From long-lost affairs to body parts not meant for the public gaze, it’s okay to just let some secrets stay hidden. Tragically, these Redditors are the (un)fortunate few. They gazed upon forbidden knowledge and lived to tell the tale to strangers on the Internet. Turn a blind eye to these scandalous “I Wasn’t Meant to See This EVER” stories.
1. Advanced Ticket to Splitsville
I found a letter between my parents back when my dad was in the army (10 years before I was born) when cleaning out the house. He was saying how they should get a divorce because it just wasn't seeming to work out. When I was 16 years old, they did end up getting a divorce; I've never talked to them about it.
2. Overdrawn at the Freaky Bank
Back in 1997, I started work at a new job and took over the office of a salesman who had recently been fired. I was in IT, using the same computer that had been set up for Sales. My first task was to install all the software I'd need. The computer hard drive was almost full, so I poked around and found a TON of folders filled with dirty videos.
Went to my supervisor, and he said to delete it, warning me that the salesman had been fired for that very offense. Over the next few weeks, I kept finding secret folders on the company's network. Not only had he downloaded enough dirty pics and videos to max out his computer's HD, but he also had the network at about 90% capacity.
When I was done deleting all the folders I could find, the server capacity was less than 50%. Dude was seriously addicted.
3. The Hurt You Give Yourself
It was about a year after my mom lost her life, so I was about 11 years old, and my sister was 13. She and I had a rocky relationship at the time, but we had our moments. When she was at a band competition on the weekend, I was dropped off with her. The time came when she had to perform so she gave me her phone. I went through it, being the nosey 11-year-old sister that I was.
I was expecting to find some exciting eighth grader gossip or a secret boyfriend, but what I did find was not a laughing matter. I found dozens of self-harm pictures. Bloody sinks and bloody words carved into my sister's skin. At the time, I didn't even know self-harm was a thing. I didn't confront my sister about the photos until years later, but I did immediately rethink all of our fights and how we were all hurting as a family. My sister and I are best friends now, and those photos did help me gain the perspective I needed to change our relationship, but they still haunt me.
4. Kids Do the Darnest Things
I come from sort of a bad town, there's a drug trade and quite a bit of youth gangs. But it's not too unsafe, if you keep your head down and know where not to go, you'll be fine. As a kid, however, I was loved exploring different areas and just wandering about, so I did get into a bit of trouble every now and then. The one that stands out, however, is when I decided to go down an abandoned road just to see what's up.
The road was unsurprisingly quiet, so I just continued down it. However, I heard people shouting in one building and as a very clever, small 11-year-old girl, I decided to go see what's up. Inside there was a trio of boys around 16 or 17, and they were arguing over a deal that's gone wrong and one of them takes out a gun and shoots one of the others in the shoulder. I have no idea if that guy survived or if they knew I was there, but I got the heck away as fast as I could. Probably not the wildest story, but 11-year-old me was definitely not supposed to be there or see that.
5. Blood is Thicker Than Discarded Oil
I used to work on oil rigs. One stormy night, I had to go to the cellar deck (the lowest level of the rig) to do a repair, and I caught the safety officer and the production supervisor opening a separator valve and emptying the contents (oily water) straight into the sea! They obviously chose a winter stormy night to do this so that by morning the oil would be elsewhere.
6. Afternoon Delight Meets the Law
Just two days ago, at a community pool, a teenage couple who entered into the pool area went into the hot tub. I stood up to stretch my legs and looked over to, well, them hooking up in the hot tub. It was mid-day!! I cringed pretty hard, but I laughed even harder when the neighborhood cop showed up.
7. Don’t Skip the Previews
I once arrived early to pick up a girl for a first date. She was renting a small garden apartment behind a bigger house. It was just after dusk and I walked around the corner. The sliding door was standing open and she was inside walking around, brushing her hair, wearing only her underwear. She did not see me, so I just walked back around that corner and waited another 10 minutes. When I walked around again, she had a dress on. I never told her. The date went well. I got to see her underwear again several weeks later.
8. Not a Home Run, But a Glimpse for Sure
I was in elementary school playing basketball, I shot the ball, but it ended up going over the fence on the other side was someone's backyard. My teacher requested that after school I knock on the door of the house, where the ball had landed to get it back and so I did. I did not expect a woman wrapped in a towel with one of her nipples revealed to answer the door. I was shocked but carried on with my mission. For those wondering, she stated she did not have the ball.
Wikimedia Commons, Bill Branson
9. It Was Supposed to Be a Surprise!
I found my own severance cheque. Apparently, someone at the payroll company addressed it to me instead of HR. Opened it at my desk and laughed, packed up my stuff and left.
10. All the Glitters Isn’t Capital
I found out that a relative who everyone believes to be filthy rich—and always throws extravagant parties, put his kids in expensive private schools, sends his wife shopping and loves fine dining—is broke and close to declaring bankruptcy. He's in deep debt and he hasn't paid his bills in months from what I could see. He owes a loan shark too. Now, every time I see him post an invite to my mom, I cringe at the thought of him owing more money. My mom knows, even though I never told her—she just knows.
11. Talk About a Power Nap
Back when I was a teenager, we hosted a New Zealander at our house for a couple of weeks. Guy gets to our place after the flight, and about 10 minutes later I’m walking around my house to see where he’s at. The door to his room is partially open, and the dude is lying face down on the bed and HUMPING THE EVERLOVING HECK out of a pillow. I backed away slowly like Homer when he saw Apu cheating on his wife. I felt bad for the pillow.
12. A Bone to Pick With the Pastor
I was in a church in France once and it was pretty empty. It was very run down and had bullet holes in the walls, presumably from WWII. Anyways, on the right-hand side of the church, there was a wooden floorboard covered up by carpets, etc. Curiosity got the better of my brother and he lifted it to find a passageway down to a tomb(?) with skeletons in coffins without lids on them. I recently looked at the photos we took of it and it’s truly creepy.
13. Not Everything Should be Renovated
I broke into an abandoned supermarket when I was 14. Not sure what I was expecting to find. I was at the second level of the 2-level building observing this wide-open expanse-inside-a-building that had at one point been full of normal families shopping and employees working, but which had now been forgotten. I was thinking about how odd it was that I was the only one who had likely been inside for several years.
I heard rats rustling off in the distance. I had entered from a large ventilation duct from behind the building. I sat there still looking downward and considering whether to venture down and further into the store (and how I would get back out if I did). I sat for a while considering but suddenly, I heard a loud noise from the front of the store. I thought perhaps the owner was entering to survey or something.
Darn, good thing I had stayed put high and out of view. I saw two younger men entered moving suspiciously. They obviously were not the owners. It seemed like they were looking to loot anything that had been forgotten. They flashed flashlights around and then as they shined them to the right around the corner from the main entrance where they entered—the direction of the rats I heard rustling about—the light uncovered a man standing facing them, about five yards from them.
This happened so fast, but I will always remember it in detail, it’s burned into my memory. The man jerked his head around to look at them. His face was leathery, and he had brown hair. His hands were dirty with something. He yelled at them, "You are DEAD!" in the most terrifying voice I've ever heard. They ran, he chased, and I got out as fast as I could.
14. Better Left On the Cutting Room Floor
When I was eight or so, my old nanny/baby sitter was showing me a video of her time with her boyfriend in Paris. After it blacks out for a few seconds, it then suddenly cuts to her lying on her hotel bed completely naked, telling her boyfriend to “come get it.” She jumped out of her seat, tried to cover my eyes, and told me to never tell anyone. I have now told potentially thousands of random strangers.
15. To the Mouths of Babes
Growing up with my little brother and single mom, we never had a lot, but she made sure we always had a safe and decent place to live, and there was always food on the table. She never really ate much, I remember dinners of baked chicken, beef stew, salmon. It was a lot cheaper back then. Good food, nothing terribly extravagant, but always nutritious, yet she barely ever ate.
When I was 10, I saw her eating peanut butter and jelly on crackers in her room after dinner. That's when I realized there was never enough food for all three of us, she would cook what we had for my brother and I, and she would eat the bare minimum, always out of sight, so that my brother and I wouldn't worry about the actual level of poverty we were at. I never asked for another material thing from her after that night.
16. The Elephant In the Room
I was helping my mother-in-law cleaning out her closet. It was all jokes and laughter until I pull out an unopened massive adult toy. We were both paralyzed for a moment before she slowly took it out of my hands and mumbled something about it not being what she thought it would be like, and that she ordered it online. She then backed out of the room and threw it in a cupboard. We then proceeded to clean the rest of the closet. I desperately wanted to tell my significant other about this awkward event, but decided to spare him.
17. What’s a National Secret Between Friends?
I was driving from West Berlin to West Germany in the late 1980s. My boyfriend gives me the wrong instructions, so I have to take an exit off the Autobahn to turn back and get back to the correct exit. On the small country road on which we found ourselves, we see a large truck with a missile on it, surrounded by Russian soldiers. They were as surprised as we were, but just laughed and waved at us, as we got the heck out of there as quickly as possible.
18. The Chain of Command Just Broke
My boss forwarded me an email telling me to do something. I noticed the email chain had his bosses on it, so I read through the chain. They had asked him to rate all my co-workers and I from best to worse earlier in the conversation.
19. Truly None of My Business
My wife and I vacationed to London a couple of years ago. After dinner, we decided to go try out some local pubs because, you know, London. We didn’t want to go to the tourist trap places, so we followed around some locals. It was about 11 pm when we got to the last pub. Was a nice-looking place with a younger crowd.
I really had to pee, but I couldn’t find a restroom anywhere. I walked up to the guy working the front door and asked him where the restroom was. He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Upstairs. First door on your left.” I thanked him and scurried back into the bar. The staircase was in the back left corner, blocked by a table. I found it odd.
I had to ask the group sitting at the table to move to let me slide by. They thought it was strange too, by the looks on their faces. You could tell that these stairs weren’t meant to be used, but I had been drinking and my bladder was about to bust. As I reach the next floor there’s a long hallway with about 5 doors.
The bouncer had told me it was the first door on the left, so, I tried it. Nope, it was a dark room with empty kegs. Pretty normal, maybe he meant the right door? Nope, dark room with extra supplies. I started to wonder if I was too drunk to follow directions, but then I noticed that I could see light under the door at the end of the hallway.
That must be the bathroom, or so I thought. I open up the door to find a group of people in very sharp business attire seated around an oval table. They were clearly having a meeting of some sort, with their laptops out. They were incredibly surprised to see me. They all froze in place and we all looked at each other for a good 15-30 seconds.
Finally, one of the guys says, “What the hell are you doing, mate?” I replied, “I’m just looking for the bathroom, the door guy told me it was up here.” They all looked a little confused, but the guy responded, “We don’t have a restroom in this building, now please leave.” I apologized and closed the door, then headed back down the staircase confused as hell.
The good news was that my urge to pee went away. I slid past the group at the table and returned to my wife, who had ordered some fish and chips, and told her all about what happened. We both agreed it was strange but ordered another round and thought nothing of it. About five minutes later, I notice the guy in the very nice-looking suit come down the same stairs.
He saw me, then went to the security guy at the front and said something to him, then pointed at me. I almost pooped myself. The bouncer walks up to me and says, “You guys have to leave.” I told him that I had not paid my tab yet, and he said not to worry about, just go ahead and leave. I obliged. My wife and I stand outside of the bar while we wait for our Uber to take us back to our hotel.
The bouncer is sitting there, just staring at us. It was a very awkward five-minute wait. When our Uber gets there, the bouncer says in a very Jamaican accent, “You all have a very good night,” followed by a very loud laugh. To this day, one of the weirdest events of my life. Why were they having a business meeting at 11 pm, in a pub, on a Saturday night? Why did the bouncer tell me to go upstairs when he knew there was no bathroom? Why did they kick us out afterward? Why did the bouncer creepily laugh at us?
Shutterstock
20. Santa Is Stuffing Someone Else’s Stocking This Year
I once walked into my dad's van while he was hooking up with a woman who was not my mom. My dad had a drinking problem. Mom took me and my brother to go looking for him because he was supposed to be buying Christmas presents. We found his van at a bar. Mom sent me to look inside the van to see if there were presents in there.
I looked into the back and saw my dad's bare bottom as he was plowing some chick. He turned over his shoulder, looked right at me, and said in the evilest voice, "Get out." This was 20+ years ago now and I still get emotional thinking about it. I still remember the entire thing so clearly.
21. Brother From Another Mother
Throwaway, for obvious reasons. The other day I was looking for my old passport when I found a few of my Dad's old visitor's passports. Now, my Dad is older than most (he's 70, while I’m a teen), so imagine my surprise when, listed under "children" in the passport, there's the name of a kid born in the 1970s. The best part is that the name isn't on his other passports from later on, so I guess I accidentally found out I have a (dead?) half-brother.
22. That’s What I Call Clean Eating
Back in middle school, we had this really strange gym teacher, about 6'2” tall and ripped. My friend and I were going to take a dump and thought that the locker room toilets would be clean, since no one used them throughout the day. When we walked in, to our left was one big shower room and there was our gym teacher showering while eating spaghetti out of a Tupperware container. Thank God he was wearing swim trunks, but he turned around and said you guys aren't supposed to be here, so we left.
23. Drive-Thru Diet
I caught someone eating a booger while sitting in his car. We made eye contact. He had the thousand-yard stare. He knew what I had witnessed.
24. Waiting for the Last Two PowerPoints
A coworker told me this happened several months before I started at the company. The big boss man comes back from a site visit/weekend at his cabin not too far from the site. He has someone burn all the photos from his camera to a CD and makes a couple of copies. One copy is with my coworker and another guy looking at photos from the site.
Suddenly, the photos of the site trip end and there are dirty photos of big boss man’s wife at their cabin on the disc. But wait, there's a twist: Another copy of the same set of photos was currently in the boardroom PC, where big boss man is showing photos to the client. My coworker doesn't know what to do, tells our lead administrative assistant.
She confidently marches into the boardroom and ejects the disc interrupting the meeting. The big boss man asks, "What are you doing?" She simply says, "There's a problem with the disc," and leaves. Everyone is praising the AA with bigger balls than anyone else. Yes, she's amazing, and no she never got in trouble.
She was the second employee that was hired when the big boss man started the company two decades ago. This event happened almost nine years ago now and she's still an indispensable employee. My coworker who unexpectedly saw the pics never heard what happened after that. Nobody talked about it and everyone just carried on like it never happened.
25. Somewhere That’s Green
I was about 8 or 9 and my parents were going to be out of town, so they had me and my siblings stay with a family from our church. Once we got to the house (which was really nice BTW), they had one rule: you can play wherever you want, but the basement is off limits. Me being the little jerk that I was, snuck down there the first chance I got and was supremely disappointed to only find rows and rows of plants growing under lights.
Wikimedia Commons, Plantlady223
26. That’s the End of that Peep Show
A bunch of teens in our neighborhood and I used to host foreign ESL university students for a semester, so they could live with an English family and practice their English while they were studying. Well, one night I was taking out the garbage, and I noticed a couple of boys hanging out along our fence. I shooed them away and went back inside.
Next night, same thing. Boys hanging out along our fence. I should mention that our house was next door to a church, so it wasn't unusual for people to hang out in the parking lot, but it did bug me they were leaning up against the fence after dark. I shooed them away again. Then every night for the next two weeks.
I started to get curious why they'd scatter as soon as they saw me come outside, and why they didn't go somewhere else. So one night, after they ran, I went over to where they were standing and looked toward my house...right into the bedroom window where our student from Japan was lying on her bed, stark naked.
Her room was on a lower level of a split so the view was perfect to see every detail. That night I had my wife knock on her door and suggest that she close her curtains at night without going into detail about why she should. She took the hint and we never saw those kids again after that.
27. I Don’t Know Where It’s Been
So, I really overheard this conversation, but I did look during a long silent pause to see my dad actually on his knees, begging my mom to engage in intimate acts with him. I couldn’t hear what he said to her, but I did hear my mom stand her ground with, “It’s my body and it’s my choice. I don’t want to and you can’t force me to.” Obviously, at the time, I wasn’t supposed to hear any of that convo, and even now I’m not supposed to know that my mom was concerned because my dad was hooking up with other women in multiple states, and she was worried about her safety. But I do.
28. Fire in the Unfinished Hole
When I was a kid, I walked in on our house contractor taking a leak INSIDE the unfinished garage on the drywall. He turned to me and put his finger on his lips and made the “shhh” sound. I think this is the first time I've ever told anyone.
29. Three’s Company, Four is a Threat to My Reputation
I caught my former boss hooking up with guys at a bar. He always put on this front of being a good Catholic, with a wife and two sons. He knew when he saw me that it was me, and a few weeks later, I was fired for no-call-no-show because he had hand-written me in for that day, right after I’d left the previous day.
30. Buy My Silence, No Refunds
When I was 16, I went to this bookstore to get some books and notice this guy and girl shopping. The guy looked really familiar to me and when he turned around, I realized it was my friend's dad and he was definitely not with his wife. He noticed me and I started freaking out since he looked pissed. He tried to bribe me with a few hundred bucks, so I took the money, lied and said I wasn't going to tell anyone, and then told his wife and my friend.
31. The Best Secrets Go Belly-Up
I had to have been pretty little. Five years old tops, probably younger. My dad was at work and my mom was in the kitchen or something. I was supposed to be playing in my room. And I was for a while, but then I decided I would sneak into my parents’ room and jump on their bed. Because jumping on beds is fun and they would never know.
So, I successfully snuck in there, climbed on the bed, was about to jump and have a grand time until I see what’s on their dresser, straight across from me: my goldfish bowl with my clearly dead goldfish floating in it. Cue screaming and crying. The goldfish bowl was normally in the living room, I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it was missing that day.
I wasn’t in the living room much, probably by design. Apparently, when my parents woke up that morning, the goldfish was dead. Knowing I’d be upset, they decided to wait to tell me until my dad was home from work. But they couldn’t leave the dead goldfish where I could see it. They also couldn’t get rid of it because I would probably want to bury it.
So, they put it somewhere I wouldn’t see it. Unless I snuck in their room to jump on the bed. I’d say that plan failed.
32. You Can’t Go Where You Bloody Well Want
I witnessed a man cut into line at a KFC in a well-known casino. The man who was cut off asked the guy in front to get back in line and was told to shut up. What I saw next is something I will never forget: the guy in line pulled out a large knife and stabbed the queue jumper. People ran in every direction. It’s stuff like this you never forget. For the guys and gals who go to war, I would only imagine what they would have seen that makes this look like child’s play.
33. What’s Wrong, Pussycat?
When I was in the Marines, my battalion did some training in Saudi Arabia. While on the Saudi base we ate at the mess hall they had. Behind the mess hall were several dumpsters and dozens of feral cats. I worked the night shift and every night going back to the barracks I saw one of the workers from the chow hall setting out pans of scraps for the cats.
The night before we left the base, I was late getting off shift. That night I saw the same guy out behind the mess hall and a lot of the cats looked to be sleeping. The worker also had a sack that he kept swinging into the ground. I didn't piece it together until I heard a cat in the bag cry out. It's my assumption that the psycho was feeding the cats and gaining their trust and that the last night we were there, he poisoned the cats.
I didn't know how to respond, so I just headed back to the barracks. If we had been in the States, I probably would have gone and kicked this guy's butt, but being in Saudi Arabia, I didn't know what to do. I still feel horrible about not doing anything.
34. Almost Check Out Too Soon
I walked in on my cousin abusing substances. He had a severe addiction for almost a decade. I walked into his room to get my Xbox controller back at about 4 am, and he was laying on the floor white as a ghost with a belt around his arm. I grabbed the syringe and threw it, took the belt off and he was taking about three to five breaths a minute.
After a few minutes, while trying to find my phone to call 9-1-1, his breathing returned to normal, but he was unable to wake up. The next evening, he was finally able to get up and walk around and returned to his normal self. He always claimed it was an accident and just overdid it that night, but just recently he admitted he was trying to end it.
That happened back in 2010, and wasn't the only time he had ever overdosed. He has now been sober for years, is engaged, has his own house, and three future stepchildren.
35. A Poor Performance
I would see this couple panhandling outside different stores around town. He would be in a wheelchair, and she would push him. A couple of weeks ago, I saw the familiar couple on bikes riding behind a shopping center. Recognized them as the couple. I followed them for a couple of minutes, just to see how he miraculously recovered.
I saw them pull up to a nice home on the other side of town. I’m thinking maybe he got better, and they’ll continue panhandling. Nah. They opened the garage, parked their bikes, and casually strolled in. There was a new Chevy truck parked in the driveway. I talked to my cousin who’s a deputy, and he said really nothing can be done. Technically, it’s not illegal to panhandle in our city and they’re not breaking any laws.
36. The Remains of The Day
I swear this story is 100% true. So, in ninth grade English class, our teacher assigned us to group work for the day so she could chill out and grade papers. She had a “teaching assistant” who was another student at our high school. We will call him "Tim.” He was either a junior or senior at this time? So we're all working (see: messing around) at our tables, and Tim comes over and starts talking with me.
So, we’re on his phone looking at some fire 2013 memes, when a kid walks up and asks Tim a question about whatever dumb worksheet we were assigned. For whatever reason, Tim goes to help this student and leaves his phone with me. So of course, ninth grade me goes straight to his picture folder to see what’s up. So, what do I find? Nudes? Embarrassing pictures from last year’s Christmas party?
No…Tim's phone was harboring much darker secrets. Inside an album with an all-too appropriate name were over 300 pictures of various poops in toilets. Thick poops, small poops, chunky poops, diarrhea... it was all there. I just kept scrolling down and down and it was just all poop. I was honestly just in shock, and as soon as Tim came back I couldn’t just pretend I didn’t see.
I had to know. "Dude. Why do you have so many pictures of poops on your phone???" "Oh, I, uhh, those are all mine...I send them to my friends as a joke sometimes. Nobody’s ever seen that before." And that was it about that. Long story short, I found the poop folder.
37. Burn After Spending
Leaving work late one evening, I saw the HR director and CFO in a dark office shredding papers—no, that's not a euphemism. I didn't say anything but quietly walked on down the hall. Two weeks later, we were raided by the SEC and several people were charged with cooking the books.
38. Outside the Terms of Your Rental Agreement (and Morality)
I worked for a downtown metropolitan hotel for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot I wasn’t supposed to see. Probably the worst was a kid with an old man. I checked this guy in at like one in the morning (not uncommon, because people travel at different times), but he was alone. Like an hour later he asked for something like a towel or blanket.
Anyway, I dispatched our runner to deliver it. Afterward, the runner comes to me and says he thinks something is wrong because he caught a glimpse of someone, and the old guy was trying hard to block the entrance. Since we were supposed to take stuff like human trafficking seriously, I asked our maintenance to cut his power so we would get a call to come up to try and fix the problem.
He does, and I go up with him to apologize for the inconvenience because the guy was also a top tier member. Sure enough, we hear a kid in the bathroom hiding. I tried to ask who the kid was, and the old guy tried everything to shut us down from throwing his status around to bribing. So I called the cops and let them deal with it.
39. A Miscarriage of Privacy
When I was about 16, I was snooping in my parents' wardrobe. Found a diary written by my mother when she was 14, from the year 1970. Read some beautiful and brilliantly written entries about meeting and dating my dad, who was 16 at the time. I had to read a little between the lines in some slightly later entries as they were written with such flowery language.
In one such entry, all of a sudden, she discloses that she's had an abortion. It was performed by my grandfather, who was an anesthesiologist. She never told anyone.
40. That’s Between You and WebMD
Years ago, a colleague had an old smartphone that he brought in to give to another coworker as theirs broke. The phone was sitting on the new owner’s desk, but she hadn't yet tried it out, as it was still charging after months of not being used. We were talking about how cool it was with the coworker—smartphones were not widespread yet—and I picked it up to see how it felt in my hand.
I pressed a button and the first thing that I saw was a Google search for "lump on anus.” I quickly put the phone back down. This must have been the last thing he searched for when he last used it a long time ago, and forgot about it.
41. Thanks for Sticking Around
At first, I thought I’d found my dad's will. I was on his computer while he was at work and ended up finding a strangely titled word document. At first, it didn't seem like a big deal. It contained a note to each of his kids. It wasn't until I got to the last one, my youngest brother, that I realized it wasn't just a will. The start of that line read something along the lines of "If anything is going to make me change my mind now, it's writing this part.”
That’s when I realized I had found my dad's suicide note. I was about 14 or 15 at the time, and I had no idea how to go about talking to him about it. I decided to just keep it to myself. He started buying us gifts and stuff, and I would get really scared and I still just kept it to myself. I remember one day, on the weekend, I woke up in my bed to a loud bang coming from my dad's room.
I laid there in bed for probably half an hour frozen. Once I worked up the strength I went to his room and opened the door. He wasn't in the bedroom. I was so confused until I saw that the bedroom window was open. What had happened is that there was a gust and the wind had slammed the door shut, but my paranoid brain had heard a gunshot.
After that, I was laughing hysterically, and I don't have much memory of the day past that. Shortly after this incident, my dad returned most of the gifts he bought us kids and I slowly started to believe that he had changed his mind. I never confronted him about it until last year, about 14 years or so later. I had never fully accepted that he was okay now.
I called him distraught about a separate matter, and he started talking to me about depression. He told me on his own about he had considered taking his life, and went into detail about it, and all I could do was cry and tell him "I know." We talked a lot longer after that and we were finally able to put it all to rest.
42. Dirty Laundry Has Never Been So Fun
When I was in college I worked at an arcade/mini-golf joint that seemed to not care about actually making money, but it was never in any kind of financial trouble. When I got hired, the owner said, "I pay minimum wage and I expect to get minimum work for it." I worked the front counter and collected money for the mini-golf and sold cups of coins (or you could just use the coin changer).
The till was completely busted and would be off by $50 or more in either direction no matter what you did. I realized very quickly that I could just pretend to ring up golf fees and cups of tokens and pocket the cash, so I'd pocket $30-40 every shift, and nobody seemed to care. One of the assistant managers let me take a break 20 minutes after I'd just taken a break because some of my friends had shown up and wanted to smoke with me.
He was like "That is totally more important than your job." It was awesome. Then one day, I walked into the owner’s office while his secretary was recording figures in the ledger. I can read upside down pretty well, and it was very obvious that the figures she was recording had nothing to do with the business we were doing. We sold maybe $60 of golf fees a night, and maybe $100 in coin cups, but she was recording $600 and $1,000 for each.
I commented on the discrepancy and quipped about how someone would think we were in the laundry business and she got really squirrely and told me to leave the office. The next day the owner called me into his office, and we had a very circumspect conversation about how much I was enjoying working there and enjoying the perks of the job, and I very much got the sense that he was trying to decide if I was going to tell anyone anything.
Apparently, he decided I wasn't (and I wasn't), and so I kept working there. About a year later, the owner was arrested for money laundering and we all got fired. Still the best job I ever had. The mob is an A+ employer, would work in fake business again.
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