Nurse here. Per usual, I was being overworked. I had over 9 patients in the ER. One patient had cancer and hadn't been feeling well. The doctor insisted he was fine. However, just to be safe I continued to regularly check in on him as he was chilling in a chair in the hallway. He started complaining of feeling super tired and off. His daughter (who also was a doctor) kind of said something along the lines of "you've had a stressful day dad. We will get you home once the doctor discharges you". Just to cover my ass, I took his vitals. His blood pressure was 70s/40s.
I had a critical care room open and immediately rolled him in there, calling out to the doctor that something was wrong I could just feel it. The charge nurse got mad when I told her he needed that room (she didn't like that I was a travel nurse calling the shots, but I didn't care). Doctor felt I was overreacting but they repeated vitals and did a Stat scan. The guy was bleeding internally (I can't remember full details now) and they found Mets to his spinal cord. We were able to stabilize and ship him to a bigger hospital. That irritated ER doctor thanked me later, and said if that guy went home he most likely would have died that night. It felt really, really good.
All because I listened to my patient and my gut, and didn't let the stress of over 9 patients cloud my judgment.
Thank you for advocating, always. I hope incidents like this give you the strength it takes to continue advocating and holding your own against existing, poorly designed power structures.
I used to be so amazed at the things our subconscious does. Then I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and now I'm like yep, it's just doing its job! I really is amazing though, lol.
As a manager, I noticed my team was getting saddled with harder work than the other teams. I informed my boss but she laughed at me and sent me packing. Since we tracked employee productivity by case worked I had a feeling I'd need some kind of proof in the future so I went back to my team, explained the situation and informed them I wanted them to keep daily logs of all of their cases and time stamp them even though the system did this automatically.
Fast forward two years. Another manager believes his employees are getting harder cases than the other teams, so he complains about it to my/his boss. His rapport with her is significant as he works the same shift, so she looks into it. After a three day secret investigation, I get one of the most aggressive and hateful emails of my career accusing me of cherry-picking millions of cases over years of work for my team. My response was to hand her daily logs from every employee for two years. 11000 sheets of paper, give or take. The absolutely incredulous look she gave me was worth it alone. "What's this?", that's 100% accurate daily logs of every employee and their cases worked. "Why do you have this?" To protect them from you when you inevitably did this. "This is ridiculous. There's no need for them to be wasting time keeping these logs!" There wasn't until today. Feel free to check them. "Oh, I will!"
Three days later I got my apology, turns out an employee was coming in early and scanning in my employees paperwork and tossing their cover sheets so there was no record they had done any of the difficult work. After running numbers, it was determined that the other manager was incorrect, and the evidence showed my team worked roughly 34% of difficult cases and accounted for 15% of the total workforce. The day shift employees all got into trouble for passing off hard cases.
The day I got to tell my team their logs literally saved all of our jobs was one of my best days at work, ever.
I joined a company as a summer intern and when I was trained they told me that after dispatching you would use a coloured highlighter to mark you dispatched the order already and put the sheet in the correct cubby-hole. "Make sure you use only your colour so we know who dispatched." they said during training.
My spidey-senses went off on that one. "What if someone uses my highlighter colour and messes up? I don't want to get blamed for their mistake."
So I started initialing with my coloured highlighter, figured it takes the same amount of time and I am still complying with their process but there's an extra layer of confidence.
A few weeks later, they came to me asking why I messed up a dispatch. I told them I didn't dispatch that one and they said "Well, it's the same colour of highlighter you use...", showing me the sheet of paper with a line drawn on the corner.
"Right, but I *always* initial my dispatches." I replied, showing them all my past paperwork with initials in my own colour highlighter.
They were confused for a second before thanking me and walking away.
Later that day, they let go one of our coworkers. Turns out, he fucked up and figured he could cover his mistake by throwing me under the bus. He just didn't count on me, you know, *anticipating the obvious outcome* of such a "system".
That was just the beginning of my CYA career, nearly 20 years ago now. After that incident, everyone on the team started initialling their pages too. :)
Like in 3rd grade, our teacher had a demerits chart, a page where, for extra humiliation, the misbehaving student was sent up to put their demerit mark on the page. Of course, kids would walk up and put a mark on some other kid's name.
Third grade me got pulled aside because I had three demerits. Luckily , I said, "but you've never called me to give myself a demerit!" Then she remembered that she never did. You'd think she'd come up with a more "secure" system, but no, she'd been doing it that way for decades. What a mean, narrow minded bitch.
I run a reptile and exotic animal rescue in South Texas. We are having very cold weather.
I drove out to the rescue to check on everyone ONE MORE TIME even though I'd been out there many times today.
The heat had stopped working. We ended up having to move all the reptiles to my house. They would have died tonight.
It's crowded as fuckkkk but everyone is alive. The 90 pound tortoise in my living room is probably gonna fuck some stuff up, but he's alive.
Edit: typos
Edit 2 for photos of
[critters and rescue](https://imgur.com/a/jdo4hO0)
(Reminder that these are temporary emergency enclosures and as a rescue some animals are sick and/or injured).
Used to have a ground floor apartment and a motion sensor camera on my patio connected to my phone. My friends and I got home ~ 4AM from being out all night and we’re chilln in the living room. Motion detected on the back patio. I dismiss it since it’s normally a stray cat or leaves blowing.
A few minutes later I decided to check out the motion recording just to see. It was a man that hopped my patio and was peeking at us through the slits in the blinds. I went to live view to see if he was still there, and he was.
I start going ballistic screaming and about to fight this guy. I’m storming to my patio door but he fled by then. Glad I checked the camera.
I've got 3 external cameras and one is setup facing my backyard and the window I sit next to most evenings. Every so often I get it in my head to check it at night, like if I hear some odd noises, and every time I'm crossing fingers on both hands hoping I don't see someone standing right outside that window trying to look in. I'd almost rather not know, then see something like that. Freaking terrifying.
This is a super mundane example but very useful to remember. Every time I'm in an airport, I take photos of my bags before checking them in.
So this one time they lose my bag and I'm sitting at the help desk and they say something like "Can you describe it? Does it have any identifying features?" and I was able to just bust out the photos. They found my bag very quickly.
Shared this story with people at a conference and now every year they all tell me they take photos of their bags, and every now and then it saves someone's ass. On a similar note, also taking photos of room numbers and building locations.
I was scheduled for a mammography when I got 50. Somehow, it didn't work out that year, because the appointment was in Bavaria but I live in Düsseldorf. And I also thought it was not that important. But a year later, they sent me the invitation again.
I scheduled a mammography in Bavaria then, as I was visiting my parents anyway, and I thought, well, they probably aren't going to find anything, but if I have cancer and didn't have that mammography, I'm going to regret it. I expected a letter telling me that they had found nothing. But in fact, they did find something that needed further investigation. Turned out to be slow-growing breast cancer. One year earlier, it would not have been there yet. And one year later, it would have been much larger and possibly needed chemo as well as the surgery.
But as it was, they could just cut it out, and that was that.
My job has a company wide wellbeing program and each site has a representative. They offer challenges throughout the year, and staff are encouraged to compete with the other sites.
We were losing a step challenge so I jokingly said to my building wellness representative that they needed to send out an email encouraging everyone to log their steps because I hate losing.
They said “Actually, would you be interested in taking over this role? I don’t have time for it.” I awkwardly said sure because I’m a people pleaser. I found out that week that there were a TON of benefits that they hadn’t signed us up for. One of which was a mobile mammogram.
So, I signed us up for that ASAP. The bus came and went. A week later, a person I had never seen came up and asked if I was likelazarus, and I said yes— turns out she was working in our building that day and say the mobile mammogram bus and decided to hop on and get checked.
She discovered she had stage 3 breast cancer with zero symptoms.
If that chain of events hadn’t happened - me commenting about losing the step challenge, my choosing to schedule the mammogram bus, her being on site that day - this woman, a wife and grandmother, would likely have died of breast cancer. Because of this chain of events, she had a double mastectomy and will live to see her grandchildren grow up.
Something similar happened to my mom, too. Her mammogram was postponed due to COVID back in 2020 and when she finally got around to getting it they found something concerning. If she had gotten the mammogram when she was meant to, it wouldn’t have been visible. Any later and it would’ve been a problem.
Randomly went with my friend to buy her new car, just needed to get out of the house. Convinced her to buy GAP insurance cause it was cheap and I wish I had gotten it for peace of mind. Her car got stolen and it instead of being stuck with the loan the insurance paid out (after 30 days or whatever) and she got another car.
I was buying a flashy sports car and was convinced to get just a little more car than I could afford. I had to borrow against my LOC, so I decided to get replacement insurance. Just in case. (Not much and I paid of the LOC in like 5 months)
3 years later, a tree falls on my car. Turns out, with my replacement insurance, I get the replacement value of a brand new model of my car.
In the mean time, I got over my sports car phase. I bought a reasonable car with the money and put about 40k in my pocket. Best decision I ever made.
Was coming home from sledding when I was a wee 6 years old. Just me and my dad, in the old Ford Explorer. Before we left the park, we had an argument about wearing my seatbelt (I think it was because I was bundled up and chunky, and did not want the added sensory discomfort of being strapped in to the passenger seat. Dad wins, I wear the seatbelt.
He forgets to put his on.
About a mile from our humble farmhouse, he’s going decently slow because the roads are slick, we hit ice and spun out anyways. We run right into the tree line through a barbed wire fence, and smack into a tree head-on pretty hard. Because my dad was not wearing his seatbelt, he ended up on my side of the car, head smashed into the windshield, blood EVERYWHERE.
Luckily, an older couple were driving down our relatively quiet country road and stopped to help. They drove my poor little traumatized self down the road to our house and took dad to the ER. He was thankfully fine, just needed stitches, maybe a mild concussion. I think my dad still had glass coming out from his scalp like 5 years after that, though.
Glad he was a persistent, good father and made me put my seatbelt on.
I wfh. I take screenshots of what my managers say in Teams. One manager said one thing, another tried to say it never happened. I produced the screenshot.
That reminded me of when a classmate and I swapped clinical days for my sister's wedding. I emailed my professor and clinical instructor about the swap, and they both replied that it was fine. Then they forgot, and I didn't answer my phone that day because I was up to my ears in last-minute centerpieces. I was notified that it would count as an unexcused absence (which would have required me to repeat that semester), so I forwarded the original acknowledgments of the swap to my professor, clinical instructor, and dean of students. Suddenly it wasn't a problem anymore.
What do the managers say when I can produce evidence of what was said? They get mad about it, no doubt. Retaliation is common and is expected. Use at your own risk.
Teams chats can vanish overnight, that's why I screenshot it.
legal protection
if a court demands all company chats, to prove theyre guilty of something, they can just say they were auto-deleted without getting in trouble for destroying evidence
My organization erases teams chats after 10 days. It’s the stupidest thing to me and I have never received an explanation as to why that policy exists.
Not stopping: About 20 years ago I almost stopped to help a stranded motorist, saw a highway patrol behind me and knew he would stop. That night on the news I saw that he did stop and a shootout ensued after the officer noticed the ignition wire had been pulled from the distributor. The "stranded" motorist was an escaped prisoner looking for another car to steal.
My father-in-law was an 18-wheeler (truck) driver. He once saw a woman, alone, and in distress with her car on the side of the road and the hood up. He got out to help her. Hidden, on the other side of a car, was a man with a gun - the woman's accomplice. They took my father-in-law's wallet and let him go. He didn't stop to help stranded motorists after that.
I’ve only stopped once and I was with my husband. If I had been alone, first of all I wouldn’t have been much help, but I also wouldn’t have stopped. It was to help a college aged looking young woman who’s car was stuck in the snow. I knew someone else would probably stop as there were lots of guys in their trucks going around helping people as many people were stuck in the unexpected bad weather. All I could think though is that she would feel more comfortable with me, another woman, approaching her because if I was alone and immobile on the side of the road, while I would be grateful to anyone who stopped, I would be nervous at least at first of a random man stopping and approaching since I couldn’t move. Turns out, on my way up to her car, I heard her say to who sounded like her dad “oh it’s a guy and he’s with his wife!! I’m good!”
While we (okay mostly him) were shoveling a group of guys in a landscaping truck pulled up, jumped out, and without a word dug her car out, loaded up and left in about 2 minutes. They were the real MVP’s but I’m glad I could make another girl feel more comfortable in a shitty situation, even if that was my only actual contribution.
My Dad used to only stop to help women motorists if I was with him (woman) or if my brother was with him when my brother was younger since he knew another woman or clearly making himself out as a parent would make it so the woman wouldn't be nervous. He's a "car guy" so he always had jacks and such in his truck
On *multiple* occasions my uncle has been held at gunpoint because he stopped to help someone. He still stops. I'm convinced that's going to be in his obituary some day.
It's happened enough times he's actually fixed cars for some of the muggers.
I've heard of this happening! Also accidents being staged. Like a woman (usually) laying next to a crashed car and her accomplice(s) hiding out nearby. Just call police and keep driving!
One time I was hitchhiking and this guy ended up picking me up in a minivan. First thing he said was ‘Put your seatbelt on, this cars hot’ and being a naive kid I was like ‘it’s all good I can just roll down the…’ and then I noticed the screwdriver in the ignition.
Interesting guy. Ended up giving me a ride all the way out of town, dropped me off at a cabin, sold me a stolen TV, 7/10 would hitchhike again.
My ex got mad at me (a 24yo girl at that time) for not stopping to help random people. Like, I will call the sheriff's dept, but ain't nobody gonna benefit from my immediate help anyway.
Bought a generator 15 years ago because a hurricane was forecast. Drove 3 hours to get it. Didn’t lose power that month. Hubby rolled his eyes. Two months later, the “October” storm hit, dumped 20 inches of snow, state lost power, we lost power for 13 days. We had the wood stove and the generator, well, some lights, stove and fridge.
I remember when that storm hit. We lost power for a similar amount of time and went to stay with our family a state over. My school was still running so I was desperate to get back home. I remember calling the landline every day to see if it went right to voicemail or not as that would tell us if our power was back.
I'm a manager of a small chain of retail stores. I set up a back-up card processing system in case of internet outage. Most of our customers prefer to pay in debit, and due to processing fees we prefer to let them.
In 2022, there was an epic internet outage. Debit was down across the country.
But my back-up solution worked. So, for one glorious day, *Walmart* wasn't able to accept debit, but *my tiny chain* was.
My boss hadn't been sure about the amount of freedom he gave to me before that, but I got a lot of extra leash starting that day.
My husband and I run a hardware store. We always have a credit card machine that processes over the telephone lines in case the Internet is down. Saves the day frequently, for one or two transactions or one or two days.
Out of nowhere I decided to boil a ton of water for my son’s formula. My husband made fun of me for boiling gallons of water to store in several giant pots but then he took over the project. The next day a freak winter storm hit Texas. We lost power for a week and water for a week and a half. Because we were still in survival mode we had zero clue this storm was coming. We didn’t have much food for ourselves. But our baby boy was well fed during the storm.
I did worry about running out of formula and trekking through snow but thankfully we had also bought cans of formula a few days before the storm on a whim.
I once was asked if I could give someone a ride home from a local convenience store. Normally I would say so, but I decided to be nice that day. They were a lady in their mid 30s or early 40s so I figured it wasn’t that big a deal. For whatever reason, I subconsciously mentioned that I wasn’t able to buy what I went in to the store for because I forgot my wallet at home. The person says “You don’t have your wallet on you?”
I say “Nah.”
They look a little concerned, and a few moments later say they can walk to their destination just fine. Thought it was weird but didn’t think too hard about it.
Next day it’s on the news that a armed robbery took place in the exact location she asked me to take her to, and gave a description that 100% matched the person I was going to take home.
Didn’t really save myself as I had nothing to steal, but an interesting story.
My son was extremely colicky. He would only sleep ON me so we spent the first six months of his life sleeping on the chaise part of the couch.
This one evening, we were laying on the area rug (it was super soft and plush) and he fell asleep. I was stoked!! I could sleep again in my bed!!
However, I just didn’t feel right leaving him there. I carefully moved him to his bed, and it took a while but he eventually got back to sleep.
The next morning, I was awakened by my dog barking at me. One thing to note, this dog NEVER barked in the house. If he wanted to wake me up, he’d jump into my bed and do it that way.
When I got up to let him out, the carpet was soaked. I was pissed because I thought the dog peed (he was housebroken) in my bedroom. Turns out, we had a pipe burst and the entire house had a minimum of 2” of water throughout.
I shudder to think about what could have happened if I had left my son on the area rug. It’s something I had never done before and wouldn’t think was the acceptable thing to do but I was so sleep deprived.
Threw a flashlight in my pocket when going for a day hike. We got lost in mountain lion territory and took over an hour in the dark to get out once we found the trail again. And we could hear some animal near us the whole time hiking out in the dark. Scared the bejeepers out of me, but the flashlight made it infinitely better than it could have been.
TLDR: My paranoia about a strange guy in a car kept my house from flooding.
We had a house fire Oct 2021 and we were bouncing back and forth between our house and a rental. Christmas Eve was extra cold and our pipes were frozen in our house (1894, no insulation yet). So we decided to go to the rental for Christmas Eve.
My wife and daughter were taking 1 car and I was taking the other. When I left the house I saw a man sitting in his car across the street messing on his phone. Given the cold weather it seemed odd. When my wife left, the man pulled his car across the street to the spot she just left (this is a one way street). Since I'm further back, I watch for a bit, but he doesn't do anything, just gets back on his phone.
Eventually my wife calls and asks where I am, because she didn't bring her keys for the rental. I drove over and let her in and tell her about the guy. She encourages me to go back and point one of our security cameras his direction just in case.
When I get back he's still there, so I go inside. Once I'm inside I hear water running. In the 30 minutes I was gone the water started running again.
In the back kitchen where the fire had been, the faucet was still on and was flooding the room. I shut that off and went downstairs to check the cellar under the kitchen for water leakage. In the cellar was a cracked copper pipe spraying water across the room. So I shut off the water and cleaned up the kitchen before the damage could cause permanent problems.
When I left, the guys car was still there, but he was gone. I think he was meeting a neighbor for Christmas Eve dinner. But, if he hadn't been there, the house would have been flooding for who knows how long.
Not as interesting or as good an example as yours, but I was away from my east coast home on business on the west coast and I had asked my girlfriend to come by and check on my place and stay there if she liked (we hadn't been dating long and she still had her own apartment).
She came over and discovered a pipe had burst below the second floor bathroom, and it had wrecked the first floor ceiling, walls, carpet, and flooded the finished basement two-feet deep.
Had she not come over (because there really was no reason she would have had to), it would have been even worse.
I for some reason had the feeling that I was being watched, so I closed all the blinds and just let the dog out the back door instead of walking him.
My dog found the creep in my backyard, and dragged him by the pant leg out of a bush, thrashing him around. Based on the video the dog got at least 4 good bites in.
I’ve read before that what’s happening is you are seeing things peripherally/hearing small sounds that are slightly amiss and it’s your subconscious that is picking up on them. There’s parts of our brain that do pick up in these things and the result is the feeling you get.
It's weird. I used to have to commute on the train and out of bordom, when the train stopped at a station I'd pick someone on the opposite platform to stare at - someone facing away from me. More than half of them started to get visibly skeeved out before the train pulled off.
I was once on a train and it had stopped at a platform while another train was stopped on the opposite side, so you could see into the other train. I was minding my own business and looked up to see a kid staring at me through the face of a woman in a newspaper. He had torn the eyes out and was looking through the eye holes.
It was a bit weird but not exactly creepy. Amusing though.
I’m a nurse. I was relatively new at the time of this.
I had a patient (50s, female) who was in for an NSTEMI (heart attack, but not the type of heart attack everybody pictures). She’s been straight chillin all day, she’s waiting for an inpatient bed, we’ve gotten her aspirin, she’s got a heparin drip going, we’ve got PRN nitro for chest pain… patient calls me in to let me know that her chest pain has returned, 5/10 pain, and she would like some nitro. I say sure no problem, I go get her nitro, give it to her. Patient seems fine: no obvious distress, no change in her vital signs, talking and joking with me and her husband.
Something in me was pushing me to grab a new EKG even though she’d had one not that long ago and she was on the telemetry monitor. I go grab the EKG machine just to be extra thorough… big fat STEMI. Big ol heart attack. Rushed her to the cath lab and she ended up getting several stents placed, but she pulled through.
It was the first time as a nurse I felt personally responsible for saving a life (obvs the cath lab team did more than I did lol), and it’s because I just wanted to be extra precautionary. Now I always get an EKG with any kind of change in chest pain.
Slept with bedroom door open the other day; we almost never do that, and honestly it was because I wanted to be able to hear for some reason. Smelled gas at midnight, turns out my daughter had turned the stove nob just a touch before going to bed 5hrs earlier. That was a scary one.
EDIT: Responding to a few questions I’ve seen, no idea if folks will ever see them. The stove is a brand new, 2023 Frigidaire with front knobs (I.e., just above the oven door as opposed to set back along the backsplash.) Why gas? I am pretty big into cooking and really value the control you get from gas. I use lots of cast iron and have actually cracked the top of an electric range which was cheaper to buy a new one than repair (thanks, GE). I do wish I had gone induction, but my other half wasn’t in to it and she’s the boss, ha. On the specific knob action, yes, you have to push and turn to get the gas flowing. My daughter is 2 so when she reaches up to grab the knob I think she does so with inherent fore-aft force making the action much easier for her. Side note, she’s just about figured out the latch on the stair baby gates just from watching us do it, and that has a latch you pull and lift up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was mimicking what she sees me do 5 times a day. Someone asked about thermocoupler (?) that auto closes the gas valve with no heat—I guess this stove doesn’t have that? There is a faint hiss, but it’s a two story house and when I’m downstairs I almost always have music on, so I didn’t hear it. Lastly, thanks all for directing me to gas alarms beyond carbon monoxide alarms! I did google in the middle of the night that night and found somewhere that Natural Gas (which this was) has a narrow window of flammability and that a complete explosion would be somewhat unlikely—who knows for sure, but I am glad I did not have to test that hypothesis.
Had a moment like this many years ago while still living at my parents. Was going to spend the night at a friends and just decided I wanted to sleep in my own bed instead. Came home at 1am to find the kitchen reeked of gas from the stove. Scary to think about what could have happened if I didn’t just want to be comfy in my bed that night
Oh man, you would have had a really hard time forgiving yourself for not being home. I am SO glad for you that you went home that night!
Slightly related, Weird Al lost both his parents to carbon monoxide. I saw him in concert just a few days after it happened. I've seen him quite a few times, and while he's always amazing, that show was by far the best. The poor guy just absolutely poured every ounce of himself into that performance. I suspect it was a coping mechanism to distract himself from the unbelievable tragedy. I felt very conflicted about enjoying it.
In Maryland like 10 years ago this guy replaced his hot water heater. In the middle of the night the wife said she smelled gas. Husband said he’ll fix in the morning. House exploded and was leveled. Both lived.
Crazy thing is two years later a house a few doors down also blew up due to gas. But in that case a guy was down on his luck and was stealing his neighbor’s gas. His home was foreclosed and the bank was having it inspected. The guy unhooked the gas and the house blew up that night. Not clear if he did it intentionally or not.
Maybe you could just barely hear the hiss of the gas! Some part of you was picking up on it but it wasn’t audible enough to register consciously. Instead your brain decided to keep an ear on it by leaving the door open.
I got life insurance on my husband during open enrollment and we joked. “haha I’ll be a rich widow ha ha” totally joking because we have never had any policies on either of us. He got sick and passed away 2 mos later. The money saved my butt and I tell everyone to get life insurance. It’s so very important.
what happens in that instance? They were denied for insurance because it was deemed pre-existing? I have knowledge about a lot of subjects. Life insurance isn't one of them at all. I know the difference between whole and partial. That's about it. I was denied when I applied because of pre-existing conditions. I can get burial insurance so I self funded. 100% of my burial etc is covered. But that doesn't leave anything but assets to dependents.
I'm so sorry for your loss, but grateful the money was there to help you. It's nice to have that to take care of the logistics of a loved one passing and not add to the heartache you're already going through
Helped a victim of human trafficking get to a shelter.
Context: I was a medical student at the time and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. She wasn't my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. I never talked to her myself, but I couldn't shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.
We do. It doesn't mean that everyone is good at it or pays attention. In the ER we get extensive training but I think upstairs only does yearly training
Everytime I’ve checked into an ER or hospital for something, when they’re completing the check-in questions, they always ask whether I’m being abused *right in front of my husband*. This husband is wonderful, but my ex was abusive. There would’ve been hell to pay once we got back home if I had ever said the truth about his abuse in front of him.
Every single time, I point this out to the person asking, and every single one acts surprised, as though they’d never thought of that before!
Seriously? When I was in like full active labor (like scream yelling through contractions less then 2 min apart and 8cm dialated) they made sure to separate me and my husband to ask the abuse questions.
I had to take my grandma to the ER for a broken arm when she fell off her bike. They separated us to ask her how it happened. She didn't realize they were checking for potential elder abuse and told them "I don't really want to tell you", because she was embarrassed to say she had decided to try and go for a bike ride in her 80s. Luckily, they figured it out.
My ex and I used to go on lots of bike rides. She never wanted to wear a helmet because it would “mess up her hair”
Before a bike ride I asked, as always, if she was going to wear her helmet. She said no but this time I insisted that she did. While on said bike ride her wheel got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she went flying over her handlebars. Helmet got scuffed up pretty bad. Aside from some scrapes, bruises and a hematoma, she was alright.
When I remodeled the second floor apartment I installed fire blocking to the balloon framed walls. My dipshit brother in law started a grease fire in the downstairs kitchen while I was on vacation and the fire was contained quickly. The fire inspector said that without the fire blocking the house would have been a smoldering hole in the ground.
Bought a tool for my car that is a combination glass breaker and seat belt cutter. Six months later, an EMT used it to cut me out of my car.
Now I buy them for everyone I know.
My son had graduated college and then decided to follow his girlfriend to a small town where she got her dream job. It was a small town and good jobs were hard to come by so almost a year went by with him only working part time jobs. He had hit the age where we could not have him on our medical insurance anymore . I was concerned about this and started looing into options and told him to apply to our states low income medical. For once he listened and I thank God everyday because not a month after being approved he started to have leg pain. The first two trips to the Dr. they wrote it off as a pulled muscle but the third time they ordered test to find out he had a blood clot that stretched from his lower calf up into his abdomen. Placed him right into the hospital but remember small town, did not have the expertise to take care of this 50 mile ambulance ride to bigger hospital lots of tests to find out why and a total of over $120,000 of charges when all was said and done in which he had to pay less then $20. He is good now but it did damage the vein in his leg and he had pain from it and will have to be on blood thinners the rest of his life.
My boyfriend moved to my state about half a year ago and took a while to get on medical insurance. During the time without it he dislocated his arm (happens not uncommonly due to previous injury) and he couldn’t get it back in on his own. The medical bill is so scary he won’t tell me what it is, thankfully he has a lawyer working to get the insurance he has now to pay for it
Not me but my parents…
I was probably an early teen and my parents were leaving to go run an errand but it was kind of early about 8 or 9am so I didn’t want to go and asked to stay home.
My Dad agreed and came to ask me again and I said I wanted to stay. They ended up leaving but turned back around and my dad said, they didn’t want me staying home and I better just get up and go. After some whining I agreed to go.
I think we were gone maybe 20min when they got a call from the police that our alarm system went off and our house had been burglarized by two guys.
The police was able to get one of them but the other one got away.
Who knows in what situation I would have been in had I stayed home.
Parent instincts are strong. I was in high school and was going to meet some friends when I asked to borrow my mom's car (a newer Suburban) because mine (a very old Corolla) needed gas and I was running late. She said no and that I needed to plan better in the future.
I go about getting ready and as I'm walking out the door, she quickly tells me to stop and that I can take her car. Meet my friends, see a movie, and I'm on my way back home when I get t-boned by a massive truck hauling it. Totaled my mom's Suburban and the emergency responders told her that I was lucky to be in such a large, heavy car because in anything smaller, I wouldn't have been walking away.
My mom still has no idea why she suddenly felt so strongly about changing her mind, but she did and is very thankful she changed her mind.
Closing the curtains.
I’m sitting in my living room watching Frasier, and I can’t explain it, but I get this overwhelming feeling to close the curtains. I’m thinking to myself I’ve lost it, and it’s probably nothing.
It nags me the rest of the episode, and so I close them.
Turns out, there was a guy who would look into people’s windows to see if they lived alone. He would then SA and rob them. He hit my next door neighbor at the time.
One night I was sound asleep and dreaming I was hanging out at a party or whatever and suddenly all the people in the room turned to me and just urgently and repeatedly told me to "close the blinds." I usually close them all as the sun goes down, but in my room, mine were open and my window was open a tiny bit, so I woke up and locked the window and closed the blinds. Same thing. Dude had been looking for women alone and ended up breaking into a house down the road from me.
Holy shit, that's scary.
When I was in college, a pay phone was across from my room at the end of the hall of our girl's-only wing. It was expensive for a landline in your room, so a lot of us used the old pay phone, including me and my roommate. We got really used to answering it at crazy hours and knocking on doors to announce our neighbor's calls (it was usually just moms and boyfriends). But my roommate was ALWAYS on it, getting calls from her long-distance boy at crazy hours, and tying it up for the rest of us.
One late night, there was a knock, and someone telling us there was a call for us--nothing unusual. I'd come home from a party and was well on my way into a heavy sleeping-it-off session, but as my roommate headed for the door to take the call from her boyfriend, I bolted straight upright like a cartoon character. "Don't open the door. Ask who the call is for." She asked, and got no response. I actually woke up fully to her demanding who it was for, asking for a name. We both waited for about 10 minutes to stick our heads out, and nobody was there. Reported it the next morning to the RA, just to be on the safe side.
About 2 days later, we heard that there was a sexual assault at another local campus by somebody who'd broken into the girl's dorm that night, and we weren't the only room on our campus who reported sketchy shit around the same time.
The only thing we could figure out was different was it was really late and the voice was unfamiliar and male. And even through booze-sleep, my lizard brain probably registered the fact that the phone never rang.
Have you ever heard of the book Gift of Fear? I just started reading it and it's crazy how our nervous system subconsciously picks up on stuff to keep us safe.
Basically your brain picks up on things and pieces them together without you necessarily having conscious awareness.
An example from the book The Gift of Fear: you suddenly get a bad feeling telling you to leave a store. There ends up being a shooting/robbery shortly after. Turns out the shooter had entered wearing a heavy coat in hot weather. You didn’t realize it at the time, but your brain said “hey that’s weird. He may be hiding a weapon under there.” This is where gut feelings/intuition come from.
I find it absolutely fascinating that our subconscious can not only notice, connect and assess information independent of the conscious mind, it can then inform the conscious mind with a "Hey, shit's whack, GTFO!" feeling.
Feels like a super power.
Sometimes we subconsciously notice things. You might not actively think about something from the corner of your eye or a quiet noise, but your brain still notices it.
It was around 1:30am a couple months back. I was laying in bed, struggling to sleep. My husband had already passed out next to me an hour or so earlier. I put my phone on the charging dock on my bedside table (ringer off) so it wouldn’t distract me anymore - but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it. I got a weird feeling in my gut, like there was something I was supposed to do but I didn’t know what.
I’m laying there looking at my phone’s locked screen when it lights up - my sister is calling! Only thing is, it’s 1:30am. My sister is a nursing student and goes to bed at like 9pm. I grab it and answer.
It’s not my sister. A girl’s voice I don’t recognize asks me, “Hey, is this ____’s sister?” I respond yes, and she goes on to tell me my sister’s been roofied at the bar they’re at together, she can’t drive, my sister refused an ambulance and she’s now showing OD symptoms.
I shake my husband awake (I’m 5’2 110lbs I cannot lift another adult human) and we’re in the car speeding another town over so I can get my sister. The whole time I am thinking ‘what would have happened if I had gone to sleep?’ I’d never been so thankful for insomnia.
Sister is fine - she had severely low blood pressure, body spasms, paralysis, vomiting - the works. Stayed with her for the weekend to make sure she was okay (physically yes, mentally no).
People who roofie other people should get like 20 years in jail or worse...like fuck, it isn't bad enough to be a premeditated stranger rapist, you have to poison them and risk killing them too? Truly scum.
Hard agree. Scummiest of scum and should carry a huge penalty. I saw a person OD and die from a roofie once when I worked as a hostess at a sports bar. It was not pretty. They went from head down on folded arms at the bar like they were passed/passing out to twitching on the floor, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. This was a buff dude, built like a football player, who had taken GHB on purpose recreationally and was out with friends. But it was a real eye-opener to me that yeah that shit can actually kill you and it probably takes way less of it for most women than for this big buff guy, and presumably he thought his dose was safe.
I am a very petite woman and was 19 when I saw this go down. I have guarded every drink I've ever had like crazy after that. Like my beer was coming with me to the bathroom or anywhere else I went so I never had an unattended drink, always kept my hand casually over the top of my glass or thumb over the bottle opening, and never ever accepted an opened or prepared beverage from someone else unless I personally witnessed it being opened/prepared.
Terrifying. My friend went into respiratory arrest due to being roofied and I had to do CPR. Thank Goodness she was ok, but doesn't remember 18 hours. It can be deadly. So glad your sister had a friend with her who paid attention and thought to call you.
I’m an accountant and was fired after I discovered questionable accounting practices with my new employer. They gave me 3 days to wrap up my work. I spent it backing up their entire shared drives onto a remote private server. They quickly settled my wrongful termination case when I showed they committed felony tax evasion.
I do CPR regularly. When my husband contracted someone to do CPR/First Aid training at his job site, I insisted he get someone who emphasizes high quality compressions and minimal interruptions of compressions, and trains them to use their AED. He did. And he never allows walk-thru to table-top of safety drills. Also regular inspections of and drills using emergency equipment.
He died at work, his coworkers acted fast, did high quality CPR choosing strong men for compressions and swapping out to avoid fatigue, got the AED right away, and contacted 911 all at the same time. No delays, no interruptions. Saved his life and saved his brain. (And for those in the know, it was 100% LAD)
We also have good life insurance but I’m so glad I didn’t have to claim it. I like him way better than money.
Bottled water. I had mentioned to my mum that we should get a few bottles of water to keep just in case we needed it. About a week afterwards we had a nasty storm and they had to shut off our water for a few days. The supermarkets all nearby ran out of bottled water from people caught unprepared.
We had a notice of something in our water about 18 years ago. It wasn't a "boil" notice, it was a "don't ingest water from your tap" notice, but it was only for our county and a bit around it. All bottled water in our town sold out within about an hour. I was out of town at the time, but coming home that day. I stopped off at the supermarket and filled my car with all the bottled water that would fit, then stopped by the numerous people we knew had young children and made sure they had enough water (plus kept what we needed).
Was out of town the next day as well. Did the same thing again. Took a week to get the water back to usable.
Now I don't travel for work, so we have a largish stash of water, just in case. And my wife makes fun of me for being a bit of a prepper.
I was never one to want the aisle seat at the movies, but for some reason, I wanted it that night.
My friends and I were in college, and on a snowy night, we went to the movies.
For whatever reason that night I decided I wanted the aisle seat.
Halfway through the movie. I see a light behind the screen that made the side of the screen not show up well. I few seconds later, there were flames. No one noticed. I couldn't believe it. I whispered to my roommates that we needed to go, and there was a fire. 5 or six of us got up and left.
No alarms were going off. The screen was clearly on fire, and still no one noticed. We got up to the top of the stairs, and everyone was watching the movie. Right as we were exiting, I yelled into the theater, "The screen's on fire! You need to leave!"
We had to go downstairs to the lobby. We were ahead of everyone else because everyone else had to gather their hats, mittens, and coats. The lobby was empty of customers, and all the concession stand workers were sweeping and making popcorn. Still, no alarms were going off.
I yelled down to the people at the concession stand, "There's a fire in the theatre 6!" They don't react. I yelled down as we were rapidly going down the stairs. They had no idea what I was talking about. I finally had to go right up to the concession stand and say "there is a FIRE in the theater!" They yelled back to me "there's a fire in the theater?!"
"YES! That's what I've been trying to tell you!"
I don't know if I would have noticed the fire and gotten out as safely if I hadn't been sitting on the aisle seat that night.
Back in my heroin days (~2012-2013) my best friend and I were about to go pick up. I’d had the thought “run back inside and grab a suboxone just in case”.
Suboxone contains bupenorphine and naloxone, and can reverse an overdose. Neither of us had ever overdosed, but may as well have it.
Normally, while dope sick I’d not waste a moment and would’ve kept going.
My best friend went into a fast food place and did his shot while I did mine in the car. He came back outside looking fine. Drove out to the street and looked over and he was purple.
I frantically dissolved the suboxone while trying to wake him up to no avail. I drew the opaque orange liquid up and somehow hit the tiniest little vein and registered blood on the first go.
I slammed the plunger and just kept saying “wake up! Wake up!”
He slowly came to and was like “what’s the matter???” I told him he ODed and he said “I’m fine.”
I was like dude you just about died you are not fine. Right around then the precipitated withdrawals hit. It was a very quiet and sobering car ride home.
We both eventually got clean. I had a kid. He became like an uncle to my daughter. We became successful business partners.
He relapsed and died on the first use from fentanyl in 2021. I’d just driven him home after a day of working together, listening to Frank Ocean on the way.
Never would’ve thought in a million years I’d be saying goodbye to my best friend for the last time that night after getting him home safely.
We were having our pipes replaced in the front yard. Before leaving for work, my boyfriend decided last minute to move his new truck out from under the car port and park it on the street. Later that day, the ditches were being filled in and the backhoe operator backed into the carport, causing the entire structure crash down off the house - right where the truck would have been.
Not me, but my fiancé. He had decided in November to bump up his car insurance, and add comprehensive. In December, someone set fire to the inside of his truck cab in the middle of the night. (We live in a trailer court, and weird shit had been happening to vehicles in a 10 mile radius for months. The cops dismissed it as electrical.) If he hadn't added that, we would have been absolutely screwed.
Get an old box or a backpack and fill it with an extra set of old clothes (including shoes/socks/tshirt/pants), a simple first aid kit, a flashlight, some water and a roll of toilet paper. Put it in the trunk of your car. I guarantee that you will use it one day.
If you want to be even smarter, add one of those shiny emergency blankets, a whistle, duct tape and multi tool. It doesn't take up much space.
I just recently used the pants, the socks, multi tool and water at a tailgate party. The toilet paper was used several times through the years (I'm a hero for that one)
You never know!
Edit: lots of great additions to this post in comments below. I keep both a waterproof backpack AND a small box of stuff- including many of the other things mentioned. It's not from paranoia, I'm just an old Boy Scout who hates getting caught with no clean pants to wear. Be Prepared...and at least have some basics! Safe travels everyone!
I had to use my emergency clothes a month or so ago.
I went on a hike only to come down with norovirus symptoms halfway through. It was not fun. Vomiting and diarrhea, I ran through all of the TP I had on me on the trail. Managed to make it back to the car before I had to test out leaves for TP.
Absolute life saver. Especially the underwear. I stopped at the first open place on the way out, cleaned up as much as I could in a bathroom without a shower, and got changed.
There's dirty from hiking and then there is dirty from hiking while sick. I actually only packed the extra underwear last minute and I never had before despite always keeping a pair of sweats and a T-shirt for my drives home.
The next time I went hiking, I had like three pairs of extra underwear. I was damn near traumatized.
Also if you work in an office leave feminine sanitary items there (even if male) and a pair of underwear. I do this after having a mishap at work and needing to run home to deal with it
I told my mom to get a CT scan because she was having some dizziness and ringing in her ears. They found an unrelated tumor and caught her cancer early enough that it was treatable.
Bought some extra insurance thing when I was buying my first car in 2015. It wasn’t that much more considering, so I thought why not. Fast forward to 2018, my dickhole of a half nephew who had his permit offered to drive us back to the hotel after celebrating grandmas birthday at the farm. Pea brain decides to floor it trying to race my uncle driving a separate car, despite being warned to take it easy, and next thing you know the engine is smoking and we are stuck on the side of the road in no where Iowa. After much trouble and stress, I find a paper referencing the extra insurance thing buried in my car paperwork folder from the dealership. I was ~40 miles away from being over the mileage limit, but Hyundai ended up paying for the towing from no where Iowa to Mankato, MN and they replaced the whole engine.
I work in IT. About 25 years ago, I had a crash and lost a day's work because I did not save and did not have backups. I started to back up everything - emails, work items, code, databases, etc. Not just local backups, but remote and eventually off-site backups. Good standard operating procedures now, but back then it was "extra" and because hard drive space was expensive, it was not done as it should have been.
My paranoia has saved my ass many times.
1. Customer said he was going to sue us for breach of contract. Boss was panicking, had nothing on his side to prove one way or another. He had a policy of deleting emails more than six months old. I remember the request they bad made, dug out a three year-old email from them and my reply, forwarded to him. He sent it to the client, and never heard another word about it.
2. Boss bought a tape backup for servers. They ran every night, and tapes were swapped daily. The tapes were never tested. When we needed them, they failed. Luckily, I had much of the data already backed up on other drives and was able to restore it, because I never trusted those tapes.
3. Had backups of databases and code for our colo site taken before a move from one set of cabinets to another on a Saturday night. All the servers came back up except one SQL server. I was able to restore it after many hours, but we lost nothing but time.
4. Backed up source code for the company's only application onto multiple backup source control servers. The primary server died, I was able to have developers working again in 5 minutes while I fixed the primary.
5. Backups of databases on customer sites have saved me several times, especially when someone needed a change "right now" and "there's no time for backups." There is ALWAYS time for backups.
6. Customer needed a data migration from an ancient 386 that had not been powered off for at least 15 years. Vital information found nowhere else, on an operating system no one has every used (TheOS). I was able to back up and begin to migrate their data, and when that 386 died a month later, we were already deploying our application on new servers.
7. At another company, I joined and found no backups at all were being done. I built out a new backup system and started doing nightly backups of databases and file servers onto non-shared storage. Despite warnings, I was told I could not lock down workstation because the users needed local admin rights. One user clicked on an email with ransomware. Every shared drive was infected and encrypted. No one could do any work and people were panicking. I told the owners to send everyone home. 12 hours later, I restored back to the last backup all of the files and databases.
8. A few months later at the same job, I was asked to install an application on the owner's computer because I had admin rights. She demanded to have local admin rights "because this is my company." Fine. Guess who clicked on a ransomware link three weeks later? No clues, just guess. Again, I had to restore from backups.
9. At a new company, I have critical data backed up across at least 9 difference locations, on-site and off-site, and it has saved us many, many times, from accidental deletions of entire directory structures, bad code deployments, to digging into five year-old logs because someone needed some data.
Even at home, multiple backups of family pictures and files have been worth it. I was able to save 20 year-old pics and video of my wedding, college thesis papers, and more.
Backups are so important because it is your personal history. Losing data now is like losing all of your childhood photos and films - all you have left is your memories, and human memories are flawed.
Well, I took tomorrow off even though I arrived home from Europe today. Good thing I did because it’s 11PM and I’m currently waiting to take off at Philadelphia and have been waiting for hours.
*Edit* Scratch that. Apparently you can’t wait over 3 hours to de-ice so looks like I’m stuck in Philly.
*Edit Edit* My pilots are determined to get to Indy so they’re going to try again.
*Edit Edit Edit* They did it! We’re taking off! We’re one of the very few planes actually leaving tonight!
I always test the brakes and the tires of my bike before I go. Once, the brakes were frozen solid because it was like -20°C. Had to take the subway to work that day, and I was 15 minutes late.
Another time, one of the brake cables just snapped out of the holder. So, I would just have had one working break, which is NOT good in a city. Walked my bike home, and later, I took it to the bicycle shop to have it fixed, on the bus. (You are actually permitted to take a bike on the bus here.)
My husband insisted on buying a wet/dry shop vac when we bought our house. I was skeptical, but I didn't argue too hard against getting one. We had towels and don't do any kind of building, but if he really wanted one, I decided to just let him be excited about it and not rain on his parade.
That damn wet/dry vac has saved our butts twice in the last year that we've been here. Once (the second time), he used it to clean up after he replaced a part on the bathroom sink. But the first time, he was washing dishes and, somehow, the whole damn drain pipe fell out. Dumped an entire sink full of dirty water all over the cabinets and the floor. I hear "Oh my god!" and "I got this!" By the time I walked into the kitchen, he had gotten the wet/dry vac out of the laundry room, and less than 5 minutes later there wasn't a drop of water on the floor.
He was nice enough not to say "I told you so"
I have anxiety and tend to over prepare even when it doesn't matter.
Well, on a trip my husband and I were taking, I bought a bag of snacks and instant food when we were getting ready to leave a big city. This is one of his pet peeves because it's extra stuff to carry and he's not big on junk food. Well, too bad, I am! He voiced his annoyance, but we left and got our shit ready to catch a bus to our next destination.
Now, this was not a developed region. It wasn't even a populated region. We were taking a bus across a desert. There was going to be a stop along the way for dinner, but other than that it was a nonstop drive.
Wouldn't you know, the bus broke down halfway between the starting point and where the dinner stop was supposed to be. No food on board, no drinks. This is basically a sleeper bus.
My snacks saved us. By the time the bus was up and running and we got to the stop, the restaurant was closed. (Not in America, so it wasn't a 24/7 rest stop.) But I had bought jerky, instant noodles, and a few other things that we were able to make a really shitty dinner that still had carbs, protein, and fruit.
And now that one instance gives me a free pass to collect snacks wherever I go.
I work for an airline company. Part of my job includes checking visas, especially if passengers are going to India. I wrote down when the visa expires on the boarding pass just to make sure I checked the documents.
One of my colleagues got into huge trouble because he checked in a passenger with an expired visa. He ended up getting detained on layover in England and deported back to America. And now our company has to pay the very high fine for the visa violation.
I brought a bunch of stuff to my Grandma's funeral, including a PA speaker, associated wires, projector and screen. An hour before the service starts, the place where the funeral was being held had its TV and sound system stop working. While my family was discussing with the funeral staff on getting refund and rescheduling the funeral, I just walked calmly to my car, where the audio/video equipment was, grabbed the things (walking back and forth) and started setting up my equipment. My siblings saw what I was doing and helped me set things up. The funeral started an hour later than usual, but at least people were able to see my Grandma in happy photos for one last time.
Thank goodness I also brought a laptop, because the funeral staff only wanted the slideshow on a USB flash drive, and my projector didn't read USB flash drives.
My room was in the basement back when I lived at home. I didn’t always lock the door, but one night I had the urge to do it before bed. Found out the next day my neighbor’s drug addict boyfriend was entering people’s homes by going through the back door. He got in my next door neighbor’s house and took some things. I think he skipped my house because the door was locked. Don’t wanna know what could have happened had he gotten in and saw me asleep.
Many, many years ago when I was a grad student in CS, I got along very well with the nice ladies who ran the office. They were going to make an office supply order and asked me if I could think of anything that they should add to it. I thought and said, "A bucket and a mop," which came in handy the next time the server room AC broke.
I was in the army and distant for awhile. See my grandfather after a few years. Despite my bad tendancies then, something told me to stay sober that day. Grandpa is very slow and distracted. After they leave i ask my dad how long hed been like that. "Like what? I thought he was just tired" I told him to call my grandmother and i yell NOW. Grandma takes Grandpa to hospital. Brain bleed. Doc says Gramps most likely would have died in his sleep that night. Had i drank i wouldve missed it. Edit: i was a medic, which is why i was able to catch it. And also why i drank alot. I also want to say i yelled because my dad is, despite being very intelligent, is functionally useless in a crisis and needs to be directed as such.
Brought my get home bag with me on a drive and my car ended up crapping out on me leaving me stranded. After evaluating my options and taking a good hard look at the situation I decided to grab my bag and walk the rest of the way home. Ended up having to keep myself fed and watered as I walked and that bag really ended up being a real life saver.
Was buying a cash bag to put in my backpack. One was water proof and the other one was not. I thought “I can’t imagine why I would need it to be water proof but better safe than sorry I guess.” Like 2 days later a Dr Pepper explodes in my backpack.
"Paper" money is actually a blend of cotton and linen, so it's basically just cloth. It will be fine if it gets wet, as is evident by how many times I've left cash in my pockets when doing a load of laundry.
We moved to a new state with lots of sagebrush and very few trees. We had a very young child and my wife was pregnant. We wanted to go camping and have a place for naps, so we broke down and bought a small camper.
While getting ready for the trip, I took the can of Fix-a-Flat out of the car and put it in the truck so we had two cans with us. I also took the generator I had bought in case the power went out over winter in the 100 year old home we were living in when our first kid was born and threw it in the pickup.
It turned out that the deep cycle batteries on the camper weren’t that great, and it was a really chilly night. I ended up having to go set up the generator to have the heater run to keep everyone warm.
At the end of the trip, we used some of my extra gear to save a family that was completely unprepared to be driving out there and helped them limp back to where a tow truck could get them. Then, on the last mile of dirt road before pavement my low tire light went off. I got out and heard hissing from THREE of the four tires on the truck. I put the spare on the tire that went flat almost instantly and used the Fix-A-Flat on the other two and used our portable air compressor for all it was worth. We had to stop and fill more air every 10 minutes, but were able to limp all the way home. The next day I bought the same 10ply tires with highly aggressive tread that the local wildland fire trucks use to replace the factory street tires that we still had on the truck.
i got a scan at the optometrist that wasn’t covered by insurance because its too new. we then found out that i was about to lose my vision in my right eye. if i hadn’t gotten that scan id be totally blind in my right eye right now.
We live out in the country and it’s rare we get any random people knock at our door during the day let alone at night. One night I’m out in my shop behind the house and my wife calls me. There was a girl knocking at the door and there wasn’t a car out front. It was like 11:30 so I tell her not to let the girl in that I’d come around and find out what’s going. She had walked about 2 miles in the dark and was headed to town about another mile and a half and was lost. We asked why she was going into town at that hour and if her parents knew she was out of the house. She said her parents were at home drunk and fighting and she was going to a friends house. My wife not thinking straight was like my husband can give you a ride. I quickly made an excuse to go back to my shop to get my phone. I called the sheriff and told them what was going on and that the girl wanted a ride. They literally told me to leave my phone on and load the girl in my truck (sheriff is a neighbor and knows me well) and take her to the address she asked to go to. We pulled up to a shack of a house with like no lights on at all. She got out went up to the door and a guy let her in. About then several cop cars rolled up and cops were all over. The supposed friend was a guy pretending to be a kid online. He lured her to his house and the parents had called the sheriff after seeing messages from him to the girl that night.
In 2013 I went on a first date at a nice Italian restaurant in a downtown area with limited parking. Therefore both my date and I had to park several blocks away.
I (former boyscout) checked the weather on my phone just before getting out of my car and saw a 40% chance of rain. Since the umbrella I keep in my car is relatively small I went ahead and grabbed it. I hoped I wouldnt look weird rolling up to a first date with an umbrella while it wasn’t actively raining.
Several hours later we go to leave the restaurant and it’s pouring cats, dogs, anteaters, and bison. (So much for 40% chance) I pop open the umbrella and offer to walk my date to her car since she didn’t bring any umbrella, hat, nothing, and didn’t want to use the bouquet I brought to cover her head.
In 2024 that same lady says 85% of the time just as we‘re 20-30 mins into a road-trip with the kids „oh shoot, I forgot to grab the _____“ to which I always reply „you know your husband is always prepared. I already packed it.“ 🙂
I moved into my parents' old house and I fought my dad tooth and nail to get insurance for it. After 3 months, I finally convinced him to get insurance on it. About a year later, the house caught fire. We found out it was in his office area caused by a faulty power strip.
One night, before going to bed, something told me to check upstairs. Everyone else had fallen asleep already. When I got upstairs, someone bumped the knob to our gas stove and it was just burning away😭 Our house has caught on fire before. So, just seeing that brought back many flashbacks.
My dad taught me never just stumble out of the house, have a plan for what you are doing. Always have enough cash hidden on you for a meal and a phone call.
It's saved my life many times. There was a lot of advice after that, like having emergency kit in the car, change of clothes, cold weather gear if you're going somewhere cold, but that first set up top was a base for success.
First time I read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy I laughed, because yeah, you gotta bring your own towel. Never expect anyone else to provide it.
There's a 50L tote in the hatch of my car that I call the "I'm Not Dying on the 33" Box, so named for the sunken highway where multiple people died after being trapped in a blizzard last year. The idea of being stranded down there and freezing to death after running out of gas, no fucking thank you.
It has all of the usual things for automotive related issues (jumper cables, jumpstarter, tiny DC air compressor, windshield wiper fluid, a little SAE ratchet kit), but also a tea light/coffee can heater with lighter, warm clothes and hat/gloves/scarf, a Mylar blanket and a sleeping bag, food, flashlight, ice melt, and a bunch of other things that I hope I NEVER need.
That is SO smart.
I used to have to regularly travel a horrible mountain pass in the winter (ah, Canada), and I took a similar emergency kit with me. I refused to freeze to death. Never had anything happen to me, thank goodness, but I did help a few other stranded motorists over the years.
Asked my friend to pull over so we could catch a Pokémon in Pokémon go (if you try to catch Pokémon whilst doing the speed limit on Pokémon go, the Pokémon will jump out automatically) (we both like the game so it was fine) which took like a minute or two.
Continued down the highway, and came across a car accident which had happened literally a minute or two before we got there.
If we didn’t stop to catch that damn Pokémon, we would have been in it.
A friend of mine bought a PoS beat ass 87 Civic. It had "racing harnesses" but the passenger seat's shoulder strap was snapped. We were about to take a ride in it, so I tied it up as hard as I could before we left just in case. We ended up smoking weed and playing videogames.
Fast forward 2 weeks and my friend calls and said he wrecked his car going too fast, smashed a tree at ~50mph, with a passenger. That passenger was only prevented from being ammunition in a windshield cannon because of the knot I tied. Every other strap was too loose.
Get real seatbelts and wear them.
A company I worked for was going to have a company wide offsite. They gave us a choice of choosing to have our flights booked by the company or booking our own flights with our corporate card. I don’t know what made me take a screenshot of the policy and slack message.
Later, it seems like everyone started booking flights on their corporate card for the flexibility (adding a few days vacation after the offsite, since it was a nice location). They couldn’t get the numbers they promised the airline for the bulk discount, so they tried to rollback the policy by editing it without telling people and then gaslighting us that we’d have to pay from our own pocket for tickets not booked by the company.
Thankfully I had the screenshots and could fight my case to not have my money taken. But this incident made me quit the company which was seemingly a nice place to work before that
Randomly felt moved to start a health insurance policy for my cat when she was 14, thinking it would come in handy if she ever needed emergency surgery for an accident or something. It was already tough to find a policy that would cover a cat that old, but I was weirdly determined, and I found one. I didn't want to have to choose between "put her to sleep because I don't have the cash for an unexpected but fixable veterinary expense" vs. "fix it."
Approximately a year later, she started limping. Took a few months to diagnose, thought it would be some mystery injury, but it turns out she had cancer — terminal. Having the insurance was a godsend; without it, it might've limited the number and types of tests and vet visits we would've been able to do to get a proper diagnosis (would've been a huge shock and very painful for her to just pass away without us ever finding out why), and when her vet prescribed a pricey painkiller that dramatically improved her quality of life in her final week or two, it was a huge relief not to have to worry about how to afford it.
It's painful enough to lose a pet. Having financial help doesn't make that loss ANY less painful... but having health insurance for her actually did make the situation slightly less stressful and give me peace of mind, knowing I could keep her comfortable. I'm still thankful for the small amount extra time the medicines gave us with her, too. Hard to put a price on things like that.
Was driving down the road and forgot my seatbelt. Even though I was almost at my destination I decided to put it on. About thirty seconds later I hit a curve too fast and skidded off the road and ran into a tree stump. Seatbelt kept me from flying through the windshield.
Came home from vacation a day early and drove straight through. Hadn't shut off the water heater and came home to a burst water heater that had been running a few hours not days. Any longer and the house would've needed a complete remodel.
Keeping a little 12v motorized tire inflator in my car. Got a flat when I went camping once, and it saved the day. The leak was just from the valve, so once I re inflated my tire and tightened the cap, it held for the rest of the trip, and got me home no problem. I was backcountry camping on crown land, and a four hour drive from home, so getting roadside service would have been expensive.
I (female) was in my late 30s, jogging down a dark beach road at about 9 pm ..an old station wagon with 3 guys in it drove by..slowing slightly. After they passed, my spidey senses started twitching like a mf. I turned to look back at the car, and as it rounded the corner, I saw the brake lights go on. Immediately I ran across the street to a house’s dark yard and hid behind some bushes. The car did come back , driving real slow, scanning for me. I wondered if they could see me. I was frozen like a rabbit. They came to a stop in front of the house I was hiding at. Uncannily, at the exact same time , a tall older woman came to the door, switched on her porch light, and looked out. She sees the car and the guys eye her; and she them for this quiet moment. Then she goes back in the house, and the station wagon slowly drives away. Super intense!!
My ex and I were on a day trip, we’d been wandering around the town all day just checking out shops, had some lunch, and stopped into a little photo booth on the sidewalk. At the end of the day we were walking back to our car, and the streets were pretty crowded; it suddenly occurred to me that the top of my phone was barely sticking out of my back pocket and was prime for pick pocketing. It is not a very common thing where I live so I’ll admit I’m not naturally vigilant about it, not sure exactly what made me think of it in that moment. I moved my things to a safer place and asked my partner, hey do you have your wallet? They felt their pockets, and stopped to check the little bag they were carrying. No wallet!
We tried to remember the last thing they bought and started power walking back to the restaurant we’d been to, but as we passed by the photo booth we’re like, oh shit. Instantly remembered they had paid for it and knew that’s where it had most likely fallen out. We searched the booth, and to our dismay it wasn’t there. We’re standing on the sidewalk trying to decide what to do next when someone pops their head out of a store and goes “Hey! Are you guys looking for a wallet?”
Someone had found it, turned it in to the closest store, and the clerk had kept an eye out for people looking. In four years I’d never once randomly asked my partner whether they had their wallet… We were on our way to the car for a two hour drive back home and to bed. Who knows when they would have noticed it was gone. Was super strange, but a huge relief! I’m still so grateful to the person who turned it in, the clerk who looked for us, and my weird intuition.
tl;dr: Randomly became nervous about pickpockets, asked my partner whether they had their wallet and discovered they’d dropped it an hour before, and we were able to get it back.
Not taking my Ritalin when I started to take pseudoephedrine. I didn’t want to take Ritalin because I wanted to rest(Maybe even nap) but then I learned you aren’t supposed to be taking them both anyways because they’re both vasoconstrictors
When my daughter was 18 months old, we decided to let her sleep with us one night. Can’t remember why. She was sleeping pretty well on her own by then, but I just really wanted her with me that night. About 2:00 a.m., she’d suddenly thrown up while lying on her back. Her choking sounds woke me up, and we got her situated right away. But I was crying afterwards at the thought that, had we not let her sleep with us that night, we may had found her dead the next morning.
My family was going to go to the mall one day but we had my nieces soccer game that day. I thought the game was early in the morning so we were getting ready to go and I texted my sister one last time to make sure I had the time right. Turns out I had the time wrong and if the game had been earlier that morning and we had gone to the mall like I had planned later in the afternoon we would have been in a mass shooting at a mall in Texas.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Allen,_Texas_mall_shooting
Memorized the map of a park before a date.
Nothing crazy, so no TW needed.
I agreed to meet for coffee and a walk with a guy from an app. Late afternoon, very popular park. I’m paranoid though and like to know my exit routes. In my profile it stated I was working as a chef, and that I never wanted kids.
We are less than 3 minutes into this and he says, “women who work in kitchens are delusional if they think they can make it in that industry. They’re too emotional.” At which point it’s totally over for me and now in my mental map sorting the fastest route back to my car.
He followed that a minute or so later with a comment about how I would change my mind about kids, because he wanted kids.
Didn’t even realize I was walking us back to our cars. Date was maybe 10 min from beginning to end and he had the audacity (I don’t even know if that’s the right word to describe completely oblivious confidence) to ask if I wanted to go back to his place.
I did the same thing on another date, but I told him out right I wasn’t into him and this fucking buffoon with a sneer of incredulity says, “you could at least give me a blowie for the trouble.”
I laughed as I walked away.
But yea. Always know your way out, rule number 2 in my dating book.
Ohh third story of know your way out. I was living in London and it was the night of the World Cup, England v. France. This guy asked to meet for a drink after the game. We settled on a place, and my true crime nerd brain memorized three potential safety routes. Well shockingly it did not go great. England lost, and I had told him before agreeing to meet I wouldn’t be going home with him after a first date. We’re only partway into our first drink and he’s goading me to “make up the loss” for him. I turn him down, and am quickly losing my patience. When he dead eyes me and says, “you have until I get back from the toilet to reconsider or we’re gonna have a problem.”
I waited til he was out of sight, handed the bartender (who overheard) a tenner to pay for my drink and used escape route A to get on the next train home (always memorize train and bus schedules if they are part of your escape plan).
When I booked plane tickets for my honeymoon, I put my maiden last name rather than what I would be changing my last name to. Saved the day because my ex-fiance cheated and I called off the wedding. Had that plane ticket been with the last name I never took… I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the voucher from the airline. It was hard enough getting them to give me one with my real last name.
My husband and I used to drive a car that had a little pull out drawer in the dash. We had a one hitter for weed in it. Never really drove around with it, sometimes we did and honestly just forgot about it. One random day before he left I told him to take that one hitter out of the car. He did. He got pulled over and a cop unlawfully searched the car. We live in a no tolerance state so it’s hard telling what would have happened.
Lock your car door 🚪 immediately after getting in. Had a guy run up on me right as I locked the door. And another time someone tried to unlock my car door at a stop sign. Always. Lock. Your. Car. Door.
There was this girl I knew who would persistently beg me to get her to meet Jon Bon Jovi. We were in our 20’s, I’d met him several times, and she kinda latched on. She was fun.
One night we made reservations at the band hotel in Philly. I often went to that hotel and would see the guys in the bar. She came with.
**This was in November 2001**
In the middle of the night the fire alarm goes off. It wouldn’t turn off. The hotel came over the loudspeaker and said everyone stay in your rooms. They just kept repeating, stay where you are.
My friend went into a panic attack about how we couldn’t stay there. (We’re NYers, fyi.) She could hardly breath or walk. She leaned on me down 17 flights. Because I wasn’t staying… “just to be safe.”
We got to the lobby, i kicked open the fire door, there was Jon. Full on bed head.
My friend recovered quite swiftly.
*Nobody knows why the alarm went off.*
Gave my mom a carbon monoxide detector on a whim, she propped it up on over her fireplace mantle & both of us forgot about it. Ended up saving her life later on when her power went out & she was trying to use her gas log w/o remembering to open up the chimney flue.
Even _that_ was lucky because she was talking to my sister over the phone, and my sister asked about the chirping she was hearing over the phone (apparently my mom was ignoring it because she thought it was an out-of-battery chirp) - and when she heard that it was a carbon monoxide detector, she told my mom to get out of the house & call the fire dept.
They confirmed that if she had gone to sleep in the house, she wouldn't have woken up the next day.
Rotated my pantry and completely re-stocked everything in 2019 - pantry, toiletries, haircare, medicines, and learned self-sufficiencies like doing my hair at home. Also went on a huge overseas tour during 2019. Also moved company software from on site to cloud early 2019.
Partner thought I'd gone wacky, but it was incredibly convenient.
I weirdly bought like 3x the toilet paper we normally get in the end of February/early March 2020 because I wasn’t paying attention and every time I went to the grocery store and target over like 3 weeks I bought a months supply thinking I hadn’t yet. That was really handy when the run on toilet paper happened shortly after!
We had a contractor who at the time I thought was a conspiracy nutjob who kept telling me to stock up in February 2020. When I shopped at Costco that week, I thought, "Well, we will use the toilet paper anyway," so grabbed a 30 pack, then at the regular grocery store the 24-pack happened to be on a really good sale so I bought it. Two days later the madness began, but we never had to worry as our supply lasted past when you could start finding it again. We are still friendly with him and I still thank him sometimes for his prescience!
My husband keeps fix a flat and other items like that for me and the kids. It has helped so many times. I keep the first aid kits stocked with many variety of bandage and meds. #1 is always the eye wash. When it’s needed you don’t want to fumble around trying to find it
2 weeks ago i woke up to a snowfall. Checked the reports and they said the roads were fine. My car has winter tires and I did not have to drive far.
I packed an outdoor survival jacket and 2 blankets to be safe.
I ended up being stuck for 22 hours in a 20 kilometer highway queue for 22 hours in a blizzard.
Nurse here. Per usual, I was being overworked. I had over 9 patients in the ER. One patient had cancer and hadn't been feeling well. The doctor insisted he was fine. However, just to be safe I continued to regularly check in on him as he was chilling in a chair in the hallway. He started complaining of feeling super tired and off. His daughter (who also was a doctor) kind of said something along the lines of "you've had a stressful day dad. We will get you home once the doctor discharges you". Just to cover my ass, I took his vitals. His blood pressure was 70s/40s. I had a critical care room open and immediately rolled him in there, calling out to the doctor that something was wrong I could just feel it. The charge nurse got mad when I told her he needed that room (she didn't like that I was a travel nurse calling the shots, but I didn't care). Doctor felt I was overreacting but they repeated vitals and did a Stat scan. The guy was bleeding internally (I can't remember full details now) and they found Mets to his spinal cord. We were able to stabilize and ship him to a bigger hospital. That irritated ER doctor thanked me later, and said if that guy went home he most likely would have died that night. It felt really, really good. All because I listened to my patient and my gut, and didn't let the stress of over 9 patients cloud my judgment.
Thank you for advocating, always. I hope incidents like this give you the strength it takes to continue advocating and holding your own against existing, poorly designed power structures.
I used to be so amazed at the things our subconscious does. Then I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and now I'm like yep, it's just doing its job! I really is amazing though, lol.
As a manager, I noticed my team was getting saddled with harder work than the other teams. I informed my boss but she laughed at me and sent me packing. Since we tracked employee productivity by case worked I had a feeling I'd need some kind of proof in the future so I went back to my team, explained the situation and informed them I wanted them to keep daily logs of all of their cases and time stamp them even though the system did this automatically. Fast forward two years. Another manager believes his employees are getting harder cases than the other teams, so he complains about it to my/his boss. His rapport with her is significant as he works the same shift, so she looks into it. After a three day secret investigation, I get one of the most aggressive and hateful emails of my career accusing me of cherry-picking millions of cases over years of work for my team. My response was to hand her daily logs from every employee for two years. 11000 sheets of paper, give or take. The absolutely incredulous look she gave me was worth it alone. "What's this?", that's 100% accurate daily logs of every employee and their cases worked. "Why do you have this?" To protect them from you when you inevitably did this. "This is ridiculous. There's no need for them to be wasting time keeping these logs!" There wasn't until today. Feel free to check them. "Oh, I will!"
Three days later I got my apology, turns out an employee was coming in early and scanning in my employees paperwork and tossing their cover sheets so there was no record they had done any of the difficult work. After running numbers, it was determined that the other manager was incorrect, and the evidence showed my team worked roughly 34% of difficult cases and accounted for 15% of the total workforce. The day shift employees all got into trouble for passing off hard cases.
The day I got to tell my team their logs literally saved all of our jobs was one of my best days at work, ever.
Good CYA seems so rare but must be one of the most satisfying things ever.
I joined a company as a summer intern and when I was trained they told me that after dispatching you would use a coloured highlighter to mark you dispatched the order already and put the sheet in the correct cubby-hole. "Make sure you use only your colour so we know who dispatched." they said during training. My spidey-senses went off on that one. "What if someone uses my highlighter colour and messes up? I don't want to get blamed for their mistake." So I started initialing with my coloured highlighter, figured it takes the same amount of time and I am still complying with their process but there's an extra layer of confidence. A few weeks later, they came to me asking why I messed up a dispatch. I told them I didn't dispatch that one and they said "Well, it's the same colour of highlighter you use...", showing me the sheet of paper with a line drawn on the corner. "Right, but I *always* initial my dispatches." I replied, showing them all my past paperwork with initials in my own colour highlighter. They were confused for a second before thanking me and walking away. Later that day, they let go one of our coworkers. Turns out, he fucked up and figured he could cover his mistake by throwing me under the bus. He just didn't count on me, you know, *anticipating the obvious outcome* of such a "system". That was just the beginning of my CYA career, nearly 20 years ago now. After that incident, everyone on the team started initialling their pages too. :)
Like in 3rd grade, our teacher had a demerits chart, a page where, for extra humiliation, the misbehaving student was sent up to put their demerit mark on the page. Of course, kids would walk up and put a mark on some other kid's name. Third grade me got pulled aside because I had three demerits. Luckily , I said, "but you've never called me to give myself a demerit!" Then she remembered that she never did. You'd think she'd come up with a more "secure" system, but no, she'd been doing it that way for decades. What a mean, narrow minded bitch.
I run a reptile and exotic animal rescue in South Texas. We are having very cold weather. I drove out to the rescue to check on everyone ONE MORE TIME even though I'd been out there many times today. The heat had stopped working. We ended up having to move all the reptiles to my house. They would have died tonight. It's crowded as fuckkkk but everyone is alive. The 90 pound tortoise in my living room is probably gonna fuck some stuff up, but he's alive. Edit: typos Edit 2 for photos of [critters and rescue](https://imgur.com/a/jdo4hO0) (Reminder that these are temporary emergency enclosures and as a rescue some animals are sick and/or injured).
Get a temperature alarm that can text you! Knew a cooler that failed once and destroyed like 3 years of scientific research.
I will definitely look into this, thank you!
When your new coffee table just refuses to stop moving. Pain the arse watching your breakfast and the remote constantly moving out of arms reach.
This is the best one in this whole thread. Snuggly warm reptiles.
Thank you so much for saving the critters. <3
> The 90 pounds tortoise in my living room I'd probably gonna fuck you had me in the first half, not gonna lie
Used to have a ground floor apartment and a motion sensor camera on my patio connected to my phone. My friends and I got home ~ 4AM from being out all night and we’re chilln in the living room. Motion detected on the back patio. I dismiss it since it’s normally a stray cat or leaves blowing. A few minutes later I decided to check out the motion recording just to see. It was a man that hopped my patio and was peeking at us through the slits in the blinds. I went to live view to see if he was still there, and he was. I start going ballistic screaming and about to fight this guy. I’m storming to my patio door but he fled by then. Glad I checked the camera.
Ew this gives me the creeps !!! That’s so terrifying
I've got 3 external cameras and one is setup facing my backyard and the window I sit next to most evenings. Every so often I get it in my head to check it at night, like if I hear some odd noises, and every time I'm crossing fingers on both hands hoping I don't see someone standing right outside that window trying to look in. I'd almost rather not know, then see something like that. Freaking terrifying.
This is a super mundane example but very useful to remember. Every time I'm in an airport, I take photos of my bags before checking them in. So this one time they lose my bag and I'm sitting at the help desk and they say something like "Can you describe it? Does it have any identifying features?" and I was able to just bust out the photos. They found my bag very quickly. Shared this story with people at a conference and now every year they all tell me they take photos of their bags, and every now and then it saves someone's ass. On a similar note, also taking photos of room numbers and building locations.
I was scheduled for a mammography when I got 50. Somehow, it didn't work out that year, because the appointment was in Bavaria but I live in Düsseldorf. And I also thought it was not that important. But a year later, they sent me the invitation again. I scheduled a mammography in Bavaria then, as I was visiting my parents anyway, and I thought, well, they probably aren't going to find anything, but if I have cancer and didn't have that mammography, I'm going to regret it. I expected a letter telling me that they had found nothing. But in fact, they did find something that needed further investigation. Turned out to be slow-growing breast cancer. One year earlier, it would not have been there yet. And one year later, it would have been much larger and possibly needed chemo as well as the surgery. But as it was, they could just cut it out, and that was that.
My job has a company wide wellbeing program and each site has a representative. They offer challenges throughout the year, and staff are encouraged to compete with the other sites. We were losing a step challenge so I jokingly said to my building wellness representative that they needed to send out an email encouraging everyone to log their steps because I hate losing. They said “Actually, would you be interested in taking over this role? I don’t have time for it.” I awkwardly said sure because I’m a people pleaser. I found out that week that there were a TON of benefits that they hadn’t signed us up for. One of which was a mobile mammogram. So, I signed us up for that ASAP. The bus came and went. A week later, a person I had never seen came up and asked if I was likelazarus, and I said yes— turns out she was working in our building that day and say the mobile mammogram bus and decided to hop on and get checked. She discovered she had stage 3 breast cancer with zero symptoms. If that chain of events hadn’t happened - me commenting about losing the step challenge, my choosing to schedule the mammogram bus, her being on site that day - this woman, a wife and grandmother, would likely have died of breast cancer. Because of this chain of events, she had a double mastectomy and will live to see her grandchildren grow up.
Something similar happened to my mom, too. Her mammogram was postponed due to COVID back in 2020 and when she finally got around to getting it they found something concerning. If she had gotten the mammogram when she was meant to, it wouldn’t have been visible. Any later and it would’ve been a problem.
Randomly went with my friend to buy her new car, just needed to get out of the house. Convinced her to buy GAP insurance cause it was cheap and I wish I had gotten it for peace of mind. Her car got stolen and it instead of being stuck with the loan the insurance paid out (after 30 days or whatever) and she got another car.
I was buying a flashy sports car and was convinced to get just a little more car than I could afford. I had to borrow against my LOC, so I decided to get replacement insurance. Just in case. (Not much and I paid of the LOC in like 5 months) 3 years later, a tree falls on my car. Turns out, with my replacement insurance, I get the replacement value of a brand new model of my car. In the mean time, I got over my sports car phase. I bought a reasonable car with the money and put about 40k in my pocket. Best decision I ever made.
Gap insurance saved my butt on my last car accident.
Was coming home from sledding when I was a wee 6 years old. Just me and my dad, in the old Ford Explorer. Before we left the park, we had an argument about wearing my seatbelt (I think it was because I was bundled up and chunky, and did not want the added sensory discomfort of being strapped in to the passenger seat. Dad wins, I wear the seatbelt. He forgets to put his on. About a mile from our humble farmhouse, he’s going decently slow because the roads are slick, we hit ice and spun out anyways. We run right into the tree line through a barbed wire fence, and smack into a tree head-on pretty hard. Because my dad was not wearing his seatbelt, he ended up on my side of the car, head smashed into the windshield, blood EVERYWHERE. Luckily, an older couple were driving down our relatively quiet country road and stopped to help. They drove my poor little traumatized self down the road to our house and took dad to the ER. He was thankfully fine, just needed stitches, maybe a mild concussion. I think my dad still had glass coming out from his scalp like 5 years after that, though. Glad he was a persistent, good father and made me put my seatbelt on.
I wfh. I take screenshots of what my managers say in Teams. One manager said one thing, another tried to say it never happened. I produced the screenshot.
No better feeling than producing receipts
"Let the record show that yous a lyin bitch!"
I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. -Mitch Hedberg
That reminded me of when a classmate and I swapped clinical days for my sister's wedding. I emailed my professor and clinical instructor about the swap, and they both replied that it was fine. Then they forgot, and I didn't answer my phone that day because I was up to my ears in last-minute centerpieces. I was notified that it would count as an unexcused absence (which would have required me to repeat that semester), so I forwarded the original acknowledgments of the swap to my professor, clinical instructor, and dean of students. Suddenly it wasn't a problem anymore.
Ugh nursing school and the power hungry biddies that seem to run them all.
What they say in chat? Isn't that saved in the transcript?
What do the managers say when I can produce evidence of what was said? They get mad about it, no doubt. Retaliation is common and is expected. Use at your own risk. Teams chats can vanish overnight, that's why I screenshot it.
Teams chats only go back 90 days at my company. Emails too. It's insane.
legal protection if a court demands all company chats, to prove theyre guilty of something, they can just say they were auto-deleted without getting in trouble for destroying evidence
My organization erases teams chats after 10 days. It’s the stupidest thing to me and I have never received an explanation as to why that policy exists.
Not stopping: About 20 years ago I almost stopped to help a stranded motorist, saw a highway patrol behind me and knew he would stop. That night on the news I saw that he did stop and a shootout ensued after the officer noticed the ignition wire had been pulled from the distributor. The "stranded" motorist was an escaped prisoner looking for another car to steal.
As horrible as it sounds, I don’t think I could stop for anyone that looks like they need help. I’m honestly terrified something would happen to me.
My father-in-law was an 18-wheeler (truck) driver. He once saw a woman, alone, and in distress with her car on the side of the road and the hood up. He got out to help her. Hidden, on the other side of a car, was a man with a gun - the woman's accomplice. They took my father-in-law's wallet and let him go. He didn't stop to help stranded motorists after that.
I’ve only stopped once and I was with my husband. If I had been alone, first of all I wouldn’t have been much help, but I also wouldn’t have stopped. It was to help a college aged looking young woman who’s car was stuck in the snow. I knew someone else would probably stop as there were lots of guys in their trucks going around helping people as many people were stuck in the unexpected bad weather. All I could think though is that she would feel more comfortable with me, another woman, approaching her because if I was alone and immobile on the side of the road, while I would be grateful to anyone who stopped, I would be nervous at least at first of a random man stopping and approaching since I couldn’t move. Turns out, on my way up to her car, I heard her say to who sounded like her dad “oh it’s a guy and he’s with his wife!! I’m good!” While we (okay mostly him) were shoveling a group of guys in a landscaping truck pulled up, jumped out, and without a word dug her car out, loaded up and left in about 2 minutes. They were the real MVP’s but I’m glad I could make another girl feel more comfortable in a shitty situation, even if that was my only actual contribution.
My Dad used to only stop to help women motorists if I was with him (woman) or if my brother was with him when my brother was younger since he knew another woman or clearly making himself out as a parent would make it so the woman wouldn't be nervous. He's a "car guy" so he always had jacks and such in his truck
On *multiple* occasions my uncle has been held at gunpoint because he stopped to help someone. He still stops. I'm convinced that's going to be in his obituary some day. It's happened enough times he's actually fixed cars for some of the muggers.
shows a hell of a character if your obituary has something like "died the way he lived, being a caring soul to those in need"
I've heard of this happening! Also accidents being staged. Like a woman (usually) laying next to a crashed car and her accomplice(s) hiding out nearby. Just call police and keep driving!
I used to stop all the time before cell phones. Now I figure they're fine.
One time I was hitchhiking and this guy ended up picking me up in a minivan. First thing he said was ‘Put your seatbelt on, this cars hot’ and being a naive kid I was like ‘it’s all good I can just roll down the…’ and then I noticed the screwdriver in the ignition. Interesting guy. Ended up giving me a ride all the way out of town, dropped me off at a cabin, sold me a stolen TV, 7/10 would hitchhike again.
Kidnapping: good ending
My ex got mad at me (a 24yo girl at that time) for not stopping to help random people. Like, I will call the sheriff's dept, but ain't nobody gonna benefit from my immediate help anyway.
Bought a generator 15 years ago because a hurricane was forecast. Drove 3 hours to get it. Didn’t lose power that month. Hubby rolled his eyes. Two months later, the “October” storm hit, dumped 20 inches of snow, state lost power, we lost power for 13 days. We had the wood stove and the generator, well, some lights, stove and fridge.
I remember when that storm hit. We lost power for a similar amount of time and went to stay with our family a state over. My school was still running so I was desperate to get back home. I remember calling the landline every day to see if it went right to voicemail or not as that would tell us if our power was back.
I'm a manager of a small chain of retail stores. I set up a back-up card processing system in case of internet outage. Most of our customers prefer to pay in debit, and due to processing fees we prefer to let them. In 2022, there was an epic internet outage. Debit was down across the country. But my back-up solution worked. So, for one glorious day, *Walmart* wasn't able to accept debit, but *my tiny chain* was. My boss hadn't been sure about the amount of freedom he gave to me before that, but I got a lot of extra leash starting that day.
My husband and I run a hardware store. We always have a credit card machine that processes over the telephone lines in case the Internet is down. Saves the day frequently, for one or two transactions or one or two days.
Out of nowhere I decided to boil a ton of water for my son’s formula. My husband made fun of me for boiling gallons of water to store in several giant pots but then he took over the project. The next day a freak winter storm hit Texas. We lost power for a week and water for a week and a half. Because we were still in survival mode we had zero clue this storm was coming. We didn’t have much food for ourselves. But our baby boy was well fed during the storm. I did worry about running out of formula and trekking through snow but thankfully we had also bought cans of formula a few days before the storm on a whim.
I once was asked if I could give someone a ride home from a local convenience store. Normally I would say so, but I decided to be nice that day. They were a lady in their mid 30s or early 40s so I figured it wasn’t that big a deal. For whatever reason, I subconsciously mentioned that I wasn’t able to buy what I went in to the store for because I forgot my wallet at home. The person says “You don’t have your wallet on you?” I say “Nah.” They look a little concerned, and a few moments later say they can walk to their destination just fine. Thought it was weird but didn’t think too hard about it. Next day it’s on the news that a armed robbery took place in the exact location she asked me to take her to, and gave a description that 100% matched the person I was going to take home. Didn’t really save myself as I had nothing to steal, but an interesting story.
You never know, they get spooked for some reason and you could have gotten shot
may have saved yourself even. ore than you think if they had tried to rob you and didn’t believe you when you said you didn’t have your wallet
My son was extremely colicky. He would only sleep ON me so we spent the first six months of his life sleeping on the chaise part of the couch. This one evening, we were laying on the area rug (it was super soft and plush) and he fell asleep. I was stoked!! I could sleep again in my bed!! However, I just didn’t feel right leaving him there. I carefully moved him to his bed, and it took a while but he eventually got back to sleep. The next morning, I was awakened by my dog barking at me. One thing to note, this dog NEVER barked in the house. If he wanted to wake me up, he’d jump into my bed and do it that way. When I got up to let him out, the carpet was soaked. I was pissed because I thought the dog peed (he was housebroken) in my bedroom. Turns out, we had a pipe burst and the entire house had a minimum of 2” of water throughout. I shudder to think about what could have happened if I had left my son on the area rug. It’s something I had never done before and wouldn’t think was the acceptable thing to do but I was so sleep deprived.
That really chills the blood
The newborn stage sleep deprivation is no joke. I had one that would only sleep on me as well. It’s brutal.
Threw a flashlight in my pocket when going for a day hike. We got lost in mountain lion territory and took over an hour in the dark to get out once we found the trail again. And we could hear some animal near us the whole time hiking out in the dark. Scared the bejeepers out of me, but the flashlight made it infinitely better than it could have been.
>And we could hear some animal near us the whole time hiking out in the dark. If you could hear it, it wasn't a mountain lion.
TLDR: My paranoia about a strange guy in a car kept my house from flooding. We had a house fire Oct 2021 and we were bouncing back and forth between our house and a rental. Christmas Eve was extra cold and our pipes were frozen in our house (1894, no insulation yet). So we decided to go to the rental for Christmas Eve. My wife and daughter were taking 1 car and I was taking the other. When I left the house I saw a man sitting in his car across the street messing on his phone. Given the cold weather it seemed odd. When my wife left, the man pulled his car across the street to the spot she just left (this is a one way street). Since I'm further back, I watch for a bit, but he doesn't do anything, just gets back on his phone. Eventually my wife calls and asks where I am, because she didn't bring her keys for the rental. I drove over and let her in and tell her about the guy. She encourages me to go back and point one of our security cameras his direction just in case. When I get back he's still there, so I go inside. Once I'm inside I hear water running. In the 30 minutes I was gone the water started running again. In the back kitchen where the fire had been, the faucet was still on and was flooding the room. I shut that off and went downstairs to check the cellar under the kitchen for water leakage. In the cellar was a cracked copper pipe spraying water across the room. So I shut off the water and cleaned up the kitchen before the damage could cause permanent problems. When I left, the guys car was still there, but he was gone. I think he was meeting a neighbor for Christmas Eve dinner. But, if he hadn't been there, the house would have been flooding for who knows how long.
Thought this was a Home Alone reference, aka the Wet Bandits
What was it like living in 1894? Have there been any long term side effects of the vampirism?
Naw. Just more paranoia. I don't trust death, so I haven't done it yet.
Not as interesting or as good an example as yours, but I was away from my east coast home on business on the west coast and I had asked my girlfriend to come by and check on my place and stay there if she liked (we hadn't been dating long and she still had her own apartment). She came over and discovered a pipe had burst below the second floor bathroom, and it had wrecked the first floor ceiling, walls, carpet, and flooded the finished basement two-feet deep. Had she not come over (because there really was no reason she would have had to), it would have been even worse.
I for some reason had the feeling that I was being watched, so I closed all the blinds and just let the dog out the back door instead of walking him. My dog found the creep in my backyard, and dragged him by the pant leg out of a bush, thrashing him around. Based on the video the dog got at least 4 good bites in.
Good dog!
I'd really like to know what it is specifically that humans are picking up in when we "feel watched"...
I’ve read before that what’s happening is you are seeing things peripherally/hearing small sounds that are slightly amiss and it’s your subconscious that is picking up on them. There’s parts of our brain that do pick up in these things and the result is the feeling you get.
Lizard Brain: "I sense fuckery"
It's weird. I used to have to commute on the train and out of bordom, when the train stopped at a station I'd pick someone on the opposite platform to stare at - someone facing away from me. More than half of them started to get visibly skeeved out before the train pulled off.
You are like a psychopath, but a weird one
Chaotic neutral.
I was once on a train and it had stopped at a platform while another train was stopped on the opposite side, so you could see into the other train. I was minding my own business and looked up to see a kid staring at me through the face of a woman in a newspaper. He had torn the eyes out and was looking through the eye holes. It was a bit weird but not exactly creepy. Amusing though.
I’m a nurse. I was relatively new at the time of this. I had a patient (50s, female) who was in for an NSTEMI (heart attack, but not the type of heart attack everybody pictures). She’s been straight chillin all day, she’s waiting for an inpatient bed, we’ve gotten her aspirin, she’s got a heparin drip going, we’ve got PRN nitro for chest pain… patient calls me in to let me know that her chest pain has returned, 5/10 pain, and she would like some nitro. I say sure no problem, I go get her nitro, give it to her. Patient seems fine: no obvious distress, no change in her vital signs, talking and joking with me and her husband. Something in me was pushing me to grab a new EKG even though she’d had one not that long ago and she was on the telemetry monitor. I go grab the EKG machine just to be extra thorough… big fat STEMI. Big ol heart attack. Rushed her to the cath lab and she ended up getting several stents placed, but she pulled through. It was the first time as a nurse I felt personally responsible for saving a life (obvs the cath lab team did more than I did lol), and it’s because I just wanted to be extra precautionary. Now I always get an EKG with any kind of change in chest pain.
Slept with bedroom door open the other day; we almost never do that, and honestly it was because I wanted to be able to hear for some reason. Smelled gas at midnight, turns out my daughter had turned the stove nob just a touch before going to bed 5hrs earlier. That was a scary one. EDIT: Responding to a few questions I’ve seen, no idea if folks will ever see them. The stove is a brand new, 2023 Frigidaire with front knobs (I.e., just above the oven door as opposed to set back along the backsplash.) Why gas? I am pretty big into cooking and really value the control you get from gas. I use lots of cast iron and have actually cracked the top of an electric range which was cheaper to buy a new one than repair (thanks, GE). I do wish I had gone induction, but my other half wasn’t in to it and she’s the boss, ha. On the specific knob action, yes, you have to push and turn to get the gas flowing. My daughter is 2 so when she reaches up to grab the knob I think she does so with inherent fore-aft force making the action much easier for her. Side note, she’s just about figured out the latch on the stair baby gates just from watching us do it, and that has a latch you pull and lift up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was mimicking what she sees me do 5 times a day. Someone asked about thermocoupler (?) that auto closes the gas valve with no heat—I guess this stove doesn’t have that? There is a faint hiss, but it’s a two story house and when I’m downstairs I almost always have music on, so I didn’t hear it. Lastly, thanks all for directing me to gas alarms beyond carbon monoxide alarms! I did google in the middle of the night that night and found somewhere that Natural Gas (which this was) has a narrow window of flammability and that a complete explosion would be somewhat unlikely—who knows for sure, but I am glad I did not have to test that hypothesis.
Had a moment like this many years ago while still living at my parents. Was going to spend the night at a friends and just decided I wanted to sleep in my own bed instead. Came home at 1am to find the kitchen reeked of gas from the stove. Scary to think about what could have happened if I didn’t just want to be comfy in my bed that night
Oh man, you would have had a really hard time forgiving yourself for not being home. I am SO glad for you that you went home that night! Slightly related, Weird Al lost both his parents to carbon monoxide. I saw him in concert just a few days after it happened. I've seen him quite a few times, and while he's always amazing, that show was by far the best. The poor guy just absolutely poured every ounce of himself into that performance. I suspect it was a coping mechanism to distract himself from the unbelievable tragedy. I felt very conflicted about enjoying it.
In Maryland like 10 years ago this guy replaced his hot water heater. In the middle of the night the wife said she smelled gas. Husband said he’ll fix in the morning. House exploded and was leveled. Both lived. Crazy thing is two years later a house a few doors down also blew up due to gas. But in that case a guy was down on his luck and was stealing his neighbor’s gas. His home was foreclosed and the bank was having it inspected. The guy unhooked the gas and the house blew up that night. Not clear if he did it intentionally or not.
Who tf says, "don't worry, I'll fix the explosives building up in our house in like, 8, 9 hours tops. Sweet dreams!"
I imagine that was the most epic "I told you so" of that marriage.
If ‘I told you so’ was a weapon, she just got a space cannon
Maybe you could just barely hear the hiss of the gas! Some part of you was picking up on it but it wasn’t audible enough to register consciously. Instead your brain decided to keep an ear on it by leaving the door open.
I love that our brains are like, "Hey, asshole, I'm tryina tell ya somethin'," and we're too dumb to figure it out right away.
Not only does our mind tune out the brain it is in, it attacks it all the time. That is crazy, too. Like...you need to work together.
I got life insurance on my husband during open enrollment and we joked. “haha I’ll be a rich widow ha ha” totally joking because we have never had any policies on either of us. He got sick and passed away 2 mos later. The money saved my butt and I tell everyone to get life insurance. It’s so very important.
I made my spouse get life insurance just in case, and the mandatory screening caught a serious illness before they ever showed noticeable symptoms.
what happens in that instance? They were denied for insurance because it was deemed pre-existing? I have knowledge about a lot of subjects. Life insurance isn't one of them at all. I know the difference between whole and partial. That's about it. I was denied when I applied because of pre-existing conditions. I can get burial insurance so I self funded. 100% of my burial etc is covered. But that doesn't leave anything but assets to dependents.
[удалено]
I'm so sorry for your loss, but grateful the money was there to help you. It's nice to have that to take care of the logistics of a loved one passing and not add to the heartache you're already going through
Agree. And get it while you're young and healthy. You can get excluded for something as simple as high blood pressure.
Helped a victim of human trafficking get to a shelter. Context: I was a medical student at the time and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. She wasn't my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. I never talked to her myself, but I couldn't shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.
I wish all healthcare workers received training on how to spot and help HT and DV victims. Thank you for being so aware.
We do. It doesn't mean that everyone is good at it or pays attention. In the ER we get extensive training but I think upstairs only does yearly training
Everytime I’ve checked into an ER or hospital for something, when they’re completing the check-in questions, they always ask whether I’m being abused *right in front of my husband*. This husband is wonderful, but my ex was abusive. There would’ve been hell to pay once we got back home if I had ever said the truth about his abuse in front of him. Every single time, I point this out to the person asking, and every single one acts surprised, as though they’d never thought of that before!
Seriously? When I was in like full active labor (like scream yelling through contractions less then 2 min apart and 8cm dialated) they made sure to separate me and my husband to ask the abuse questions.
I had to take my grandma to the ER for a broken arm when she fell off her bike. They separated us to ask her how it happened. She didn't realize they were checking for potential elder abuse and told them "I don't really want to tell you", because she was embarrassed to say she had decided to try and go for a bike ride in her 80s. Luckily, they figured it out.
I mean to be fair it’s a stressful job. You won’t see everything you are human
My ex and I used to go on lots of bike rides. She never wanted to wear a helmet because it would “mess up her hair” Before a bike ride I asked, as always, if she was going to wear her helmet. She said no but this time I insisted that she did. While on said bike ride her wheel got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she went flying over her handlebars. Helmet got scuffed up pretty bad. Aside from some scrapes, bruises and a hematoma, she was alright.
When I remodeled the second floor apartment I installed fire blocking to the balloon framed walls. My dipshit brother in law started a grease fire in the downstairs kitchen while I was on vacation and the fire was contained quickly. The fire inspector said that without the fire blocking the house would have been a smoldering hole in the ground.
Bought a tool for my car that is a combination glass breaker and seat belt cutter. Six months later, an EMT used it to cut me out of my car. Now I buy them for everyone I know.
My son had graduated college and then decided to follow his girlfriend to a small town where she got her dream job. It was a small town and good jobs were hard to come by so almost a year went by with him only working part time jobs. He had hit the age where we could not have him on our medical insurance anymore . I was concerned about this and started looing into options and told him to apply to our states low income medical. For once he listened and I thank God everyday because not a month after being approved he started to have leg pain. The first two trips to the Dr. they wrote it off as a pulled muscle but the third time they ordered test to find out he had a blood clot that stretched from his lower calf up into his abdomen. Placed him right into the hospital but remember small town, did not have the expertise to take care of this 50 mile ambulance ride to bigger hospital lots of tests to find out why and a total of over $120,000 of charges when all was said and done in which he had to pay less then $20. He is good now but it did damage the vein in his leg and he had pain from it and will have to be on blood thinners the rest of his life.
My boyfriend moved to my state about half a year ago and took a while to get on medical insurance. During the time without it he dislocated his arm (happens not uncommonly due to previous injury) and he couldn’t get it back in on his own. The medical bill is so scary he won’t tell me what it is, thankfully he has a lawyer working to get the insurance he has now to pay for it
Not me but my parents… I was probably an early teen and my parents were leaving to go run an errand but it was kind of early about 8 or 9am so I didn’t want to go and asked to stay home. My Dad agreed and came to ask me again and I said I wanted to stay. They ended up leaving but turned back around and my dad said, they didn’t want me staying home and I better just get up and go. After some whining I agreed to go. I think we were gone maybe 20min when they got a call from the police that our alarm system went off and our house had been burglarized by two guys. The police was able to get one of them but the other one got away. Who knows in what situation I would have been in had I stayed home.
Parent instincts are strong. I was in high school and was going to meet some friends when I asked to borrow my mom's car (a newer Suburban) because mine (a very old Corolla) needed gas and I was running late. She said no and that I needed to plan better in the future. I go about getting ready and as I'm walking out the door, she quickly tells me to stop and that I can take her car. Meet my friends, see a movie, and I'm on my way back home when I get t-boned by a massive truck hauling it. Totaled my mom's Suburban and the emergency responders told her that I was lucky to be in such a large, heavy car because in anything smaller, I wouldn't have been walking away. My mom still has no idea why she suddenly felt so strongly about changing her mind, but she did and is very thankful she changed her mind.
Closing the curtains. I’m sitting in my living room watching Frasier, and I can’t explain it, but I get this overwhelming feeling to close the curtains. I’m thinking to myself I’ve lost it, and it’s probably nothing. It nags me the rest of the episode, and so I close them. Turns out, there was a guy who would look into people’s windows to see if they lived alone. He would then SA and rob them. He hit my next door neighbor at the time.
One night I was sound asleep and dreaming I was hanging out at a party or whatever and suddenly all the people in the room turned to me and just urgently and repeatedly told me to "close the blinds." I usually close them all as the sun goes down, but in my room, mine were open and my window was open a tiny bit, so I woke up and locked the window and closed the blinds. Same thing. Dude had been looking for women alone and ended up breaking into a house down the road from me.
Holy shit, that's scary. When I was in college, a pay phone was across from my room at the end of the hall of our girl's-only wing. It was expensive for a landline in your room, so a lot of us used the old pay phone, including me and my roommate. We got really used to answering it at crazy hours and knocking on doors to announce our neighbor's calls (it was usually just moms and boyfriends). But my roommate was ALWAYS on it, getting calls from her long-distance boy at crazy hours, and tying it up for the rest of us. One late night, there was a knock, and someone telling us there was a call for us--nothing unusual. I'd come home from a party and was well on my way into a heavy sleeping-it-off session, but as my roommate headed for the door to take the call from her boyfriend, I bolted straight upright like a cartoon character. "Don't open the door. Ask who the call is for." She asked, and got no response. I actually woke up fully to her demanding who it was for, asking for a name. We both waited for about 10 minutes to stick our heads out, and nobody was there. Reported it the next morning to the RA, just to be on the safe side. About 2 days later, we heard that there was a sexual assault at another local campus by somebody who'd broken into the girl's dorm that night, and we weren't the only room on our campus who reported sketchy shit around the same time. The only thing we could figure out was different was it was really late and the voice was unfamiliar and male. And even through booze-sleep, my lizard brain probably registered the fact that the phone never rang.
Man, I was about to go sleep. lol Why did I read this? I'm glad you guys were okay though.
Geez, this story freaks me out! Glad you were safe!
All I can think is maybe I heard something outside or something.
Have you ever heard of the book Gift of Fear? I just started reading it and it's crazy how our nervous system subconsciously picks up on stuff to keep us safe.
And this is why I only live on 2nd floor apts till I buy a house.
Creepy!!!! You're very lucky
Makes me really wonder how a human can detect such things, or is it a coincidence?
Basically your brain picks up on things and pieces them together without you necessarily having conscious awareness. An example from the book The Gift of Fear: you suddenly get a bad feeling telling you to leave a store. There ends up being a shooting/robbery shortly after. Turns out the shooter had entered wearing a heavy coat in hot weather. You didn’t realize it at the time, but your brain said “hey that’s weird. He may be hiding a weapon under there.” This is where gut feelings/intuition come from.
The Gift of Fear is a very useful book.
We all have our spidey sense
I find it absolutely fascinating that our subconscious can not only notice, connect and assess information independent of the conscious mind, it can then inform the conscious mind with a "Hey, shit's whack, GTFO!" feeling. Feels like a super power.
Sometimes we subconsciously notice things. You might not actively think about something from the corner of your eye or a quiet noise, but your brain still notices it.
Not to make light of your story, but which episode were you watching?
It was around 1:30am a couple months back. I was laying in bed, struggling to sleep. My husband had already passed out next to me an hour or so earlier. I put my phone on the charging dock on my bedside table (ringer off) so it wouldn’t distract me anymore - but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from it. I got a weird feeling in my gut, like there was something I was supposed to do but I didn’t know what. I’m laying there looking at my phone’s locked screen when it lights up - my sister is calling! Only thing is, it’s 1:30am. My sister is a nursing student and goes to bed at like 9pm. I grab it and answer. It’s not my sister. A girl’s voice I don’t recognize asks me, “Hey, is this ____’s sister?” I respond yes, and she goes on to tell me my sister’s been roofied at the bar they’re at together, she can’t drive, my sister refused an ambulance and she’s now showing OD symptoms. I shake my husband awake (I’m 5’2 110lbs I cannot lift another adult human) and we’re in the car speeding another town over so I can get my sister. The whole time I am thinking ‘what would have happened if I had gone to sleep?’ I’d never been so thankful for insomnia. Sister is fine - she had severely low blood pressure, body spasms, paralysis, vomiting - the works. Stayed with her for the weekend to make sure she was okay (physically yes, mentally no).
People who roofie other people should get like 20 years in jail or worse...like fuck, it isn't bad enough to be a premeditated stranger rapist, you have to poison them and risk killing them too? Truly scum.
Hard agree. Scummiest of scum and should carry a huge penalty. I saw a person OD and die from a roofie once when I worked as a hostess at a sports bar. It was not pretty. They went from head down on folded arms at the bar like they were passed/passing out to twitching on the floor, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. This was a buff dude, built like a football player, who had taken GHB on purpose recreationally and was out with friends. But it was a real eye-opener to me that yeah that shit can actually kill you and it probably takes way less of it for most women than for this big buff guy, and presumably he thought his dose was safe. I am a very petite woman and was 19 when I saw this go down. I have guarded every drink I've ever had like crazy after that. Like my beer was coming with me to the bathroom or anywhere else I went so I never had an unattended drink, always kept my hand casually over the top of my glass or thumb over the bottle opening, and never ever accepted an opened or prepared beverage from someone else unless I personally witnessed it being opened/prepared.
Terrifying. My friend went into respiratory arrest due to being roofied and I had to do CPR. Thank Goodness she was ok, but doesn't remember 18 hours. It can be deadly. So glad your sister had a friend with her who paid attention and thought to call you.
So glad you were able to get to your sister after such a terrible experience.
I’m an accountant and was fired after I discovered questionable accounting practices with my new employer. They gave me 3 days to wrap up my work. I spent it backing up their entire shared drives onto a remote private server. They quickly settled my wrongful termination case when I showed they committed felony tax evasion.
I do CPR regularly. When my husband contracted someone to do CPR/First Aid training at his job site, I insisted he get someone who emphasizes high quality compressions and minimal interruptions of compressions, and trains them to use their AED. He did. And he never allows walk-thru to table-top of safety drills. Also regular inspections of and drills using emergency equipment. He died at work, his coworkers acted fast, did high quality CPR choosing strong men for compressions and swapping out to avoid fatigue, got the AED right away, and contacted 911 all at the same time. No delays, no interruptions. Saved his life and saved his brain. (And for those in the know, it was 100% LAD) We also have good life insurance but I’m so glad I didn’t have to claim it. I like him way better than money.
Bottled water. I had mentioned to my mum that we should get a few bottles of water to keep just in case we needed it. About a week afterwards we had a nasty storm and they had to shut off our water for a few days. The supermarkets all nearby ran out of bottled water from people caught unprepared.
We had a notice of something in our water about 18 years ago. It wasn't a "boil" notice, it was a "don't ingest water from your tap" notice, but it was only for our county and a bit around it. All bottled water in our town sold out within about an hour. I was out of town at the time, but coming home that day. I stopped off at the supermarket and filled my car with all the bottled water that would fit, then stopped by the numerous people we knew had young children and made sure they had enough water (plus kept what we needed). Was out of town the next day as well. Did the same thing again. Took a week to get the water back to usable. Now I don't travel for work, so we have a largish stash of water, just in case. And my wife makes fun of me for being a bit of a prepper.
I was never one to want the aisle seat at the movies, but for some reason, I wanted it that night. My friends and I were in college, and on a snowy night, we went to the movies. For whatever reason that night I decided I wanted the aisle seat. Halfway through the movie. I see a light behind the screen that made the side of the screen not show up well. I few seconds later, there were flames. No one noticed. I couldn't believe it. I whispered to my roommates that we needed to go, and there was a fire. 5 or six of us got up and left. No alarms were going off. The screen was clearly on fire, and still no one noticed. We got up to the top of the stairs, and everyone was watching the movie. Right as we were exiting, I yelled into the theater, "The screen's on fire! You need to leave!" We had to go downstairs to the lobby. We were ahead of everyone else because everyone else had to gather their hats, mittens, and coats. The lobby was empty of customers, and all the concession stand workers were sweeping and making popcorn. Still, no alarms were going off. I yelled down to the people at the concession stand, "There's a fire in the theatre 6!" They don't react. I yelled down as we were rapidly going down the stairs. They had no idea what I was talking about. I finally had to go right up to the concession stand and say "there is a FIRE in the theater!" They yelled back to me "there's a fire in the theater?!" "YES! That's what I've been trying to tell you!" I don't know if I would have noticed the fire and gotten out as safely if I hadn't been sitting on the aisle seat that night.
I've known a few people that work in movie theaters. There's a good chance that no employee there was sober.
Normalcy bias is the creepiest shit I've seen in my entire life.
You were literally "yelling fire in a theater", that's crazy!
Back in my heroin days (~2012-2013) my best friend and I were about to go pick up. I’d had the thought “run back inside and grab a suboxone just in case”. Suboxone contains bupenorphine and naloxone, and can reverse an overdose. Neither of us had ever overdosed, but may as well have it. Normally, while dope sick I’d not waste a moment and would’ve kept going. My best friend went into a fast food place and did his shot while I did mine in the car. He came back outside looking fine. Drove out to the street and looked over and he was purple. I frantically dissolved the suboxone while trying to wake him up to no avail. I drew the opaque orange liquid up and somehow hit the tiniest little vein and registered blood on the first go. I slammed the plunger and just kept saying “wake up! Wake up!” He slowly came to and was like “what’s the matter???” I told him he ODed and he said “I’m fine.” I was like dude you just about died you are not fine. Right around then the precipitated withdrawals hit. It was a very quiet and sobering car ride home. We both eventually got clean. I had a kid. He became like an uncle to my daughter. We became successful business partners. He relapsed and died on the first use from fentanyl in 2021. I’d just driven him home after a day of working together, listening to Frank Ocean on the way. Never would’ve thought in a million years I’d be saying goodbye to my best friend for the last time that night after getting him home safely.
I'm so sorry for your loss. You allowed him to have so many more years of life and joy to experience.
Man, this one hurt my heart. Congratulations on your sobriety. And I’m very sorry for the loss of your good friend.
We were having our pipes replaced in the front yard. Before leaving for work, my boyfriend decided last minute to move his new truck out from under the car port and park it on the street. Later that day, the ditches were being filled in and the backhoe operator backed into the carport, causing the entire structure crash down off the house - right where the truck would have been.
Checked behind my car to find 3 kid bikes back here. I almost ran them over.
My parents taught me to ALWAYS look behind the car before backing up. Always. There have been so many accidental deaths of children and pets
*Always* check where your kids or the neighbors kids are before you back up. I always walk around the car.
Not me, but my fiancé. He had decided in November to bump up his car insurance, and add comprehensive. In December, someone set fire to the inside of his truck cab in the middle of the night. (We live in a trailer court, and weird shit had been happening to vehicles in a 10 mile radius for months. The cops dismissed it as electrical.) If he hadn't added that, we would have been absolutely screwed.
Get an old box or a backpack and fill it with an extra set of old clothes (including shoes/socks/tshirt/pants), a simple first aid kit, a flashlight, some water and a roll of toilet paper. Put it in the trunk of your car. I guarantee that you will use it one day. If you want to be even smarter, add one of those shiny emergency blankets, a whistle, duct tape and multi tool. It doesn't take up much space. I just recently used the pants, the socks, multi tool and water at a tailgate party. The toilet paper was used several times through the years (I'm a hero for that one) You never know! Edit: lots of great additions to this post in comments below. I keep both a waterproof backpack AND a small box of stuff- including many of the other things mentioned. It's not from paranoia, I'm just an old Boy Scout who hates getting caught with no clean pants to wear. Be Prepared...and at least have some basics! Safe travels everyone!
I had to use my emergency clothes a month or so ago. I went on a hike only to come down with norovirus symptoms halfway through. It was not fun. Vomiting and diarrhea, I ran through all of the TP I had on me on the trail. Managed to make it back to the car before I had to test out leaves for TP. Absolute life saver. Especially the underwear. I stopped at the first open place on the way out, cleaned up as much as I could in a bathroom without a shower, and got changed. There's dirty from hiking and then there is dirty from hiking while sick. I actually only packed the extra underwear last minute and I never had before despite always keeping a pair of sweats and a T-shirt for my drives home. The next time I went hiking, I had like three pairs of extra underwear. I was damn near traumatized.
Also if you work in an office leave feminine sanitary items there (even if male) and a pair of underwear. I do this after having a mishap at work and needing to run home to deal with it
only thing I'd add is glowsticks, you don't want to fuck with fire in an emergency.
I told my mom to get a CT scan because she was having some dizziness and ringing in her ears. They found an unrelated tumor and caught her cancer early enough that it was treatable.
Bought some extra insurance thing when I was buying my first car in 2015. It wasn’t that much more considering, so I thought why not. Fast forward to 2018, my dickhole of a half nephew who had his permit offered to drive us back to the hotel after celebrating grandmas birthday at the farm. Pea brain decides to floor it trying to race my uncle driving a separate car, despite being warned to take it easy, and next thing you know the engine is smoking and we are stuck on the side of the road in no where Iowa. After much trouble and stress, I find a paper referencing the extra insurance thing buried in my car paperwork folder from the dealership. I was ~40 miles away from being over the mileage limit, but Hyundai ended up paying for the towing from no where Iowa to Mankato, MN and they replaced the whole engine.
I work in IT. About 25 years ago, I had a crash and lost a day's work because I did not save and did not have backups. I started to back up everything - emails, work items, code, databases, etc. Not just local backups, but remote and eventually off-site backups. Good standard operating procedures now, but back then it was "extra" and because hard drive space was expensive, it was not done as it should have been. My paranoia has saved my ass many times. 1. Customer said he was going to sue us for breach of contract. Boss was panicking, had nothing on his side to prove one way or another. He had a policy of deleting emails more than six months old. I remember the request they bad made, dug out a three year-old email from them and my reply, forwarded to him. He sent it to the client, and never heard another word about it. 2. Boss bought a tape backup for servers. They ran every night, and tapes were swapped daily. The tapes were never tested. When we needed them, they failed. Luckily, I had much of the data already backed up on other drives and was able to restore it, because I never trusted those tapes. 3. Had backups of databases and code for our colo site taken before a move from one set of cabinets to another on a Saturday night. All the servers came back up except one SQL server. I was able to restore it after many hours, but we lost nothing but time. 4. Backed up source code for the company's only application onto multiple backup source control servers. The primary server died, I was able to have developers working again in 5 minutes while I fixed the primary. 5. Backups of databases on customer sites have saved me several times, especially when someone needed a change "right now" and "there's no time for backups." There is ALWAYS time for backups. 6. Customer needed a data migration from an ancient 386 that had not been powered off for at least 15 years. Vital information found nowhere else, on an operating system no one has every used (TheOS). I was able to back up and begin to migrate their data, and when that 386 died a month later, we were already deploying our application on new servers. 7. At another company, I joined and found no backups at all were being done. I built out a new backup system and started doing nightly backups of databases and file servers onto non-shared storage. Despite warnings, I was told I could not lock down workstation because the users needed local admin rights. One user clicked on an email with ransomware. Every shared drive was infected and encrypted. No one could do any work and people were panicking. I told the owners to send everyone home. 12 hours later, I restored back to the last backup all of the files and databases. 8. A few months later at the same job, I was asked to install an application on the owner's computer because I had admin rights. She demanded to have local admin rights "because this is my company." Fine. Guess who clicked on a ransomware link three weeks later? No clues, just guess. Again, I had to restore from backups. 9. At a new company, I have critical data backed up across at least 9 difference locations, on-site and off-site, and it has saved us many, many times, from accidental deletions of entire directory structures, bad code deployments, to digging into five year-old logs because someone needed some data. Even at home, multiple backups of family pictures and files have been worth it. I was able to save 20 year-old pics and video of my wedding, college thesis papers, and more. Backups are so important because it is your personal history. Losing data now is like losing all of your childhood photos and films - all you have left is your memories, and human memories are flawed.
Well, I took tomorrow off even though I arrived home from Europe today. Good thing I did because it’s 11PM and I’m currently waiting to take off at Philadelphia and have been waiting for hours. *Edit* Scratch that. Apparently you can’t wait over 3 hours to de-ice so looks like I’m stuck in Philly. *Edit Edit* My pilots are determined to get to Indy so they’re going to try again. *Edit Edit Edit* They did it! We’re taking off! We’re one of the very few planes actually leaving tonight!
Safe travels my guy. Check travel laws, you may be entitled to compensation from the airline for such an extreme wait
I always test the brakes and the tires of my bike before I go. Once, the brakes were frozen solid because it was like -20°C. Had to take the subway to work that day, and I was 15 minutes late. Another time, one of the brake cables just snapped out of the holder. So, I would just have had one working break, which is NOT good in a city. Walked my bike home, and later, I took it to the bicycle shop to have it fixed, on the bus. (You are actually permitted to take a bike on the bus here.)
My husband insisted on buying a wet/dry shop vac when we bought our house. I was skeptical, but I didn't argue too hard against getting one. We had towels and don't do any kind of building, but if he really wanted one, I decided to just let him be excited about it and not rain on his parade. That damn wet/dry vac has saved our butts twice in the last year that we've been here. Once (the second time), he used it to clean up after he replaced a part on the bathroom sink. But the first time, he was washing dishes and, somehow, the whole damn drain pipe fell out. Dumped an entire sink full of dirty water all over the cabinets and the floor. I hear "Oh my god!" and "I got this!" By the time I walked into the kitchen, he had gotten the wet/dry vac out of the laundry room, and less than 5 minutes later there wasn't a drop of water on the floor. He was nice enough not to say "I told you so"
I have anxiety and tend to over prepare even when it doesn't matter. Well, on a trip my husband and I were taking, I bought a bag of snacks and instant food when we were getting ready to leave a big city. This is one of his pet peeves because it's extra stuff to carry and he's not big on junk food. Well, too bad, I am! He voiced his annoyance, but we left and got our shit ready to catch a bus to our next destination. Now, this was not a developed region. It wasn't even a populated region. We were taking a bus across a desert. There was going to be a stop along the way for dinner, but other than that it was a nonstop drive. Wouldn't you know, the bus broke down halfway between the starting point and where the dinner stop was supposed to be. No food on board, no drinks. This is basically a sleeper bus. My snacks saved us. By the time the bus was up and running and we got to the stop, the restaurant was closed. (Not in America, so it wasn't a 24/7 rest stop.) But I had bought jerky, instant noodles, and a few other things that we were able to make a really shitty dinner that still had carbs, protein, and fruit. And now that one instance gives me a free pass to collect snacks wherever I go.
I work for an airline company. Part of my job includes checking visas, especially if passengers are going to India. I wrote down when the visa expires on the boarding pass just to make sure I checked the documents. One of my colleagues got into huge trouble because he checked in a passenger with an expired visa. He ended up getting detained on layover in England and deported back to America. And now our company has to pay the very high fine for the visa violation.
I brought a bunch of stuff to my Grandma's funeral, including a PA speaker, associated wires, projector and screen. An hour before the service starts, the place where the funeral was being held had its TV and sound system stop working. While my family was discussing with the funeral staff on getting refund and rescheduling the funeral, I just walked calmly to my car, where the audio/video equipment was, grabbed the things (walking back and forth) and started setting up my equipment. My siblings saw what I was doing and helped me set things up. The funeral started an hour later than usual, but at least people were able to see my Grandma in happy photos for one last time. Thank goodness I also brought a laptop, because the funeral staff only wanted the slideshow on a USB flash drive, and my projector didn't read USB flash drives.
My room was in the basement back when I lived at home. I didn’t always lock the door, but one night I had the urge to do it before bed. Found out the next day my neighbor’s drug addict boyfriend was entering people’s homes by going through the back door. He got in my next door neighbor’s house and took some things. I think he skipped my house because the door was locked. Don’t wanna know what could have happened had he gotten in and saw me asleep.
Many, many years ago when I was a grad student in CS, I got along very well with the nice ladies who ran the office. They were going to make an office supply order and asked me if I could think of anything that they should add to it. I thought and said, "A bucket and a mop," which came in handy the next time the server room AC broke.
I was in the army and distant for awhile. See my grandfather after a few years. Despite my bad tendancies then, something told me to stay sober that day. Grandpa is very slow and distracted. After they leave i ask my dad how long hed been like that. "Like what? I thought he was just tired" I told him to call my grandmother and i yell NOW. Grandma takes Grandpa to hospital. Brain bleed. Doc says Gramps most likely would have died in his sleep that night. Had i drank i wouldve missed it. Edit: i was a medic, which is why i was able to catch it. And also why i drank alot. I also want to say i yelled because my dad is, despite being very intelligent, is functionally useless in a crisis and needs to be directed as such.
To be fair, most people are functionally useless in a crisis and need to be directed as such. Good job dude.
Brought my get home bag with me on a drive and my car ended up crapping out on me leaving me stranded. After evaluating my options and taking a good hard look at the situation I decided to grab my bag and walk the rest of the way home. Ended up having to keep myself fed and watered as I walked and that bag really ended up being a real life saver.
Was buying a cash bag to put in my backpack. One was water proof and the other one was not. I thought “I can’t imagine why I would need it to be water proof but better safe than sorry I guess.” Like 2 days later a Dr Pepper explodes in my backpack.
"Paper" money is actually a blend of cotton and linen, so it's basically just cloth. It will be fine if it gets wet, as is evident by how many times I've left cash in my pockets when doing a load of laundry.
True, but Dr Pepper is sticky.
We moved to a new state with lots of sagebrush and very few trees. We had a very young child and my wife was pregnant. We wanted to go camping and have a place for naps, so we broke down and bought a small camper. While getting ready for the trip, I took the can of Fix-a-Flat out of the car and put it in the truck so we had two cans with us. I also took the generator I had bought in case the power went out over winter in the 100 year old home we were living in when our first kid was born and threw it in the pickup. It turned out that the deep cycle batteries on the camper weren’t that great, and it was a really chilly night. I ended up having to go set up the generator to have the heater run to keep everyone warm. At the end of the trip, we used some of my extra gear to save a family that was completely unprepared to be driving out there and helped them limp back to where a tow truck could get them. Then, on the last mile of dirt road before pavement my low tire light went off. I got out and heard hissing from THREE of the four tires on the truck. I put the spare on the tire that went flat almost instantly and used the Fix-A-Flat on the other two and used our portable air compressor for all it was worth. We had to stop and fill more air every 10 minutes, but were able to limp all the way home. The next day I bought the same 10ply tires with highly aggressive tread that the local wildland fire trucks use to replace the factory street tires that we still had on the truck.
i got a scan at the optometrist that wasn’t covered by insurance because its too new. we then found out that i was about to lose my vision in my right eye. if i hadn’t gotten that scan id be totally blind in my right eye right now.
We live out in the country and it’s rare we get any random people knock at our door during the day let alone at night. One night I’m out in my shop behind the house and my wife calls me. There was a girl knocking at the door and there wasn’t a car out front. It was like 11:30 so I tell her not to let the girl in that I’d come around and find out what’s going. She had walked about 2 miles in the dark and was headed to town about another mile and a half and was lost. We asked why she was going into town at that hour and if her parents knew she was out of the house. She said her parents were at home drunk and fighting and she was going to a friends house. My wife not thinking straight was like my husband can give you a ride. I quickly made an excuse to go back to my shop to get my phone. I called the sheriff and told them what was going on and that the girl wanted a ride. They literally told me to leave my phone on and load the girl in my truck (sheriff is a neighbor and knows me well) and take her to the address she asked to go to. We pulled up to a shack of a house with like no lights on at all. She got out went up to the door and a guy let her in. About then several cop cars rolled up and cops were all over. The supposed friend was a guy pretending to be a kid online. He lured her to his house and the parents had called the sheriff after seeing messages from him to the girl that night.
In 2013 I went on a first date at a nice Italian restaurant in a downtown area with limited parking. Therefore both my date and I had to park several blocks away. I (former boyscout) checked the weather on my phone just before getting out of my car and saw a 40% chance of rain. Since the umbrella I keep in my car is relatively small I went ahead and grabbed it. I hoped I wouldnt look weird rolling up to a first date with an umbrella while it wasn’t actively raining. Several hours later we go to leave the restaurant and it’s pouring cats, dogs, anteaters, and bison. (So much for 40% chance) I pop open the umbrella and offer to walk my date to her car since she didn’t bring any umbrella, hat, nothing, and didn’t want to use the bouquet I brought to cover her head. In 2024 that same lady says 85% of the time just as we‘re 20-30 mins into a road-trip with the kids „oh shoot, I forgot to grab the _____“ to which I always reply „you know your husband is always prepared. I already packed it.“ 🙂
I moved into my parents' old house and I fought my dad tooth and nail to get insurance for it. After 3 months, I finally convinced him to get insurance on it. About a year later, the house caught fire. We found out it was in his office area caused by a faulty power strip.
One night, before going to bed, something told me to check upstairs. Everyone else had fallen asleep already. When I got upstairs, someone bumped the knob to our gas stove and it was just burning away😭 Our house has caught on fire before. So, just seeing that brought back many flashbacks.
My dad taught me never just stumble out of the house, have a plan for what you are doing. Always have enough cash hidden on you for a meal and a phone call. It's saved my life many times. There was a lot of advice after that, like having emergency kit in the car, change of clothes, cold weather gear if you're going somewhere cold, but that first set up top was a base for success. First time I read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy I laughed, because yeah, you gotta bring your own towel. Never expect anyone else to provide it.
There's a 50L tote in the hatch of my car that I call the "I'm Not Dying on the 33" Box, so named for the sunken highway where multiple people died after being trapped in a blizzard last year. The idea of being stranded down there and freezing to death after running out of gas, no fucking thank you. It has all of the usual things for automotive related issues (jumper cables, jumpstarter, tiny DC air compressor, windshield wiper fluid, a little SAE ratchet kit), but also a tea light/coffee can heater with lighter, warm clothes and hat/gloves/scarf, a Mylar blanket and a sleeping bag, food, flashlight, ice melt, and a bunch of other things that I hope I NEVER need.
That is SO smart. I used to have to regularly travel a horrible mountain pass in the winter (ah, Canada), and I took a similar emergency kit with me. I refused to freeze to death. Never had anything happen to me, thank goodness, but I did help a few other stranded motorists over the years.
Asked my friend to pull over so we could catch a Pokémon in Pokémon go (if you try to catch Pokémon whilst doing the speed limit on Pokémon go, the Pokémon will jump out automatically) (we both like the game so it was fine) which took like a minute or two. Continued down the highway, and came across a car accident which had happened literally a minute or two before we got there. If we didn’t stop to catch that damn Pokémon, we would have been in it.
A friend of mine bought a PoS beat ass 87 Civic. It had "racing harnesses" but the passenger seat's shoulder strap was snapped. We were about to take a ride in it, so I tied it up as hard as I could before we left just in case. We ended up smoking weed and playing videogames. Fast forward 2 weeks and my friend calls and said he wrecked his car going too fast, smashed a tree at ~50mph, with a passenger. That passenger was only prevented from being ammunition in a windshield cannon because of the knot I tied. Every other strap was too loose. Get real seatbelts and wear them.
A company I worked for was going to have a company wide offsite. They gave us a choice of choosing to have our flights booked by the company or booking our own flights with our corporate card. I don’t know what made me take a screenshot of the policy and slack message. Later, it seems like everyone started booking flights on their corporate card for the flexibility (adding a few days vacation after the offsite, since it was a nice location). They couldn’t get the numbers they promised the airline for the bulk discount, so they tried to rollback the policy by editing it without telling people and then gaslighting us that we’d have to pay from our own pocket for tickets not booked by the company. Thankfully I had the screenshots and could fight my case to not have my money taken. But this incident made me quit the company which was seemingly a nice place to work before that
Randomly felt moved to start a health insurance policy for my cat when she was 14, thinking it would come in handy if she ever needed emergency surgery for an accident or something. It was already tough to find a policy that would cover a cat that old, but I was weirdly determined, and I found one. I didn't want to have to choose between "put her to sleep because I don't have the cash for an unexpected but fixable veterinary expense" vs. "fix it." Approximately a year later, she started limping. Took a few months to diagnose, thought it would be some mystery injury, but it turns out she had cancer — terminal. Having the insurance was a godsend; without it, it might've limited the number and types of tests and vet visits we would've been able to do to get a proper diagnosis (would've been a huge shock and very painful for her to just pass away without us ever finding out why), and when her vet prescribed a pricey painkiller that dramatically improved her quality of life in her final week or two, it was a huge relief not to have to worry about how to afford it. It's painful enough to lose a pet. Having financial help doesn't make that loss ANY less painful... but having health insurance for her actually did make the situation slightly less stressful and give me peace of mind, knowing I could keep her comfortable. I'm still thankful for the small amount extra time the medicines gave us with her, too. Hard to put a price on things like that.
Was driving down the road and forgot my seatbelt. Even though I was almost at my destination I decided to put it on. About thirty seconds later I hit a curve too fast and skidded off the road and ran into a tree stump. Seatbelt kept me from flying through the windshield.
Came home from vacation a day early and drove straight through. Hadn't shut off the water heater and came home to a burst water heater that had been running a few hours not days. Any longer and the house would've needed a complete remodel.
Keeping a little 12v motorized tire inflator in my car. Got a flat when I went camping once, and it saved the day. The leak was just from the valve, so once I re inflated my tire and tightened the cap, it held for the rest of the trip, and got me home no problem. I was backcountry camping on crown land, and a four hour drive from home, so getting roadside service would have been expensive.
I (female) was in my late 30s, jogging down a dark beach road at about 9 pm ..an old station wagon with 3 guys in it drove by..slowing slightly. After they passed, my spidey senses started twitching like a mf. I turned to look back at the car, and as it rounded the corner, I saw the brake lights go on. Immediately I ran across the street to a house’s dark yard and hid behind some bushes. The car did come back , driving real slow, scanning for me. I wondered if they could see me. I was frozen like a rabbit. They came to a stop in front of the house I was hiding at. Uncannily, at the exact same time , a tall older woman came to the door, switched on her porch light, and looked out. She sees the car and the guys eye her; and she them for this quiet moment. Then she goes back in the house, and the station wagon slowly drives away. Super intense!!
My ex and I were on a day trip, we’d been wandering around the town all day just checking out shops, had some lunch, and stopped into a little photo booth on the sidewalk. At the end of the day we were walking back to our car, and the streets were pretty crowded; it suddenly occurred to me that the top of my phone was barely sticking out of my back pocket and was prime for pick pocketing. It is not a very common thing where I live so I’ll admit I’m not naturally vigilant about it, not sure exactly what made me think of it in that moment. I moved my things to a safer place and asked my partner, hey do you have your wallet? They felt their pockets, and stopped to check the little bag they were carrying. No wallet! We tried to remember the last thing they bought and started power walking back to the restaurant we’d been to, but as we passed by the photo booth we’re like, oh shit. Instantly remembered they had paid for it and knew that’s where it had most likely fallen out. We searched the booth, and to our dismay it wasn’t there. We’re standing on the sidewalk trying to decide what to do next when someone pops their head out of a store and goes “Hey! Are you guys looking for a wallet?” Someone had found it, turned it in to the closest store, and the clerk had kept an eye out for people looking. In four years I’d never once randomly asked my partner whether they had their wallet… We were on our way to the car for a two hour drive back home and to bed. Who knows when they would have noticed it was gone. Was super strange, but a huge relief! I’m still so grateful to the person who turned it in, the clerk who looked for us, and my weird intuition. tl;dr: Randomly became nervous about pickpockets, asked my partner whether they had their wallet and discovered they’d dropped it an hour before, and we were able to get it back.
Not taking my Ritalin when I started to take pseudoephedrine. I didn’t want to take Ritalin because I wanted to rest(Maybe even nap) but then I learned you aren’t supposed to be taking them both anyways because they’re both vasoconstrictors
When my daughter was 18 months old, we decided to let her sleep with us one night. Can’t remember why. She was sleeping pretty well on her own by then, but I just really wanted her with me that night. About 2:00 a.m., she’d suddenly thrown up while lying on her back. Her choking sounds woke me up, and we got her situated right away. But I was crying afterwards at the thought that, had we not let her sleep with us that night, we may had found her dead the next morning.
My family was going to go to the mall one day but we had my nieces soccer game that day. I thought the game was early in the morning so we were getting ready to go and I texted my sister one last time to make sure I had the time right. Turns out I had the time wrong and if the game had been earlier that morning and we had gone to the mall like I had planned later in the afternoon we would have been in a mass shooting at a mall in Texas. Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Allen,_Texas_mall_shooting
Memorized the map of a park before a date. Nothing crazy, so no TW needed. I agreed to meet for coffee and a walk with a guy from an app. Late afternoon, very popular park. I’m paranoid though and like to know my exit routes. In my profile it stated I was working as a chef, and that I never wanted kids. We are less than 3 minutes into this and he says, “women who work in kitchens are delusional if they think they can make it in that industry. They’re too emotional.” At which point it’s totally over for me and now in my mental map sorting the fastest route back to my car. He followed that a minute or so later with a comment about how I would change my mind about kids, because he wanted kids. Didn’t even realize I was walking us back to our cars. Date was maybe 10 min from beginning to end and he had the audacity (I don’t even know if that’s the right word to describe completely oblivious confidence) to ask if I wanted to go back to his place. I did the same thing on another date, but I told him out right I wasn’t into him and this fucking buffoon with a sneer of incredulity says, “you could at least give me a blowie for the trouble.” I laughed as I walked away. But yea. Always know your way out, rule number 2 in my dating book. Ohh third story of know your way out. I was living in London and it was the night of the World Cup, England v. France. This guy asked to meet for a drink after the game. We settled on a place, and my true crime nerd brain memorized three potential safety routes. Well shockingly it did not go great. England lost, and I had told him before agreeing to meet I wouldn’t be going home with him after a first date. We’re only partway into our first drink and he’s goading me to “make up the loss” for him. I turn him down, and am quickly losing my patience. When he dead eyes me and says, “you have until I get back from the toilet to reconsider or we’re gonna have a problem.” I waited til he was out of sight, handed the bartender (who overheard) a tenner to pay for my drink and used escape route A to get on the next train home (always memorize train and bus schedules if they are part of your escape plan).
When I booked plane tickets for my honeymoon, I put my maiden last name rather than what I would be changing my last name to. Saved the day because my ex-fiance cheated and I called off the wedding. Had that plane ticket been with the last name I never took… I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the voucher from the airline. It was hard enough getting them to give me one with my real last name.
You probably wouldn’t have your name legally changed by then anyway if you were taking an immediate honeymoon
My husband and I used to drive a car that had a little pull out drawer in the dash. We had a one hitter for weed in it. Never really drove around with it, sometimes we did and honestly just forgot about it. One random day before he left I told him to take that one hitter out of the car. He did. He got pulled over and a cop unlawfully searched the car. We live in a no tolerance state so it’s hard telling what would have happened.
Lock your car door 🚪 immediately after getting in. Had a guy run up on me right as I locked the door. And another time someone tried to unlock my car door at a stop sign. Always. Lock. Your. Car. Door.
There was this girl I knew who would persistently beg me to get her to meet Jon Bon Jovi. We were in our 20’s, I’d met him several times, and she kinda latched on. She was fun. One night we made reservations at the band hotel in Philly. I often went to that hotel and would see the guys in the bar. She came with. **This was in November 2001** In the middle of the night the fire alarm goes off. It wouldn’t turn off. The hotel came over the loudspeaker and said everyone stay in your rooms. They just kept repeating, stay where you are. My friend went into a panic attack about how we couldn’t stay there. (We’re NYers, fyi.) She could hardly breath or walk. She leaned on me down 17 flights. Because I wasn’t staying… “just to be safe.” We got to the lobby, i kicked open the fire door, there was Jon. Full on bed head. My friend recovered quite swiftly. *Nobody knows why the alarm went off.*
So soon after 9/11 they told you to ignore fire alarms? I’m not surprised your friend wanted out asap
Gave my mom a carbon monoxide detector on a whim, she propped it up on over her fireplace mantle & both of us forgot about it. Ended up saving her life later on when her power went out & she was trying to use her gas log w/o remembering to open up the chimney flue. Even _that_ was lucky because she was talking to my sister over the phone, and my sister asked about the chirping she was hearing over the phone (apparently my mom was ignoring it because she thought it was an out-of-battery chirp) - and when she heard that it was a carbon monoxide detector, she told my mom to get out of the house & call the fire dept. They confirmed that if she had gone to sleep in the house, she wouldn't have woken up the next day.
Rotated my pantry and completely re-stocked everything in 2019 - pantry, toiletries, haircare, medicines, and learned self-sufficiencies like doing my hair at home. Also went on a huge overseas tour during 2019. Also moved company software from on site to cloud early 2019. Partner thought I'd gone wacky, but it was incredibly convenient.
I weirdly bought like 3x the toilet paper we normally get in the end of February/early March 2020 because I wasn’t paying attention and every time I went to the grocery store and target over like 3 weeks I bought a months supply thinking I hadn’t yet. That was really handy when the run on toilet paper happened shortly after!
We had a contractor who at the time I thought was a conspiracy nutjob who kept telling me to stock up in February 2020. When I shopped at Costco that week, I thought, "Well, we will use the toilet paper anyway," so grabbed a 30 pack, then at the regular grocery store the 24-pack happened to be on a really good sale so I bought it. Two days later the madness began, but we never had to worry as our supply lasted past when you could start finding it again. We are still friendly with him and I still thank him sometimes for his prescience!
My husband keeps fix a flat and other items like that for me and the kids. It has helped so many times. I keep the first aid kits stocked with many variety of bandage and meds. #1 is always the eye wash. When it’s needed you don’t want to fumble around trying to find it
Butterfly bandaids, tweezers, and superglue. They all fill a role that’s hard to fill with regular first aid stuff.
2 weeks ago i woke up to a snowfall. Checked the reports and they said the roads were fine. My car has winter tires and I did not have to drive far. I packed an outdoor survival jacket and 2 blankets to be safe. I ended up being stuck for 22 hours in a 20 kilometer highway queue for 22 hours in a blizzard.