There are small slipups, and then there are really bad blunders. Sometimes, a momentary mistake can instantly turn a good day into an awful day. Sometimes, a particularly bad event might even have lifelong consequences. These Redditors share stories of accidents that spiraled completely out of control.
1. The Perfect Proposal
There was a guy I used to work with who went on holiday with his girlfriend. While he was away, we thought it would be hilarious to spread a rumor around the office saying that he'd proposed and she said yes, thinking that when he got back, he'd be amused and incredulous.
His inbox ended up absolutely flooded with congratulations from colleagues. But here's where it gets SO cringeworthy. Little did we know, he actually did propose on holiday...but she said no. He came to work for two days that week, and then we never saw him again.
2. The Photographer’s Fouls
I'm a photographer, and I get pretty animated and enthusiastic during my portrait sessions. It's who I am, and it tends to make my clients feel more at ease when I'm raving about how awesome they are and how gorgeous their pictures are going to look.
I'm photographing an engagement session one day, and it's going really well, but as I snapped one with an amazing backdrop and the perfect light, I shouted, "This is the kind of photo your grandkids are going to go CRAZY over!" I instantly knew that I'd made a grave mistake.
As this is leaving my mouth, I remembered that the woman suffers from infertility and is very sensitive about it. You can pretty much see her heart break between one image and the next.
To make things worse, I was lining everyone up for family portraits at their wedding when I turned to an older lady with a sour look on her face and said, "And you're the groom's...grandmother?" Nope, that was actually his ma.
3. Valentine's Disaster
Right after college, I worked in a copy, shipping, and print shop. The day before Valentine's Day, this college-aged guy comes in and says he wants to get something laminated.
It was a Transformers Valentine's Day card he made for his girlfriend when they were in grade school together, which he recently found and now wants to give it to her a second time, years later. Pretty sweet, right?
I'm in the middle of a large print job, so I tell the guy it'll be around 30 minutes before I can get to it. He pays, gives the card to me, and leaves. I finish my current job and go to laminate the card. I put the card in the plastic sleeve and between some heavy cardstock, feed it into the machine's rollers...and then chaos ensues.
The machine EATS it. It gets caught between the rollers and the machine starts twisting and ripping it all up, melting the plastic together and crushing the card. I try to reverse the machine and get it out, but it's jammed in there really good. I wound up having to actually take the machine apart to get it out.
The card was utterly trashed. Singed, crumpled, ripped, and sealed in lumpy melted plastic. When I told the guy and showed him what was left of the card, I felt like I was kicking a puppy. He just had the saddest, most helpless expression on his face.
I managed to extract the remnants of the card from the plastic and scanned it all in, then spent the next two hours doing my best with Photoshop to fix all the damaged spots and creases. I printed it out on cardstock and laminated that.
It actually looked pretty good when I was done, but...I know it wasn't the same. Ugh, I feel bad just thinking about it. That poor guy.
4. A Tragic Parade
We were standing on a downtown corner watching the Fourth of July parade when we saw the parents of one of the players on a soccer team I coached talk to someone. Then they began running through the crowd with panic-stricken faces.
Someone came to our door later and told us that their 10-year-old son had jumped off a float to get some candy thrown by someone on another float and had tripped. The float he was on ran over him. Our son was on the same float and hadn't gotten home yet.
It was one of the most depressing moments in my life. The parents were never the same. The people on floats in our town never threw candy again. I think of that kid every Fourth of July.
5. Without Warning
I used to work the front desk of HR for a big hospital. There was a cute elderly gentleman who had been hired for the janitorial staff. I onboarded him and remembered how sweet, kind, and appreciative he was all the time. One day, a few months into his job, he came to the front desk and looked completely different.
His light spirit was gone and had been replaced by something much, much darker. He had come in to set up counseling appointments and proceeded to tell me why...He was on the job when he received a call that a patient had fallen and he needed to go to a certain spot to help clean it up. That was it.
Of course, he didn’t realize until he arrived at the scene that the patient had jumped from the top of a five-story garage building. He was the first person there and was totally unprepared for the gruesome scene. No one had warned him of what he would find. No one thought that the poor janitor could’ve been spared from seeing that.
My heart still goes out to him. I hope he got lots of counseling and was somehow able to move on with his life. He didn’t have to say much for me to understand how deeply traumatized he was. Poor soul.
6. A Heartbreaking Mixup
A van full of college students got into an accident and only one girl survived with major injuries. She had facial trauma and was hospitalized for weeks. She kept repeating another girl’s name as she was recovering. Turns out, she was saying her own name.
She and another similarly built, same hair and eye-colored female passenger were mistakenly identified for each other in the aftermath of the crash. Her family had a funeral for her, and the other girl’s family was the ones at her bedside before the misidentification was realized.
I cannot even imagine the suffering of thinking your daughter was alive for weeks and then learning she hadn’t been all along OR having a funeral for a child who was actually alive and you didn’t know.
7. The Band’s Blunder
I was playing a show with my band, opening up for a different band who was on the verge of breaking and was gracious enough to let us on their bill. They had a few notable people from record labels come out to the venue that night, who were seated right by the stage.
As I was setting my guitar rig up for our set, I accidentally knocked over a mic stand from the stage! It fell onto the table that the record execs were sitting at, which led to their drinks being knocked over and spilled all over them.
I wanted to apologize and buy them drinks, but right as I was about to offer, the lead singer of our band began to play the first song. From the corner of my eye, I could see them getting up to leave and they never came back.
8. Complimenting Crutches
When I was 15, I had an ACL reconstruction on my right knee and used crutches temporarily while it was healing. During this time, I went to a movie with some friends and found myself in the ticket line behind an attractive girl my age who also had crutches due to an ankle injury.
We eyed each other's crutches and I said, "Hey, nice crutches". She said she liked my crutches too and my friends and I just thought this was the funniest thing ever, to compliment someone on their crutches while on crutches yourself.
So, the rest of the day as we walked around the mall and saw people with crutches, I'd hobble past them and say "Nice crutches," and 100% of the time it got a good laugh. Fast forward to that evening.
My friends and I are driving through the mall parking lot and it's dark, but up ahead on the sidewalk I see a boy, maybe 10 years old, hunched over on his crutches with his parents at his side. Instinctively I roll down my window, lean half of my body out, and yell as we pass them "NICE CRUTCHES, KID!!!"
The second after I said this, I made a horrifying realization. His crutches were not temporary. They were the permanent kind for disabled children with grip handles and bands that wrapped around his arms for support. The worst part is that this kid, and his parents, did not have ANY idea that it was just teenagers being immature.
They couldn't even see my crutches because they were laying across the floorboards of the car. All they saw was a car filled with teenage boys and girls, one of them yelling out the window to make fun of a crippled kid, then driving off with all of us erupting in laughter.
My friends all shook it off as an innocent mistake, but I cried myself to sleep that night and several more times since then, even years after, when I thought about it. I still get these terrible images in my head. Like, maybe it was his birthday and his parents took him to the movies because he didn't have any friends and then THIS happened.
I imagine him being sad for the rest of the night and his parents trying to comfort him, then his mother in bed that night asking her husband how kids can be so cruel. I tried to tell myself that he might not have heard me, but I know it's a lie.
I stopped being a teenage jerk at that exact point in my life and conducted myself more respectfully to this day. Over 10 years later, this still haunts me. I still wish I could go back and make sure it never happened, or at least explain to him what happened and tell him how sorry I am. But I don't even know who he was.
9. A Terrifying Typo
When I was a teen, I was watching our next-door neighbor's house for the weekend and watching her pets. I left a note that said, "Everything went great and ‘noone’ called". Unfortunately, I somehow spelled "no one" without a space.
Unbeknownst to me, several years back, she had escaped an awful marriage to a man named "Noonie". My letter made her think he had tracked her down and she rightfully panicked.
10. Speaking Without Thinking
I worked at Men's Wearhouse, the clothing chain, and one of the assistant managers was kind of a jerk. I still tried to be nice to him whenever I could, and this incident happened a few days after he and I got into a verbal altercation.
I came to work on a Friday to see that he wasn't working, which is weird because he always works the whole weekend. I check the schedule and see that it's been changed and he has the whole weekend off. I was a little jealous because being 19 years old, I had "better stuff to do" on the weekends.
Monday rolls around and I see him first thing in the morning. I said, "Hey man, how was your impromptu weekend vacation, I wish I could get time off whenever I wanted like that". In retrospect, I wish I'd never said anything.
I find out his two-year-old son who has a litany of medical conditions took a turn for the worst after being sick on Thursday and they had to rush him to UCLA hospital where he was the entire weekend. His son had to be resuscitated twice.
I had no idea that he even had a son that was extremely sick like that, it wasn't until later in the day when one of the salespeople pulled me aside and asked why I was being such a wad this morning. After everything was explained to me, I felt like a complete jerk and didn't even know how to go about apologizing for a truly horrendous case of foot-in-mouth disease.
I quit a couple months later and that manager never worked with just me and him in the building again and would oftentimes go out of his way to avoid talking to me.
11. Gas Station Gaffe
I'm pretty sure I got a gas station attendant fired when I accidentally sprayed several gallons of gasoline all over myself, my car, the ground, and him. I was a fairly new driver and I convinced him that I could pump it myself, even though the attendant was supposed to do it there.
Thing is, my car tank was finicky and the handle got stuck. When I tried to pull out the nozzle, gasoline went spraying everywhere. His eyes, my eyes, and our clothes were all drenched in gasoline.
After flushing out our eyes with water in the bathroom sink, I had to sign a piece of paper that said that it was my fault, not the attendant's. He probably got fired anyway. I still feel embarrassed about it, and I've never told anyone about that.
12. Droning On And On
I was complaining to a buddy about this girl that had a stalker-ish crush on me. She would wait for me outside my dorm room, come in unannounced when the door was unlocked, and things like that.
My friend sat and listened to me talk on and on about how this girl was obsessed with me and how I found her strange and had no interest in her. Thing is, I later found out that my friend was secretly in love with this girl and desperately trying to get her attention.
13. A Pregnancy Phenomenon
It was the middle of summer when I was eight and a half months pregnant with my daughter, and it was so very hot out. I don't know what it is about being pregnant that complete strangers think they can walk up to you and rub their hands all over your belly.
Anyhow, I was in the grocery store and some random lady did just that. She walked right up to me with a big goofy grin on her face and just starts rubbing away like she's polishing me or something. I stand there while she gets her to fill, and when she was finished, she asked when the baby was due.
Having had enough of the strange belly-rubbing phenomenon, I knew exactly what I had to do. I lied to her that I wasn't pregnant, just fat, but thanks for the massage. The look of horror was priceless, and she walked away feeling awful!
14. Choice Of Color
I was taking a psychology class and the professor required all of his students to be test subjects for the psychology lab. His intent was to introduce us to lab research to see what it's like and to help provide test subjects for students doing research. It was a good idea and helpful for everyone.
I went in to do a research study and was given a piece of paper with a very clear set of instructions that I had to sign acknowledging that I understood the instructions perfectly. The test had to do with visual identification and processing.
I had to stare at a computer screen and wait for an image to flash on the screen for a fraction of a second and then press a blue button if I thought the image was a letter or press a red button if I thought the image was a number.
The computer screen had a message at the top of the screen like the title of the research study and the rest of the screen was blank. A moment later, the screen would flash and a message came up prompting me to pick blue or red. That message came up so that I could tell that the image had flashed even if I didn't realize it.
The test was trying to figure out what you could see and how fast you could see it. Anyways, the researcher sat next to me, did a few practice runs with me, and said, "hit blue if you think you saw a letter, and red if you think you saw a number".
I did that a few times to get the feel of it, and we started the test. I was very focused on trying to make sure I didn't blink, and to do a good job picking letters from numbers. About ten minutes into the scheduled 15-minute test, I noticed something that scared the life out of me.
I asked the researcher who was in another room to stop the test for a minute. He came in the room thinking that maybe I needed a bathroom break or something. I felt stupid and scared that I might have messed up during the test by getting the instructions backward because at the bottom of the screen where the words blue or red came up to prompt me to answer, I noticed that the instructions on the screen read "blue for numbers, red for letters".
I told him that I felt really bad because even though he explained it, had me sign a piece of paper saying I understood, did a practice run with me, and I still got it mixed up. I was apologizing and I could see that he was a little aggravated, but he was very nice.
I explained that I thought I was supposed to press blue for letters and red for numbers, but I screwed up. Except he said that I was right. I told him that I had been doing that and was in a groove and then I saw the on-screen instructions were the other way around.
He said, "WHAT??" I told him that the on-screen instructions said to pick blue for numbers and red for letters. I have never seen anyone go so pale right before my eyes. He went to the other room and started the test again. We both looked at the screen, and it indeed had the opposite directions displayed.
He went through three or four answers and was shaking before he jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room, down the hall, to his advisor's office. A minute later, he and his advisor came in, his advisor looked at the screen and the paper instructions, and turned to the researcher, and said, "David, this is bad".
The researcher was a wreck. The professor asked me to go to the department office and wait for him to get a statement. I gave my statement and the rest is history.
15. A Little Lie
I had a former colleague who was doing his residency in General Surgery. He had just started his 5th and final year of training. One day, in the middle of a surgical case, the authorities show up at the hospital for him.
A tech pulled him out of the OR, and he was taken in right there on the spot in front of everybody, still in most of his surgical attire. He had to do the walk of shame through the entire hospital, in handcuffs and his scrubs. Turns out his ex-wife had claimed that he had hurt their children.
The children testified to this effect as well. All of us were blown away. This was the sweetest, most cheerful guy ever. Nobody thought him capable of something like this. And we were right. It came out several months later that the kids' statements were coerced and that his ex-wife falsified the whole thing.
It wasn't the first time she had attempted to screw him over, but it was definitely the most successful. Dude's career and life were totally ruined just like that.
16. Falling For The Call
I used to work in the FTC-HELP call center. We took calls from people reporting that they had been scammed. All day, 60 calls a day of people who had been scammed. I have heard it all. But this was one of the worst.
A guy called and was telling me that he had been sending his mortgage for his farm, which was like a $2k/month mortgage, via Western Union to Nigeria. He got a phone call a year ago from someone saying he was with the mortgage company and to send the payment that way from now on.
He was telling me that he was now going to lose the farm and his wife was leaving him for it. He was in really bad shape.
17. A Counterfeit Conundrum
I work as a cashier in a theme park. One day a guy with his family tried to pay with a $100 bill, and when I used the counterfeit pen that management gave us, the ink came up black, which supposedly meant that the bill was fake. So, this being the first time it happened to me, I did what I was told and called my supervisors.
They looked at the bill and called management. They looked at it and called security. The guests had to wait half an hour while we verified the authenticity of the bill, and they were so mad.
They'd already given me another bill to pay for their food, so they didn't get why we needed to investigate it further. But we had a policy, so I feel like I had no choice. Worst of all, security ultimately said it was an authentic bill after all, it was just really old.
The guy's wife chewed me out about it the whole time, and now I just feel really bad about it.
18. Losing Your Balance
I am leaving Starbucks with two coffees, one for me and one for my then-girlfriend. I had lost ten to fifteen minutes talking to a friend that was there, so the coffees were cooled down a bit. I am going to the door when I trip over a power cord from one of the many people that use Starbucks as a personal office.
I didn't fall, but I did the ‘almost fell’ dance where you are completely off balance and catch yourself last second. However, I instinctively clenched my fists, squeezing the coffees as this happened, and the space was too small for me to completely get my balance before bumping into someone.
I bumped into a woman in her 30s and wearing a nice suit, and covered her in both my coffee and my then-girlfriend's mix of syrup, whipped cream, and mocha. After offering to pay for the dry cleaning, she started to cry in that way people cry as they start a complete breakdown. Then I found out why.
Apparently, she had an interview; the first one in a year of unemployment in fifteen minutes and was completely screwed. We talked for a minute and I tried to convince her that it would be best to wipe off and go to the interview. After her breakdown, her friend came and I left.
I wonder sometimes if she ever got a job or if she thinks of me with hate for ruining that opportunity. I hope things turned around for her.
19. The Wardrobe Malfunction
I have this fixation for dresses with zippers that run all the way down the back. I recently got a red dress of mine with one of these zippers down the back returned from my laundromat. The zipper was being a bit difficult, but I was able to power through and zip it back up again.
A friend of a friend who just recently moved to my city from a different country was visiting and we were going to go out after work. I mentioned she could borrow whatever and she chose to wear said dress. Fast forward, we were out at the club with my friends who I was introducing her to and she dropped something on the ground.
While bending over, the zipper malfunctions, and the dress literally explodes completely off of her. We haven't really hung out much since except for birthdays and stuff.
20. Fidgeting Too Hard
When I was a flight attendant, I was hanging out in the cockpit of our aircraft during a layover in an outstation waiting for time to pass. I was fiddling with this little pull tab that was attached to a trap door on the ground. In the trapdoor was where the manual lever for the landing gear was.
But when I was fiddling with it, I broke the pull tab. The consequences were serious. The flight was canceled, and it was the last flight out of there that night. 70 plus passengers, almost all of which had connecting flights, were the victims of my stupid mistake.
Me and my crew spent eight hours on the ground, losing pay and it cost my airline a ton of money.
21. Rescued... But Not
I locked myself out of the house in the morning, so I called my husband to rescue me so I could get to work. He worked close by, so he came over to help. Everything is great for me that day, I get to work on time and send lots of praise to my rescue husband. But when I get home that night, he looks uncomfortable, so I ask him what's wrong.
Apparently, him leaving to get me was a safety violation and they gave him the option to resign or be fired. This was about two weeks before our huge vacation we had planned for months as a late honeymoon. I didn't stop crying even after he was able to find a new job and I still feel terrible.
Luckily, he is an optimist and hated the other job because they treated him like trash.
22. Cashier Confusion
I used to work at a department store that had a discount for seniors one day a week. Lots of seniors came shopping on those days, and it's not like we rigorously checked their IDs. If they asked for it and they weren't obviously lying, we'd give the discount.
There was a woman in line who looked in her 40s, but me being 16 and utterly stupid, thought maybe she'd want the discount. I thought it would be awesome if someone would give me a discount. So, I asked her if she wanted the senior’s discount. Her response made my jaw DROP.
She started crying! I think about it now and feel so bad... she didn't know I was just trying to save her a few bucks, she thought that I saw her as a senior.
23. Cosplay Conundrum
I accidentally stepped on and completely ripped up the bottom of a girl's cosplay dress when I went to an anime convention a couple years ago. I felt so horrible that whole weekend knowing I ripped this young woman's dress that she worked so hard on to show off for this one weekend. If you are out there somewhere...I'm sorry!
24. Nosy Outsiders...
I was riding a crowded elevator. A casually dressed computer science type of person is chatting with his bud on their way up, lunch in hand. He's complaining about some "outside analyst" coming to "mess up their afternoon" with "petty garbage". Just absolutely letting it all out on the short elevator ride up to their floor.
Ding! The two men exit, still griping and moaning about how much they hate nosy outsiders meddling in their work. Suddenly, there's a quick shuffle behind us, as a very well-dressed tall fellow in shoes (worth more than my monthly take) bounds in a long proud stride off the elevator.
As the doors close, we watch in horror as he raises his hand toward the two employees. "Excuse me! Gentlemen! Mind holding the door? So I can mess up your afternoon?" Slam! Lots of wind hissed through clenched teeth in that elevator. We never saw those guys again.
25. A Ruined Surprise
I was working at a restaurant when I was 20. Our restaurant did classy parties and wedding receptions as well as regular restaurant stuff too. Well, my boss told me I was working the birthday party and had me go set it up.
All of the guests were in the room waiting for the birthday lady to arrive, and when she walked in with her husband, I asked them if it was for the birthday party. The look on his face and the collective facepalm of all of my coworkers immediately clued me in that it was a surprise party.
To be fair, my boss never told me that it was a surprise. It was awkward as heck.
26. Medication Mishaps
When I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa, there was a malaria outbreak happening during the rainy season. Someone's daughter in the village had a bad case of malaria and the father asked me for medications to cure him. I was so far out in the bush that it took like a day to get into the nearest town to get non-counterfeit medication.
I really only had just enough meds for me, plus the previous year I came down with a bad case of malaria. So, I didn't exactly want to give up my supply at the moment and put myself in a bad spot. I told the guy to go to the doctor's clinic a few miles away, but he was cheap and didn't want to pay the three bucks unless absolutely necessary.
He had lots of cows and was the type to buy nice clothes and food for himself rather than send his kids to school. His daughter's fate was devastating. She passed one day while I was out of the village. I still feel bad about it.
27. A Sandwich Oversight
I worked at a restaurant that made sandwiches, salads, and pastries. We had a large customer base of Indian people who were vegetarians based on their religions, so obviously they take it very seriously and it's more than just a lifestyle choice for them.
A guy comes up asking what this thing was on his vegetarian sandwich he had ordered, and we see that a slice of turkey meat had made it into his sandwich by mistake due to a careless employee working the line. The worst part?
The customer figured it out only after taking a bit, tasting it, and ingesting it. The look on this man's face was that of shame and disgust. He was so, so ashamed of himself for having eaten the flesh of an animal because it was against his beliefs. He left saying he could never eat there again, he was so, so genuinely affected by it.
I tried to tell the kid who made it that he'd probably ruined someone's month by haphazardly putting that sandwich together, but he obviously didn't care at all. I felt so bad for the guy...We couldn't fix the situation at all.
28. Between Bathrooms
I worked at a summer camp, and there was an ambiguous-looking child with an equally ambiguous name. No one working there knew if he or she was a boy or a girl. When the kid asked to go to the bathroom, I brought them to the men's room and said, "Here ya go!" Immediate regret.
They were a little girl. I was mortified and the girl looked like she was going to cry, but at least only one of us made the mistake that week!
Flickr, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
29. Blame It On Support
I once fired a lady by accident. That was a terrible day. I was working as a network admin, and got a ticket from one of our clients, a boss, asking to reset one of her employee's LDAP passwords. The request didn't contain any details, that was pretty much it.
I figured the girl got to work in the morning, couldn't remember her password, and had her boss send us an email, because she was locked out. I called the girl to tell her that I made her password "Password123" and that she should change it when get got in. She replied, "I didn't need my password changed".
I was confused for a second there. "Oh. Well I got a request from your boss to change your password". Then, she realized what was going on. "Wait one sec," she said, as she put the phone down on the desk. I could hear her ask her boss, "Are you firing me???"
To which the boss said, "Well, we were going to at least wait till the end of the day, but umm...yeah, you're fired. I guess you can pack up your stuff now". The boss lady was so angry at IT, but frankly, it was her fault, as the ticket didn't contain any details at all. My boss defended me, and that was that.
I went home feeling pretty horrible.
30. With Only One Sentence
I had just joined a new World of Warcraft guild. I hopped into their voice chat and noticed that in one channel, there were several of my friends there. Two of them had just recently started dating... So I went in and said, "Hey, how're you two lovebirds doing?" Boom.
The third friend in the channel started screaming, the girl started crying, and my other friend started freaking out...I sat in sheer shock as the chaos grew, and more and more people started screaming and cursing. It turns out, with one sentence, I unraveled a girl's scheme to be cyber-dating over twelve men at once.
She'd apparently told both of my friends that she'd broken up with the other guy, and wanted "only them". She had actually convinced several other guys involved with her that she wanted them to leave their wives and girlfriends for her.
Her plan, of course, was to drop communication with them once they actually did follow through, because she "didn't want the baggage". Seriously, it was evil. Her life was ruined after that. Turns out she was married as well, and when her husband was informed, he divorced her over it.
She was kicked out of the house, since it was his, and never heard from her again after that.
31. Shoe Sabotage
My boyfriend is a teacher and was off work for the summer. He'd just moved in with me and a major point of contention was the fact that he wouldn't put his shoes away in the closet where they belonged.
I'm leaving to work one morning and I decide to give him a kiss on the cheek before leaving for work. Instead, I end up tripping over his shoes which he'd left by his side of the bed, falling forward and accidentally punching him in the ribs while he was still asleep! The first thing out of my mouth?
"That's what you get for not putting your shoes where they belong!" I realized that he might think I purposely punched him for not putting away his shoes and explained that I tripped over them. It was a very rude awakening for him though!
32. So I Can’t Tell Anyone?
A friend of mine lived in a trailer behind her aunt's house for most of her life. It never bothered me and I never gave much thought to it because she never hid that from me. I didn't know she was hiding it from everyone else, including her boyfriend while we were in high school.
I was talking to her boyfriend while at a party, and he was telling me about hanging out at her place. He said they were in her basement, which made me realize that he was actually in her aunt's house. That's when I made an idiotic error.
Like an idiot, I corrected him. He broke up with her the next week. She was so embarrassed that people found out she lived in a trailer that she switched schools.
33. A Pianist's Nightmare
A girl in my class at school was a very talented pianist. She and her family took it all very seriously because she was hoping to go professional. For example, her mum wouldn't let her play tennis as it was potentially damaging to the wrists, so when the rest of us were playing tennis, the PE teacher would just have her run around and around the tennis courts.
But for some reason, she was allowed to play hockey. One time, she had the ball and I went in for the tackle. Her fingers were kind of low on the stick and they got slammed between our sticks, hard. I think she broke two of them. This was two weeks before the National Young Musician of the Year Competition. Oops. Sorry.
And she wasn't allowed to play hockey either, after that.
34. Flying Fail
I worked at an airline and had to call a bunch of people to tell them their flight time had changed, even though the flight was still a few months out. One woman seemed really confused but took the information down.
About a half hour later, her husband called back furious because he had booked her flight as a surprise Christmas gift to go see her new grandchildren! He had even expressly told the reservations agent to make sure he was the point of contact.
It ended up being not such a big deal in the end, but I could tell he was an elderly guy and it seemed like the flight was quite an extravagant gift for his means. I felt terrible about ruining the surprise.
35. Spilt Milk And Coffee
I worked at Burger King while in college. I was working in the drive-thru and was handing a customer a drink—but the lid wasn't completely on. The pop spilled all over her white top making it look like her chest was leaking brown fluid. I apologized profusely and the woman was fuming, and rightfully so.
She came into the restaurant to berate me for my ineptitude because she was on her way to an important job interview. I offered to pay for cleaning but she stormed off. I felt like garbage.
36. Samurai Sword Fight!
My dad used to keep some pretty sweet samurai swords above my parents’ bed. When me and my brother were younger, we got the bright idea to have a sword fight. On my parents' bed. Except the bed happened to be a water bed.
Needless to say, we punctured the water bed several times during our epic battle, and completely ruined the bed. To this day, I'm pretty sure my parents think it was our family cat, Whiskers.
37. Exposing The Truth
When one of my good friends moved out of state, he and his girlfriend were going to do the long-distance relationship thing until she could transfer to a school in the same state the next year. In the two months after he left, she started sleeping with everything that moved, including some of his "friends".
Two days before he came back for his first visit, I made a comment to a mutual friend about the situation. She ended up calling him up in the middle of the night and told him his girlfriend was screwing around on him. The next day, he calls me up and starts asking questions about what the heck was going on, and what I had heard.
I had to tell him that yeah, I had heard a lot of things and she was definitely screwing around on him, and everyone was under the impression things had ended because of her behavior. It wasn't until the 7th name had been dropped that he started to believe it was all true.
He called her and confronted her about it and she came clean and the relationship ended there. She still blames me for that relationship ending. Flash forward, and it turns out that when he came back that weekend he was going to propose to her. He had everything prepared, including the time and location.
38. Under The Water Pressure
I used to work at a job where we would occasionally open up fire hydrants to test the pressure for fire flow. It was the favorite part of my job. Once I was doing this at a construction site, it went a lot further than I thought it was going to, and was blasting the door of a port-a-potty.
No big deal, so we left it a for a couple minutes and then slowly turned the valve off when we were done. Then, a guy who I swear I had no idea was in there, comes out of the port-a-potty totally drenched. "You could have told me you were going to do that!" says the drenched guy.
I felt bad for a minute, but now every time I think about it, it just makes me laugh.
39. Terrifying Twins
This happened to me and only ruined my day for about the whole length of the incident. My water broke and I was in labor and delivery. The hospital is one of the top teaching hospitals, and the doc was new. He comes in and asks, "So, ready to deliver the twins?" My face was priceless.
According to the nurse and others in the room, I turned pale and looked so scared. He looked just as scared as I did. Then he asked, "You aren't Elizabeth, are you?" I just shook my head. He thankfully had the wrong chart, and I luckily delivered only one baby.
40. Changing The Oil
I tried changing my fiancée's oil in her car, but seemed to overfill it. I kept draining it, but it still was overfilled. I decided to drive it around to see if it would "settle," but it didn’t. I realized I had drained her transmission fluid and had double-filled her oil and had been driving it around like that.
I fill the transmission fluid, drain all of the oil, then refill it. She uses the car to drive back to school, returns home, and then realizes that I never screwed the plug on all the way, meaning it fell off and drained transmission fluid all across the state of New Hampshire.
She has no car all week and has to walk a mile to class every day in the winter. She made me fill the transmission fluid, then take it to the shop for them to drain everything and refill it because she didn't trust me. She still won't let me touch her car anymore.
41. I Didn’t Mean That
Some friends and I are driving to a less popular hiking spot but have to drive through the parking lot of a really popular waterfall. We pull up to a stop sign in front of the really popular waterfall. I'm sitting beside my friend, who was the driver, and we want to take a picture before we drive off.
Where my friend stops, there is a light pole right in the middle of the picture! I tell him "Could you move a little" in a pretty rude tone to my friend. Funny thing, I was looking out of the rolled-down window when I said this and not facing the driver. There was something I didn't know.
It turns out there was an overweight lady taking a photo of the falls too that was in front of me when I said that. She glanced back at me and then stepped to the side. I didn't realize what I had done until we were driving off and it was too late to apologize.
42. Not The Family Jewels
I was attending a summer camp-thing in the UK when I was 13 or 14. We did all sorts of cool outdoor activities and had a blast. One of the evenings, we had some sort of game where we were mimicking each other's karate moves. I was teamed up with one of the leaders, a super great guy, and he did a "kick to the balls move".
Everybody around us was like "ooooooohhh". And without thinking about it, I kicked him full throttle between the legs. Apparently, he was bleeding and all blue and mashed up. I'm not sure if he ever recovered from it. I think about it every now and then, and feel incredibly bad about it. Not my proudest moment.
43. Juggling Way Too Much
I was walking to class carrying my laptop, a book, and some coffee. Outside my building, the book started to slip and I was afraid I might drop it or the laptop.
Normally, you would just set the things down or walk in and put it away, but I think that asking random people to help with trivial things is a good way to build interpersonal relations. I asked a passerby if they would mind holding my laptop for a second while I put my book in my bag.
She says of course, and hangs on to the laptop for me. While I'm putting my book away, she gets a phone call. Unable to hold the phone, as her free hand is now taken by my laptop, she puts her phone between her ear and shoulder. BIG MISTAKE. The phone slips, falls on the floor, and the screen cracks.
Apparently, she had just gotten it earlier that week. I felt awful... But there was no way I could afford to buy a new iPhone, so I sincerely apologized and ran to class. I really hope that worked out, but at the same time, I know they don't offer insurance on iPhones.
44. You Think I’m Like This?
My friend was having a bad day, and she described it in vivid detail on Facebook. It reminded me of a hilarious speech by David Foster Wallace. It was a good speech as well, because he talked about the struggle to be a happy person, and how real and vivid that struggle is. It was a very multi-layered compliment.
Anyway, I sent the video with the tag "You really remind me of this video" or something. The video opens, and he is talking about how his day sucks and everyone has super lifeless eyes, and he just hates everyone. She took the most vacuous interpretation possible, assuming I was calling her an emotionless, stupid person, and proceeded to delete me from Facebook.
Unfortunately, she is also my roommate.
45. But It Wasn’t Me
When I was in 1st grade, for reasons I don't recall, my friends and I decided to confront a group of 3rd graders on the kickball field. The 'confrontation' was mostly verbal and ended with me spraying one of them with my Kool-Aid pouch.
I got in trouble, as did most of the rest of us, and was supposed to meet with the principal and get a call home. After my immediate reprimand, none of that happened, no call home, no pink slip, no mark on my record. Fast forward a few years to me being in 3rd grade.
I met a kid on the bus who was a year behind me and had the same first name. It was then I came to learn that he had been the one punished for this in my stead and he resented it and me for it. I only talked to him once or twice after that and haven't seen him since I moved on to fourth grade.
I've mentioned it to my family once or twice but that wasn't until high school. To this day, I believe that this event had a part to play in the school system banning snacks from recess the following year.
46. Whistleblower Woes
I filed an Office of Inspector General Fraud claim against the secretary of a federal government agency. Blam! There was immediate retaliation beyond belief. I lost my government job, was blackballed in every industry I held jobs in, and now I'm barely holding on doing Uber and Lyft.
Nobody wants to deal with it because "it is too high profile and the amount is too much politically!" My wife doesn't understand why I would have done such a thing, and the kids can't figure out why Dad is nothing but an Uber driver now.
Every time I get to the interview stage, the interview is canceled and I am told something along the lines of "additional information has come to light, thank you but we are withdrawing our invitation". Got to love how eight years of college don't matter anymore. I also can't afford a lawyer to fight it.
47. Sleeping In
One of the former anesthesiology residents in the program here was in his last year. He was an emergency call, which comes after C1, C2, and C3, and basically never ever calls in, but you have to be available in the event that you do get called in.
Most people will sleep with their phone on or go out to the movies or do basically anything within a 30 min drive of the hospital. Some crazy car accident happens that night around 2 AM and multiple trauma cases are going back into the OR.
Our dude fell asleep and his iPhone did an automatic update so he didn't get the call from the hospital immediately. Oh, but it gets worse. His pager battery also ran out some time that evening. He doesn't realize any of this until he's getting ready for work the next day at around 5:45 AM and sees his phone blown up.
He shows up to work at 6, and gets fired on the spot. The guy was two months away from graduation and a starting salary of $400k a year plus overtime.
48. In The Search History
I was in high school, and I call my best friend over to use her laptop to write a paper for class. I didn't have a computer or printer at the time. My friend was still in the process of moving into a new house, which her new stepfather bought for her mother.
I go over and try to use her laptop but it was out of battery and the charger was in a packing box. We were too lazy to search for it, so I throw out the idea: "Hey, do you think your stepdad would let me borrow his?" I really just wanted to get my research paper done. So, we go up to her mom and ask for his laptop.
She hands it over and tells us not to break it. Her stepdad had a sticky note on his laptop with his password. My best friend goes back to doing her nails and I start writing my paper. My best friend’s mom comes into the room to use the mirror to put on makeup.
I was on the laptop and opened a browser tab and it showed me all the most viewed websites. The very first website was a hot date hook-up site, so my big mouth blurted out, "What the heck is that?" to my best friend. Her mom, curious about what I was so intrigued about told me to show her, so I did, then she tells me to click on it.
I felt uncomfortable, but I could tell she was getting really upset by seeing it, so I did. I'll never forget what I saw. Up comes a profile, already logged in, and a picture of her new, very Christian husband, in women's lingerie with a very scandalous bio. But that wasn't the worst part.
Her mom did more investigating on the website, and turns out he had been an active member for over two years. We were all in complete silence, shocked. I tell my best friend that I should go home before he gets home.
At this point, she was bawling her eyes out asking if she can come with me because she felt too uncomfortable staying there. The next couple of days go by, and the new couple was filing for divorce. Now, five years later, her mom lives in Ohio with her new hubby and her ex is probably still in the same place, paying off the house he bought for my best friend and her mom.
49. Bearing Bad News
In college, we'd receive emails whenever a student lost their life. One email I got was about an engineering student who had passed. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to ask a girl who I barely knew on my ski team that was also majoring in engineering, if she knew this kid. Her reaction chilled me to the bone.
She started screaming, "WHAT?! WHAT?!" in a very panicked way. A few other teammates escorted her out of the ski lodge. It turns out, that was the guy she had been hooking up with and they were really good friends. He'd even been to a few ski team parties, I just had never met him. I
barely knew this girl and I still feel guilty about being the one to casually tell her that something awful happened to her good friend.
50. I Want Quiet!
I came back to my apartment after working all night around 10 am, and my new neighbor across the hall from me decides to play heavy metal rock so loud that it vibrates and shakes the walls and floors of the entire building through his apartment all the way to mine.
I called for help this time, as calling the leasing office hasn't done me any favors in the past. Through the peephole, I saw the authorities knock on the door a few times before he answered, asked him a few questions, and turns out he had a warrant out for something. He gets taken in and never returns to that apartment again.
I asked the leasing office about what happened, but they didn't know exactly what. The office was just told that he won't be spending the next few years in that apartment. So, the lesson here kids, playing music too loudly can land you in trouble for a long, long time.
I am sure he did something worse before that day but I can't help but feel partly responsible for ruining his life because I could not sleep.
Sources: Reddit,
