The world is a wonderful place. Most of the time. Sometimes it's completely, totally, infuriating. Almost as if by design.
In times like those, sometimes people lose their cool. I get it, I live in one of the biggest cities in the nation and driving 5 miles down the road sometimes takes 2 hours because everyone is a moron.
Other times you have to deal with the bureaucracy that literally only exists to justify its own existence, and therefore, is horribly inefficient and rage-inducing.
And let's not even get me started on just having to deal with other people.
How about we just move on to the list?
40. The DMV: capable of sending even the calmest people into a rage
My 7th trip to the DMV when trying to reinstate my license. Every single time they scrutinized my paperwork and always managed to find something “wrong” and would send me away to fix it.
On this 7th trip, they finally resorted to, “you have no proof that you ever had a license,” despite my piles of paperwork showing my driving record, among other things.
I refused to leave the seat and said, “you people are monsters.”
A manager was called. we argued, he said he believed that I had had a license, but there was just no proof, and he couldn’t risk accepting my paperwork in case someone checked it.
I said I refused to leave the seat until I knew exactly what was needed. Manager said, “tell you what, I can contact the last state you lived in and could get a verification that I had had a license there." It would take 3 minutes.
That’s when I yelled in the DMV, “WHY WASN’T THAT THE FIRST THING YOU SAID?”
Anyway, I got my license back.
39. I guess you could say the florist didn't know the score
I had things all set up to play piano with a string quartet for a wedding ceremony in a church.
The grand piano was up front, near the couple, and the organ in the rear to be used later.
When I entered the church, I found that the florist had placed a large vase of roses on the grand piano, using the sheet music for the string quartet underneath the vase to absorb water.
Rarely do I lose my cool, but I did that time. Members of the string quartet told him in no uncertain terms where he could stick those roses as they tried to salvage their soaked music scores.
38. Good job, kid
I was always a really quiet kid, even as a toddler apparently. So one of the first times I remember losing it was when I got really tired of this 3rd grader picking on me on the bus. I was in kindergarten and this kid kept popping his head over my seat and poking me. I timed it out and the next time he did I punched him straight in the nose, which he immediately started bleeding and crying.
I didn't know it at the time but apparently, the kid's parents tried to get some disciplinary action against me. That was until they found out I wasn't the same age or older. They just didn't want to make a big stink out of their kid getting beat up by a kindergartner.
37. Wanna see a magic trick?
This girl viciously bullied me in school. Told everyone I was a lesbian (at an all girl's school, this made you a social pariah), even the foreign exchange students, started rumors that my Dad was gay, threw paper at me during class, and other nasty taunts.
In history class, she was sat behind me and started kicking me through the hole in the back of my chair. I told her to stop it several times, but she kept doing it. I turned around and stabbed her in the leg with a pencil (didn't draw blood, twas but a scratch). I got detention but she left me alone after that.
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36. This shouldn't need to be said, but never involve a child in parental arguments
I'd been dealing with listening to my dad and his ex-girlfriend have screaming matches and occasionally getting dragged into it for like a year. They started again one evening and she addressed me, demanding me to answer something or another to fuel her argument against my dad. I was just trying to play a game at the time and I just kinda snapped and screamed "I don't know and I don't care and I'm tired of your fighting"
It wasn't much but I've never raised my voice ever and I think it kinda just stunned them both into silence. She walked out of the house
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35. Yes because the "real world" consists of paying $10 more for renewing a license
As a teen, I was pretty meek towards adults because I figured nothing could be gained by arguing with them. When I turned 18 I went in to renew my license. It had always been $15. Apparently, that's for minors, because when I went to pay the lady said it would be $25. I apologized and reached into my wallet to get $10 more, saying, "Sorry, it was always fifteen before."
He replied, talking very slowly as if I was an idiot, "You're an adult now, honey. Welcome to the real world." That was the first time I told an adult to go [bleep] themselves.
34. He's clearly inhuman and therefore incapable of peaceful coexistence with the human race... The only option, in this case, is extermination
We got a free 3-day stay in a condo at Legoland in exchange for sitting through the presentation. Of course, we took them up on it. The deal is, if you miss it, they can charge you the full price, which in this case they had trumped up to about $2k. I became very ill a month before, and we were still in the thick of it at the time of the presentation. After politely declining many times, I told the truth, “The thing is, I might be dying, so it’s just not the right time to take this step.”
The salesman, who had been very kind to this point, said, “well if you die, don’t you want your children and husband to have this? It’s selfish to say no just because you may not use it.”
I cried. My husband was furious. I used my mom voice to tell him I was very disappointed in him. Then the salesman cried, and I felt much better.
33. My friend's mother used to do this with all her stuff
This guy at work was "cleaning" out the work break room. Basically, he was throwing out people's personal belongings. So, I see the new coffee mug I bought specifically for work, in the trash and lost my bloody mind.
I started yelling at him that what he was doing was morally wrong and it's not his stuff to throw out. I went to my HR manager and complained to him about the "principle" of the thing. I took all of the coffee mugs in the trash out and washed them.
32. This dude sounds like a total tool
I used to waitress and never caused any drama. I was there to make money for my wedding. I showed up on time, didn't take smoke breaks, never on my phone, and rolled with the punches. The two best compliments of my life came from my manager, one was him thanking me for not making him know my fiance's name (I never had problems to deal with at work like the other girls and I didn't chit chat) and when it was all kicking off, he called me his calm little Hindu calf, which still makes me laugh.
Anyway, this jerk cook wouldn't stop calling me pet names and trying to touch me. Every time I said loudly and clearly"don't touch me" and "my name isn't sweetheart, it's Erica!" Everyone knew how I felt and tried to tell me "that's just how he is, let it go." I told them that the way I am is that I don't want him to touch me. When the manager talked to him, he'd stop for a few weeks, then start again. After months of this, I told the manager of it didn't stop I was going to file a harassment complaint.
Manager talked to the owner and asked if he'd rather have the cook or me, because I was on the verge of quitting, and they agreed they'd rather have me a hundred times over this loser. Dude was gone by the next day and I got an escort to my car every night.
Turns out if you are drama free and calm, people REALLY listen when you have a problem.
31. I honestly have no words for this
One of my friends in college (I consider him my best friend, but for reasons soon to be obvious he refused to feel the same) lost his high school best friend because he took his own life; they had been friends since birth basically, close to brothers.
He nearly killed a guy because they were in class, and this guy said something along the lines of "seriously, he was a loser, I'm just glad he is dead."
Their teacher was a "retired" marine, around 350lbs of muscle, and admits that he struggled a bit to pull my then 140lb friend off of the kid.
30. You willingly chose to work at the DMV... I really don't think you're qualified to question other people's life choices
When I went to the DMV to get my M endorsement added to my license, the lady gave me a bunch attitude and kept calling me an insane idiot for wanting to ride motorcycles. I looked at her and said, “Well if you’d look at my license, you’d see that I’m an organ donor. I fully expect to be dead in six months.” The look of horror on her face was priceless.
29. I know some of these words
As a junior developer, I spent three weeks trying to fix a system that made custom PDFs of financial records from an HTML template and a handful of JSON in C# (I do not know how to write C#). Alone, as by a bizarre confluence of circumstances, the rest of my team was absent the entire time.
I got to the end of it, battered, bruised, half-insane from the stress, but still calm and smiling, not least because I had somehow pulled it off.
And then the product owner asked me how I'd implemented support for multiple signatories using the system simultaneously.
There was no mention of that on any of the tickets. Not anywhere. I must have read every one of those tickets a hundred times, I was sure of it.
So I'd spent 3 weeks building something very impressive out of a pile of broken garbage, and then with hours left on the clock, I found out that what I'd built, while impressive, was not what the customer wanted. All because the PO can't write a ticket, and never designed to check up on my progress.
I. Lost. My. MIND. Emails were written, some by me, some by superiors from different sections of the business defending me. The PO was fired unceremoniously (it was her third strike for screwing up), and new policies were put into place to prevent this from happening ever again. Overnight, I literally became the precautionary tale for anyone wanting to break from protocol.
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28. You always want to quit right when it will hurt them the most
When I was supposed to be working part-time as a waitress one summer (I was 20 and actually working 12 hour shifts on one 30 minute break where I was given soup and a sandwich, usually 6 days in a row but sometimes up to 11 days before a day off) I asked my boss for 3 days off to go and visit my cousin up the country who was brain damaged after a suicide attempt. She said no, that I couldn't have time off unless it was a matter of life and death.
Then she gave my coworker 3 days off to go to a music festival, even though she had just taken a month off to go traveling. The pressure of working there and the abuse I got from customers (because we were understaffed and I only had two hands) and the chefs and the fact that every morning I woke up I could barely walk because my limbs were so sore made me end up crying and quitting in the middle of service a week later.
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27. And that's how I got fired
A kid bit me on the chest in kindergarten. I waited till after nap time to run him over with my tricycle.
26. The dad knew
My brother and I played travel sports for a few seasons as kids. One trip, I was at the pool with some of his teammates messing around in the water and the coach's kid was being a jerk as usual. My brother was one of the smaller kids on his team so the coach's son would mess with him a lot. Most of the kids on my brother's team disliked him but didn't speak up so they wouldn't be next. He thought it would be funny to pick up my brothers drink right in front of him and spit into it.
My dad taught me from a young age not to let anyone mess with my brother or sister, so I got seriously angry. I took a good running start and shoulder checked him into the pool. Since he had just gotten there, he hadn't taken his clothes off yet and cried because his phone and iPod got ruined. He literally ran out yelling, "I'm telling my dad!"
Well that backfired, because everyone stuck up for my brother and the coach was not happy to find out what a jerk his son was being so he was the only one to get in any trouble.
25. I don't remember this scene in Mean Girls
In high school we had a friend who had chosen to be a little more promiscuous than others. We honestly didn’t care, besides enjoying fooling around her personality was entirely the same.
However it’s high school so one girl in particular took it upon herself to often shame this girl. We would all stick up for her, be the bigger person and walk away.
Except one day, this girl decided to shove through our group knocking said friend over causing her to hurt herself, she laughed, called her a name and spit on her.
I completely lost it. I grabbed the girl by the hair as she walked away and yanked it and than screamed at her that she’s a hateful person because her mom chose crack over her. Than as I walked away I pushed the door open so hard that when she tried to follow me it swung back and hit her in the face.
She stopped calling my friend names after that. Not my proudest moment and I have not ever used physical violence or information that’s meant to be private against another person again.
24. When it comes to bullying, violence really does solve your problems
My Dad was in hospital after having a stroke, I was 14 at the time and still in school. This absolute little bastard of a kid kept going on about how my dad was going to die, that he deserved it, etc.
I put up with it all morning but at lunch he cornered me. Normally I took all the beatings and bullying, but not that day. I don't remember what happened, but apparently, it took 3 adults to pull my 14-year-old, 100lb self off him.
I regret nothing. He didn't mess with me after that.
23. Man this guy went all out
As a surgeon, I try to remain calm and steady about most everything. Even all the staff comments about it about how I’m the calmest surgeon they’ve ever met.
One time taking out someone’s gallbladder, the assistant needs to grab it and hold it up so I can free stuff up. A newer person was helping me and moving a little too fast without seeing where their instrument was going before grabbing the gallbladder. When the camera finds their grasper, they ended up poking a small hole in the liver. I let out an audible sigh and a small grumble.
Ended up not bleeding all that much and the rest of the surgery went fine.
One of these days I want to throw instruments like some other people I know just to see how people react.
22. These coaches are legitimately the worst
I never liked playing football in general just because I wasn't an aggressive person. But in 5th grade, I had a teammate who during practice scrimmages would always line up across from me. At the snap, he would grab me by my facemask and pull me to the ground. I let it go on for most of the season until I started having neck issues and pains (and still do).
During one of our final practices, I was getting water across the field and decided enough was enough. I sprinted full charge across the field, sacked him with all my weight, and while I pinned him down under me grabbing his facemask and repeatedly slammed his head into the dirt until my coaches pulled me off him.
After practice, I was running laps until my mom came to get me and when the season ended I decided to switch to basketball.
21. From day one, my child will be taught to fight back, because you can't count on teachers to do anything useful
I was dealing with bullying on a level that often involved me being outnumbered by groups of kids. Teachers and even the principal enabled it, punished me instead of the bullies regularly, even when the bullying started to turn violent and even semi-sexual (destroying my stuff, snapping bra straps, pouring water on my light-colored shirts, etc etc.)
My parents were also separated at the time and fighting constantly, so my life was rough. I had teachers and even the principal singling me out as a troublemaker every time I even raised my voice in self-defense, bullies would get nothing. I was told to turn the other cheek, let boys be boys, be the bigger person. Etc.
My parents eventually pulled me out of school and homeschooled me for 8th grade because they were rightfully concerned that I might end up suicidal. But the other reason is that I started to fight back.
My dad had been to so many of these “interventions” with the teachers and the principal just being incredibly terrible to me. Like my homeroom teacher who complained that I was hiding in the bathroom crying instead of going to class. My dad was livid because here was a teacher whose job it was to watch over children, being annoyed at a clear sign of extreme distress in a child. My dad wanted to know why no one told him I was doing that. I don’t remember what it was she said but we left that day, and my dad said “from now on, I don’t care how much trouble you get in. You start hitting back.”
And I did. All my pent up rage and anger and fear came out. I scratched and drew blood more than once. Someone grabbed me and I shredded his hands with my brace-covered shark teeth. I kicked a girl so hard her kneecap’s tendon tore. But even when I wasn’t hitting, I was screaming and yelling back at these little monsters. I’d get cornered and swing my backpack like a mace. I was a total freaking pariah towards the end of that year, and that’s also why my parents pulled me out of school the next year.
But you know what? People stopped touching me and breaking my stuff. I was still bullied but from a nice distance. Mostly I was just ostracized and left out. Which still sucked, but in comparison, much easier to deal with.
20. That had to feel amazing
I was in charge of a rollover trainer once at a military training site. Think of a Humvee on an axle that spins...like a rollover accident. Part of the safety brief before anyone goes in is too empty their pockets of all items. Take any items on belts off. We have rubber items inside to simulate things flying. We do this for safety's sake.
Part of the training is we stop the trainer on its side/roof, so the participants can get exposure to assisting the other passengers and exit the vehicle safely and quickly.
It’s been a long boring day. It’s hot, and like all good Army training, I am hungover and irritated. All officers and they aren’t listening. We stopped the exercise on the roof for a group and they all exit except one who can’t undo the set belt.
I open the door and reach in...and placed my hand on a dual-edge 4-inch boot knife. I was furious. I saw red, my ears burned and I distinctly remember seeing one of the other instructors mouth “Oh No”.
I chewed out every officer there. ALL of whom outranked me, many of whom outranked my commander. It didn’t matter, as my position was Safety Officer. I went on a Tirade.
I turn around after it was done, and my best friend is recording it on his phone. That prick showed that clip the rest of the week and for years after him. I miss him every day!
19. Yep, that sounds like the Bible Belt
When I was in 6th grade (I think?), I was always forced to go to church every Sunday and Wednesday. Perks of growing up in the Bible Belt. I've always been a pretty heavy reader, and like most kids at that time I was heavily into the Harry Potter series. The people at the church my mother forced me to attend decided that those books were not only of the Devil himself but also surely corrupting me. They took every opportunity to tell me so.
Making matters worse, the son of my Sunday school teacher decided he was responsible for correcting my devilish ways. In addition to harassing me about these books every chance he got, he also began getting physical about it. I pretty much just let it all go, because it was just a bunch of idiots, what did I care?
That is, until he spit in my face. Twice. I chased him down and proceeded to beat the jesus out of him. I've only been in a few fights, but I've never been in one where I was this absolutely livid.
He never bothered me about my choice in books again, I stopped being forced to go to church, so I guess it all worked out ok?
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18. Yeah, you can go ahead and just leave now
I worked at a diner with an open kitchen (you can see us and we can see you). I'm the only cook during the lunch rush when I hear a lady shout "hey!". I look over and a lady sitting in a booth points at me and then does a very condescending "come here motion" with her finger.
I thought something was wrong with her food, so I decide I can run out of the kitchen (leaving 4 orders on the grill) and see what I need to fix. She has no food on her table. She holds her blue soda cup out to me and asks "what is this?" "Uhhh excuse me?" "Why is my root beer in a soda cup and not a mug?" "I... I don't know I'm just the coo-" "oh great another idiot in this place who doesn't know anything!"
She then proceeds to chew me out, because I, the cook, do not know why the server gave her root beer in a cup. (We have special root beer mugs but the servers couldn't find them, someone misplaced them). I apologize and head back into the kitchen while she's loudly talking crap about me to the next booth to find that all of my orders are ruined (and more had been coming in). It's already stressful working in a kitchen and that was the last straw. I went in back, started screaming and kicking the walk-in cooler.
When I went back out everyone was quiet and avoided eye contact, even the lady with the issues (still looked pretty mad though). I rushed through the orders and thank God she left without saying anything. I didn't get in trouble though since my manager was serving and had to deal with her as well. He understood.
17. Isn't it incredible how nobody cares when someone brutalizes someone else, day after day, but flip out when the victim finally fights back?
In the fifth grade, a boy led his friends in throwing rocks and wood chips at me at recess every day, along with calling me names and generally making my life a living hell. It was so bad I'd cry before school every day and beg to stay home. The teachers saw everything and never did anything.
I gave up on trying to convince an adult to help me and didn't do anything either. I just took the abuse and kept going. Until one day - when he grabbed me and threw me into a brick wall, and I had just. Had. It.
Now keep in mind I was a tiny girl, and I've always been really underweight. But I just remember looking down, seeing blood pouring out of my arm, and then suddenly being on top of him, holding the back of his hoodie, and repeatedly slamming his face into the concrete. I broke his nose.
They punished me by making me miss recess and clean up the kindergarten classrooms instead for the rest of the year. He didn't get in trouble at all. It was a grave miscarriage of justice and I'm still angry about it
16. The long-distance fees are killing me here
I was working at Disney World. I had just finished my first solo shift after a week of training so it was already a stressful day and my car battery was completely dead.
Staff has to park in this big lot behind the park. There aren’t a lot of addresses or street names visible because they don’t want regular people back there. So when I called AAA I was trying to describe my location. I didn’t want when sending a tow truck to the guest parking lot because it was like a 20 minute drive away from where I was.
I said “I’m in the parking lot behind Magic Kingdom.” This lady with a strong southern accent working in some call center in Tennessee says “United Kingdom? Yer in the United Kingdom?”
Yeah, lady. I’m calling you from England! Seriously, who hasn’t heard of Disney World!? When they finally connected me to a local guy he knew exactly where I meant.
Photo by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash
15. This guy would have killed it as a Hockey player
In the 8th grade I decide to join the school wrestling team. I was overweight and not very good at wrestling, but I still tried. Every day after practice, while waiting for parents to pick us up, I would get picked on by any of a number of the other team members.
One day one of the guys decided to take it to the next level, and punched me in the face three times. I stood there stunned with my ears ringing, and then rage took over. He was wearing a hoodie sweat shirt, and with my left hand I reached over and grabbed the hood, pulling it over his head so his face was pointing down, and held tight while delivering uppercuts to his face in rapid succession, while he tried to escape running backwards. I held on tight and kept hitting his face while the crowd watched me in amazement. After what seemed like around 15 straight punches to his face I finally let go and he continued to run backward. He stopped running backward after a few seconds, then came running back towards me. I’m thinking “oh great, here we go again”. He got about halfway back to me and let out a wail than sounded like a combined scream and wolf howl, and then dropped to the ground crying. I turned around to a crowd of wide eyed and stunned bystanders, and walked to the door, while they tended to him.
The next day he came to school with two black eyes swollen shut and bruises all over his face. The wrestling coach basically told the team to stop messing with me, and that was literally the last time I ever got into a physical fight.
That was nearly 40 years ago.
14. That lady is a sociopath
This lady came to the shelter to see the cats. She ask if she could give them treats and I said yes. It's a shelter were most of the cats are free. So gets the bag out, the cats are getting wild with anticipation and she just stood there laughing and tempting them without giving them anything. She looked like she enjoyed their anxiety and her laugh sounded like a crazy person.
I lost it, grabbed the bag out of her hands, gave treats to the cats and ask her to leave. Those cats are already stressed out, don't give them more anxiety.
13. This sounds beautiful
My son was maybe 8 months old and had recently diagnosed as profoundly deaf. Deaf kids will often inhale to make vibrations and noise that they can somewhat “hear” for stimulation. We were on pins and needles as I had just lost my job and our insurance and the cochlear implant surgery was going to cost us $170k. We’d have to sell the house and one of the cars. We needed a break and our in-laws took us to the food court at a local mall. Our boy started to inhale and gasp.
“He needs a beating,” a fat twenty-something said no so quietly to her friends at the table next to us.
I rarely curse in public and am generally non-confrontational, but a stream of insulting profanity issued from my mouth for a good 10 minutes that would have put a sailor to shame. I found it couldn’t stop and it got on the verge of Bukowskian poetry. I insulted her, her mother, her weight, and her pinched faced friends. I launched into the smell of her, how fat she was, how she’d only be able to reproduce with a blind moron with a deathwish as she was uglier than the devil’s butthole on fire, and it only progressed from there. F. Lee Ermy’s Marine Drill Sargent from Full Metal Jacket would have told me to tone it down a bit. I told her he was deaf and that we couldn’t stop it and this was a food court in a pissant Southern town filled with pissant inbred redneck ignorant mutant troglodytes that embarrass normal troglodytes.
The food court was silent and all the eyes were upon us.
And then it progressed from there.
She got up and left crying.
I can honestly say the whole rant was involuntary, like a puss-filled boil popping and draining in a torrent. I had never done anything like this before and have not done it since. I feel bad for her to this day.
12. I was going to make a joke about Russian police brutality, then I remembered this also happens daily in the United States, so I didn't
I had been detained during the 12th of June protests in Moscow. The actual protest was on Tverskaya street. It is normally a huge street with heavy car traffic, but on that day it was blocked and full of people. The thing went super smooth, we had good time with friends, it was pretty calm, the thing ended and we decided to go home.
We went from Tverskaya street into the neighboring small side street, went to a bar, had a drink, it was all nice, we were happy no one has been in contact with police. Then we walked around a little and decided to go home. At that point, the protest has been over but the OMON forces were still there. So I notice on our way a lonely police officer, come to him and ask if we can get this way to the closest subway station (I can see it in about 600 meters in front of me) or it is closed (it might have been, who knows). He is polite and says it is OK and we can go there. I thank him, turn right, and start walking towards the subway station.
Next thing I see is 4 OMON guards marching towards me on the street in a line. For some reason I am in front of my group by about 4 meters. I guess I was rushing to finally go home. That was a mistake. So I obviously don't want to get in the way of the guards and go to the sidewalk, but they probably interpreted it as me trying to escape from them (even though they were just going somewhere, they weren't walking towards specifically me) so the next thing that happens is that two of them in a matter of second rush towards me, kick me on the ground, then lift me up and bring me to the side of the police bus were they rudely search me and call me names, and then throw into the thing.
All of that with my girlfriend screaming on top of her lungs behind me in fear, I can't see her but just hear her voice. Just the way they did it and the whole situation angers me off to this day. It wasn't even in the place of the protest, so I might have just been a random dude whom they found like I could me a part of the protest because of my age. I had no attributes like flags or posters, was dressed in a very neutral way, and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If you are interested, what happened next is that I sat in that bus for an hour, then we went to a police station on the other side of the city, sat in the bus some more (there were about 10 detained people in my bus) on the territory of the police station, then some good cop bad cop for about two hours and they release me. Three months later I get a fine of about $400 for taking a part in an unlawful protest via mail. At least I didn't get beaten.
11. Treating employees with compassion and basic human decency is expensive and businesses obsessed with their bottom line will toss that out faster than yesterday's newspaper
My grandfather passed away so I told my boss that I had to take a couple of days off to be with my family. He had the nerve to tell me work was more important than family and threatened to fire me. I went off on him in the middle of the office for a solid 5 minutes before quitting and rushing home.
10. Way to use your words, dude
When I was at college I was at a party with a bunch of friends. My friend Emma and I took a break from the hot mess inside and went out for a smoke. I went over by this one group of friends that I knew and Emma went off by herself to talk to other people.
About a minute later she comes up to me and asks me if she could bum a smoke. I asked her how she managed to finish so quickly since I was usually the one that was done first. She pointed over to this one guy and said he knocked hers out of her hand and told her she was too pretty to smoke. I recognized the guy from earlier in the night, he was in town visiting one of the guys that lived in the house where the party was being held. The guy he was visiting was a guy I liked to play beer pong with, so I decided to hold my tongue and just give her another.
She came back again very soon after and asked me for another. The guy apparently did it again to her even though she wasn't even trying to talk to him and was standing like 5 feet away from him. Emma was a very close friend of mine and I just got fed up, so I went over to the guy and said, "Hey man, what's your problem?" He replied by saying that smoking was bad for you and he was looking out for her. I told him, "Look, man, she is capable of making her own decisions. I know you're here visiting Luke and I like Luke, so I don't want any problems. But, if you hit her hand one more time, we are going to have a problem."
He backed off and left her alone for the rest of the night. I'm sure in his head he had this idea that what he was doing was a cute way of flirting, but he was just being a dick. The next day he found me and apologized for the way he acted, he was just sloshed and being an idiot and wanted me to pass along his apology to Emma too because he couldn't find her.
9. This is heartbreaking
It's always felt like my parents never wanted me. I was a surprise Honeymoon baby born 9 months and a day after their wedding, I was regularly screamed at for anything I did until I just started hiding, I was called "the practice child" my whole life, my younger siblings got way more love and attention, etc. In my teens they started taking in "strays". If any neighborhood kids didn't want to go home, they could just be at our house all the time. Effectively, my mother would take my friends away from me to be HER friends instead. One of which was a kid who picked on me constantly from the time I was 11. I guess they had that in common.
That guy was kicked out of his Dad's house AND his mom's house when he was 20, so my parents took him in permanently. That killed me. But I always wanted their approval, so I was always calm and agreeable, always desperately trying to figure out how to get them to love me, so I went along with it. Years later, I'm married and have a son. This guy still lives with my parents. They continue to coddle and make excuses for him while criticizing me for whatever they feel like. One day, we're all at my parent's house and my son is being a goofy 2-year-old, which annoys the man-child living there. So he gets furious, picks my son up by his ankle and spanks him.
My parents claimed not to have seen it. We went home.
I couldn't sleep that night because I was so upset. The next morning, I made sure the guy and my mom would be at home (and why wouldn't he be there) and I went to confront them with my wife. I dumped everything I had been putting up with on them for about an hour, including asking how my mom could allow this jerk to hit my son. She maintained that it didn't happen, so I went through the roof. I ended up crying because of all the pent-up emotion, so my fantastic wife took over. She said we wouldn't be coming back if the guy still lived there, so he yelled that he would move out and he stormed off after saying he didn't have to listen to this. My parents convinced him not to move out shortly after we left. My mother expressed how disappointed she was that I didn't come "to have a conversation", and only came to "dump" on them. THAT was her big takeaway from everything I said. That I wasn't being "fair" to them.
We went to counseling with them later. For months. It validated everything I had felt, but they never stopped lying and being defensive. One counselor said we should be on Dr. Phil. The other counselor said my mom is "incapable of empathy". Both counselors called my parents delusional. But of course, my parents didn't take any of that seriously. At one point my dad asked me "Who does he think he is to judge us like that?" as if he forgot that THAT'S THEIR JOB.
I haven't spoken with them in almost a year, and life is so much better.
8. Giving help that’s not asked for is what makes a true hero!
When I was growing up my dad discouraged me from showing any emotion that wasn't "manly". When we left my cousin's funeral he asked me on the drive home "why were you crying like that back there?" That was the first funeral that I remember going to and I had been heaving/ crying not any louder than anyone else. He did this with any emotion that could have been "embarrassing."
I was in line at a grocery store when a guy in front of me started yelling at the cashier because she wouldn't sell him alcohol without an ID. I spoke up and told him to calm down a little, it wasn't her fault it's the rules. He started poking me in the chest, shoving me back, and shouting insults at me (he actually hit a couple of nerves). The cashier lady started to move back, but the dude saw her and turned away from me to grab her arm.
I don't know what snapped inside of me, but the tear-stained look on the cashiers face made me feel like I had to protect her. I found what rage tasted like. The hatred I felt for this man was so much I couldn't stop myself from reaching out, grabbing him, and beginning to repeatedly punch him in the face until he was on the ground (and even then I kept swinging for a couple of seconds).
I fell down on my knees, next to him, and completely broke down crying. I'm talking ugly boogers dripping down the front of my sadness shattered face. At this point, other people came over and an officer was quickly behind them. I didn't stop crying. I cried so much I got a headache. I finally stopped crying just long enough to tell my story to the officers as my statement.
I don't know what broke in me that day, but it hasn't happened again. I cry a little more often now (like during sad tv show moments or during movies), but I can never cry in front of other people.
7. Can we get some aloe in here? This kid just got burned
I had a job filling vending machines in my mid 30's, and was servicing one of my larger accounts that we called "full service". Basically, they had soda, snack, and cold food machines. Most of the customers, while on their break, would come over to me and request certain items. That was not a problem. But there was this one guy, that would take it too far. A 21-year-old, know-it-all. He would stand next to me during his break, and he would constantly tell me how to do my job better and tell me about complaints other employees had, but they were not telling me in person. Those complaints almost seemed made up, just so he can have something to say.
So one day, while I had the food machine door open and I was checking the expiration dates of the milk, he kept interrupting me and telling me to not miss the dates on the milk, and to make sure there is an even amount of chocolate and whole milk........I LOST IT!
I stood up, and I got right in his face. I didn't yell, but I said loudly enough for others to hear...." why do you always come over here and nug me while I'm trying to do my job? How would you like it if I went and started jumping up and down on the bed while your mom was trying to do her job?!" He got extremely red, and looked like he wanted to hit me. Then he walked away. I immediately shut and locked all of my machines and left. I called my really good friend who was a supervisor at the time and told him to be expecting a phone call because I'm probably going to get fired. Never got the call, and the kid finally left me alone.
6. Two warnings is more than enough
I was bouncing around on the dance floor with everybody else and apparently stepped on some dudes foot who had been standing there with his posse of 2 or 3 other guys watching people.
I shrugged and apologized, then turned around to leave. Right then "somebody" smacked me in the back of the head. Not hard, but too hard to ignore. I turned around still calm and said something like "Look, I'm gonna walk this way, you guys stay here and nothing more needs to happen".
Turned around again, got smacked in the head again. I was very much pissed off at that point. It didn't help that they looked at me all innocent. I couldn't even tell which one of them did it. So I just stuck my finger in the face of the dude who's foot I allegedly stepped on and recommended he don't do it again. Turned around once more, waiting to get smacked in the head again.
This time they poured a glass of beer in my back. That's when I completely lost my cool. Threw myself around and went straight at the guy. I was in full rage mode, didn't care what happened next as long as that guy suffered. I could tell by the terrified look on his face he realized he had gone too far. His friends never stepped in to help him. After a while, people separated us and that was that.
I have no sympathy at all for people who resort to violence for solving their problems but feel no shame for having snapped in that situation. I think I did everything in my power to avoid what eventually happened.
5. You can seriously damage someone's eyes with those things
In high school, I got into two fights. One of them in particular sticks with me. Before school started this group of kids, 4 or 5 of them, were playing with a laser pointer. It was 1998 or 1999, they had just become popular and affordable. They were pointing it at me, highlighting my groin, pointing out my chest or whatever, once they were pointing it at my face as I walked over to them and told them to stop. This guy holds it to my face and shines it in my eye. I just kind of grabbed him. While I still had him the guy behind him said "put down my cousin." so that was when I let him go. I had tossed the guy at the other two or three in the group. The cousin steps up and takes a swing at my face, I bob my head left and pull up my right to guard. his momentum takes him past me and I just swing my right arm back. I think I hit him in the back of the head with my elbow, I'm not sure but when I backed away he was face down on the ground. I went to my class and cried for half an hour.
Nothing ever came of it.
4. And this is but one reason I'd rather be homeless than work retail
Back when I was working retail, I was manning the return desk when this woman comes in to "return" two totes full of clearance clothes. She wants to rebuy them all since clearance stuff was now cheaper. That's against the rules and I explain why, but per usual she gets a manager and the manager caves. Since she bought this stuff on three different receipts and mixed them all up this transaction is fixing to take 30 minutes at least, and I am frustrated but hiding it well.
15 minutes in I hear some commotion off to the side. I turn my head and see that this woman's five or so completely unsupervised kids have piled on to a flat cart and are pushing it around. I don't know why it set me off so bad, but I pointed and yelled at them, raising my voice for the first and last time during my ten year stint. The entire place fell silent and the customer was so mad at her kids that she took her stuff and left.
A couple of coworkers said seeing me get angry was really unsettling. A blessing/curse that comes with being the quiet one I guess.
Pixabay
3. Yeah, I'd probably do the same thing
It was Halloween and I was sitting out the front of my house watching my sister take my niece, who was around 4, trick or treating. The people who lived above us (we lived in a maisonette) decided to shoot a firework at them.
This is the only time I've lost my mind. Got them inside the house made sure they were alright, sister had only a few non-serious burns on her arm and managed to shield my niece from the explosion. At that point, I was just so angry, went up to their door and started banging on it demanding they come out.
They didn't answer so I starting trying to kick the door in. My mum and brother dragged me away and back inside to calm me down. Half an hour later the police arrived because the neighbors had called them about me. Luckily after we explained what had actually happened I didn't get in any trouble. But neither did they.
2. The real miracle here is that he has a close friend in his 30s
My friend and I were walking home from high school, sophomore year I think. He was really bothering me, kept lightly tripping me the whole walk home. I kept asking him to stop but he didn’t. For context, I did get picked on in high school so maybe this moment just was the breaking point for some other incident.
When we got near where we would separate he did the tripping thing one last time and I lost it. I swung my backpack at him (high school remember so I had heavy books, lunch bag, etc.). Here’s the part where he really messed up.
He was carrying a balsa wood bridge home that he needed to complete for some class. When I swung the backpack he dropped the bridge. I ran directly at him but then saw another, better target. I could’ve kicked a 60 yard field goal. I grabbed my bag, turned and walked as he stared at his scattered work saying in a shocked voice “You broke my bridge.” I replied “I don’t care” or something to that effect.
15 years later and he’s one of my best friends.
1. That's a good older brother
My older brother lost his cool when an ex-friend of mine threw a ceramic pipe on hand my which somehow ended up cutting my wrist half-open. My bro went to the kid and punched him right in the face, breaking his nose in the process. My hand was pretty messed up and after 8 years I still have a big scar on my right hand.
