!?!
"I’ve lived in New York my whole life and came to South Carolina for vacation ended up moving down here because I loved the weather. I learned that they apparently LOVE Mayonnaise and BANANA SANDWICHES!!"
"Miss me with that friggin' crap WHAT!?"
Yunloveme
"This is a dying sandwich down here, too. I grew up with them and enjoy them, but it's becoming less common. I think it must have started as a poverty food or something. They are good, though. Sweet and tangy." ~ Ritz527
"Banana and mayonnaise sandwiches came about during the times when food was more scarce (WWII). My grandmother loved them!"
Excusemytootie
Spoiled
"Suspiciously lukewarm milk. I am extremely paranoid about spoiled milk."
Melomius
"The smell of warm/hot milk is disgusting. When I have to make a huge batch of Mac and cheese at the school I work at, I have to wear a mask during the heating up of the milk/butter."
"Nothing like filling up a kitchen with the odor of vomit. Ugh. I refuse to eat Alfredo sauce and NE clam chowder for the same reason."
KitchenWitch021
Sorry Danes
fish GIFGiphy"Lutefisk. No offense to the wonderful people of Sweden/Norway and I genuinely like most other Swedish/Norwegian cuisine but not that."
"Edit- changed from Swedish to Scandinavian to Swedish/Norwegian thanks to the new knowledge about it from helpful Redditors. Apologies to Danes and anyone else who was offended by Lutefisk being labeled as Scandinavian."
HelenAngel
I go back and forth with fish in general, so a fish I can't pronounce... never!
Anything But This!
No No No GIFGiphy"Balut."
DesignerString6620
"On Today’s episode of 'F**k That!'"
"My friend said 'It’s great! Just pop the top off and sprinkle a little salt, drink the soup, and then eat the rest.' No."
omega_frog
"This. I could probably eat damn near everything, everyone else named, but hell no to this! And doing a quick skim, I’d actually probably tried half of the stuff, that’s been posted here."
Eupion
After Effects
"Pickled fish... tapeworms."
"Edit: I probably should have said 'Pickled fish because of tapeworms.' Buying them from a store is probably safe but buying/getting them from a bar or a person may not be. My uncle got tapeworm from pickled Walleye. One of two things need to be done beforehand, 1. bring the meat to 'a temp' (I don't remember) which sterilizes it but doesn't cook it, or 2. freeze for 2 days."
hatchetman208
Bad Harvest
"Edible Birds Nest. The high demand causes the nests to be harvested while still in use resulting in uncountable deaths of chicks and unborn swallows."
CaptainCloudyL
"Nearly all the edible bird's nest on the market is farmed, not harvested wild. Nesting houses are often built in urban areas for the swiftlets to settle in, while wild populations are left relatively untouched."
"The overharvesting you mention was a problem around 2 decades ago when immature nests in caves were destroyed to meet demand, but urban farming today has allowed populations to rebound and stabilize. After all, it's not in the farmers' interests to destroy swiftlet chicks which would become moneymakers for them next season."
LostTheGame42
LOATHING!!
"Liver, I cannot for the life of me get past the horrible taste and the horrible smell, I can't."
mikeyeli
"I tried eating liver before because I read that they’re a good source of iron. I then stopped and would rather take iron pills. I don’t eat any organs food like liver, gizzard, intestine, and all that. Those food are easily found in my country."
mznh
"Hell, yes. I LOATHE any kind of liver and have a special hatred for foie gras. Not only the method is horrible, but the texture is also even more revolting than regular liver."
"And yes, I've tried multiple times, from multiple animals and in every preparation under the sun because a lot of people go 'But you haven't tried it made THIS way.'"
Duochan_Maxwell
Bad Texture
"Gizzards. I'm not a gristle gal at all."
biggesttoot
"I love gizzards but I don't think I would ever call them gristly. Chewy as leather for sure though!"
orangestegosaurus
Lord No!
"Durian."
leafbaker
"Hot garbage fruit. When I was living in China, about 10 meters from my apartment’s entrance there was a durian stand and a stinky tofu stand side by side. Never needed coffee in the morning to wake up properly."
kuridono
Well, my stomach is unsettled.
I'll skip dinner for now.
Do you have anything to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
Some of us are more comfortable with advertisements, commercials, and sponsored content that we see on television and social media, but we can all agree that there is some truly cringey content out there.
But there have been some completely side-eye-worthy blunders that have happened at the corporate level that earned a company or product more attention than their marketing ever could, cringey or not.
Redditor LeatherFruitPF asked:
"What are some of the worst corporate blunders or PR (Public Relations) disasters in history?"
Gerard Ratner's Jewelry Woes
"Gerald Ratner called his own company’s (jeweler) products 'crap' and said that, 'a prawn sandwich would last longer' than their earrings at a conference."
"The company’s value fell by 500 million euros, and he had to resign."
- Onion_Heart
Bringing Back Spam
"Back in the 90s, Hormel Foods went on a Cease and Desist spree against anyone who was making jokes about Spam because they felt the brand had been damaged and needed to be rebuilt."
"The last straw was when they threatened to sue Jim Henson Studios over the character Spa'am in 'Muppet Treasure Island.' That turned people against them pretty quickly. It turns out that if you want to rebuild your brand in the public eye, suing one of the most beloved entertainment franchises of two generations was a bad way to go about it."
"Eventually, they dropped all the cease and desist stuff and changed their marketing strategy, instead deciding to lean into it and proclaiming that there are always going to be jokes about Spam, so they might as well be in on them."
- weirdoldhobo1978
Complacency Over Competitiveness
"Blackberry thinking that they are the top in the mobile market so they didn't need to innovate to compete with those new iPhone things from Apple."
- TechyDad
Poor Translations
"Supposedly years ago, there was a Pepsi slogan, 'Come Alive with Pepsi,' that was mistranslated in Chinese as, 'Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Dead.'"
- xain_the_id**t
Not Welcome in Canada
"Target's expansion into Canada. It collapsed in two years and cost seven billion dollars."
- USSMarauder
"I still remember how annoyed my town was when our Zellers (what Canada had before Target) was closed down because Target was rolling into Canada. In the time it took for them to renovate the two-story mall location and convert it to a Target, THEY PULLED OUT OF CANADA."
"So for about a year, we lost our only Zellers location and we didn't even get a chance to experience it as a Target because they went t*ts up before it had a chance to open."
- sillyslambo
The Thing That Could Have Given Them an Edge...
"Sears dominated the mail order industry for over a century with their catalog. In 1993, they decided that mail order was on the decline and discontinued the catalog. Less than a year later, Jeff Bezos would found Amazon."
- BlueRFR3100
The Osborne Effect
"Have you heard of the Osborne Effect?"
"The company in 1981 had one of the first home computers on the market, it sounded fantastic and everything. At the launch, CEO said the next version will be so much better... So everyone decided, Why buy this version if the next version will be better? We'll wait for V2."
"So V1 sold terribly, the company folded, and there was no V2."
- BIllyBrooks
If Kodak Could See the Internet Now...
"Kodak shunning digital photography... Yeah..."
- uvaspina1
Inappropriate Trends
"Digiorno trying to make the hashtag 'Why I Stayed' be about making pizza at home."
- Kira82
"Reminds me of the whole Bud Light 'Up For Whatever' fiasco."
- The_ChwatBot
The 349 Incident
"The Pepsi Number Fever promotion in the Philippines went really terribly! They basically never recovered in the market there. It’s really interesting actually!"
- Londonbreakdown
"'Pepsi Number Fever, also known as the 349 incident, was a promotion held by PepsiCo in the Philippines in 1992, which led to riots and the deaths of at least five people.'"
"That's the first sentence, oh my god, I don't know why this is so funny to me but I'm going to h**l."
- onaraynaafternoon
Who is Max?
"Here’s one happening right now: HBO is rebranding as 'Max.'"
"HBO is a premium brand with decades of quality programming behind it."
"Max is generic, vague, and makes me think of softcore."
- watchingsongsDL
"It makes me think of Cinemax more than HBO, which, what?"
- EverywhereINowhere
Hoover Flights
"I can't believe the Hoover flights to America promotion from the early '90s hasn't come up yet."
"They offered a pair of return flights to America worth £600 if you spent £100 or more on their stuff."
"As it turned out, people thought £100 for a return flight with a free vacuum cleaner was a h**l of a deal, and it was a disaster that cost the company millions."
- Tim6181
Empty Promises
"Celebrities singing 'Imagine' at the beginning of the pandemic."
- KickMinaj
"'We're all in this together,' said by some idiot celebrities in their multi-million dollar mansions."
- eddyathome
Wizards of the Coast
"'Wizards of the Coast' and the open gaming license earlier this year."
"Worst handling I've seen. Literally caused dozens if not hundreds of companies to pull away from creating content for the company to making new games that will directly compete with them while alienating their fans at the same time."
- Konocti
Embrace the Tech
"Nokia, once the biggest phone company in the world, failed to move with the times and switch to Android/smartphones."
- bent_eye
It's crazy to think of how successful and large some of these companies once were before serious corporate blunders, or how hard they've had to work to come back from those blunders.
It just goes to show that some mistakes have a way of sticking around and make it really hard for people to move on.
From latch-key life to knowing when someone's home based on their bike being thrown on the front lawn to the earliest, cringiest days of social media, 80s and 90s kids are full of stories from their childhoods.
But these stories are uniquely nostalgic as kids today will never quite experience this type of childhood ever again.
Redditor MediumRareTint asked:
"What was a typical 90s scenario that today's youth will never experience?"
Landline Etiquette
"Talking to someone's parent and asking for your friend, because it was the landline and no caller ID."
- MixedSyrup
"Answering the phone in the kitchen, then running back to your room to take it there, and yelling, 'MOM, HANG UP THE PHONE! MOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM, HANG UP THE PHONE!'"
- manderifffic
The Dial-Up "Song"
"Dial-up internet. That tone is ingrained in my memory."
- Reeeeaper
Downloading Woes
"The experience of losing connection when you downloaded 99% of the file because your mom picked up the phone. Still hurts."
- Cute_Panda9
"Telling everyone in your family you're downloading a big file; don't pick up the phone."
"Reminding your family that you're downloading a big file; don't pick up the phone."
"Telling your family the file is almost done; don't pick up the phone."
"Then someone picks up the phone with ten seconds left... and you have to start the 14-hour download again tomorrow."
- Mustang46L
Internet Sounds in the Home
"The dial-up internet tone that was like nails on a chalkboard."
"'Welcome! You've got mail!'"
"The happy logging onto AIM sound."
"Someone yelling from another area of the house, 'Get offline so I can make a call!'"
"Starting a file download/upload... walking away to make a sandwich, brew coffee, fold laundry, start a new load of laundry, put the laundry away... and coming back and the download/upload is still not complete."
"Getting disconnected from the internet because someone picked up the phone to make a call while you were in the process of the aforementioned download/upload, and losing your everlovin' mind on that person."
"The best part: The original Oregon Trail game."
- Just_another_Sue
Renting Movies
"Getting a video to rent and watch at home made you feel like you were going 'out' to do something."
- ekimlive
"Oh God, movie rental, a pizza, some microwave popcorn, and some soda. It was such a fantastic night if those things were planned."
- GreenOnionCrusader
True Quiet and Disconnection
"The feeling of coming home free from school or work, and the outside world was very separate from you until the following day."
"You couldn’t easily find out what your friends were doing (they weren’t doing anything anyway), you couldn’t easily catch up on the news unless it happened to be on, and you couldn’t catch up on new movies or celebrity gossip unless you had a magazine lying around, which would come out monthly."
"It’s a level of relaxation that we took for granted, but we were likely the last generation to experience it."
- Own-Firefighter-2728
"Man, this is a really good one. We are so, so connected and it's so, so unhealthy for us."
"It was really nice when we were an entire phone call away. I didn't need to know anything about anybody, the focus was on the people you were with, and experiences outside of the home were more special."
- artemasfoul
The All-Important Meeting Place
"Making plans beforehand and having a meeting place since no one owned cell phones."
- MixedSyrup
Being Stood Up
"My youth and adulthood perfectly straddle cell phones. Last-minute cancellations became increasingly more common throughout my 20s but were rare in my teens."
"What really sucked was when a date didn’t show up and you had no way of knowing whether 1. they were ok, 2. they had a good reason, or 3. they just decided to stand you up. You generally assumed the worst, or at least I did."
- Dudley_Do_Wrong
"I never adjusted to this. I still hold true to my original plans and am confused with today's culture on this. Like, we made plans. If you didn't want to, don't say yes."
"And I am only 39."
- x-Mowens-x
No Cameras Rolling
"I grew up in the 70s and 80s, but this applies to the 90s as well…"
"You could do the absolute dumbest, craziest, most embarrassing s**t you could possibly imagine, and no one was recording it."
- FrankNStein
Safer Surroundings
"A parent saying, 'Here's $20, I'll pick you up at 8:00 when the mall closes. Don't talk to strangers.'"
- Nonsenseinabag
Airport Security
"Meeting people at the gate when you pick them up from the airport."
- Main_Maximum8963
"Romance movies have been ruined because of this."
- lifejustice
Cramming Commercial Time
"Making a dash through the house from the kitchen to the couch when someone yelled out, 'It’s back on!'"
- NicGyver
"This is how my mom used to get my sister and me to clean the house. One commercial at a time during a movie."
- reklawpuck
Live Television Programs
"Missing an episode on tv and never knowing when you can see that episode again unless some chance someone recorded it."
- Cute_Panda9
School Delays and Cancelations
"Waiting for your school district to be announced as on time, late, or canceled on the news when it snowed."
- SuitableNegotiation5
"Seeing your school scroll across the ticker was like winning the lottery."
- umanousti
Simpler Travel
"Stopping at a gas station and asking for directions."
"Or driving around aimlessly looking for a place to eat."
- Actuaryba
"Using an actual physical map. Then trying to fold it again."
- he77bender
Anyone who was a kid or young adult in the 90s will surely get feelings of nostalgia from at least some of these memories, but with the way technology is rushing forward, it's unlikely that kids today will ever get to experience these.