1 week ago
20
If you're a decent human being, I'm sure being a good Samaritan is important to you. However, in life, not everyone, nor every situation, deserves the same courtesy, am I right? Like, in the cases in this Reddit thread, people discussed moments when we just have to let people live sometimes. Here's what they spilled:
1. "A guy called me up to basically brag that he was the one my girlfriend had been cheating with. It was serious, and they had been seeing each other for a year or so. Even though we hadn't officially broken up, we were basically done at that point, so it wasn't a real surprise. I wasn't even all that mad. What I didn't tell him was that she had hidden about $400K of debt from me. I only figured it out when she tried to name me as a co-signer for another massive loan. I think they got married eventually. So…good luck, buddy."
2. "I'm a lawyer. I had a client call me and say, 'Hey, I got a call from the sheriff's department asking me about some stuff I did. Should I call them back?' I told him, 'No. Absolutely not.' The next day, he walked into the department and told the deputy, 'Hey, I just wanted to come in and clear the air. Figure we should talk it out like men.' Charges were filed that afternoon. WTF did you even hire me for?"
3. "I used to work with a recently graduated woman who was a pretty decent salesperson. When she got her first paycheck after a big commission, she showed up to work in a brand-new Lexus. Later on, though, one of our coworkers let it slip that she was already struggling to pay off her credit cards when she got the new car and had asked management to consider promoting her because 'she needed to be on the fast track to success so her kids could live the life she deserved.' Turns out, she was one of those ‘hustle to cover how overextended I am' folks, instead of ever considering building a budget and sticking to it. SO many commissioned folks I have known are like this."
4. "You've got a young child. They're refusing to eat their favorite dinner. You engage in conversation with the other people at the table. It's about school or the weekend, something the young child can follow. A few minutes later, they forget they're being stubborn and start eating dinner. You DO NOT say ‘Well done, sweetheart, keep going!' — they will immediately remember they were being stubborn before. You just let them eat. You're not ignoring them if they want to join in conversation — this isn't the ‘silent treatment’ — but you're not mentioning their dinner once they forget they weren't eating."
5. "I let my irritating coworker continue CC'ing our boss on all the unnecessary and/or straight-up wrong emails he sends me. I think he thinks he’s ‘telling’ on me, when he’s really just proving my point."
6. "Watching any court case where someone thinks they can represent themselves."
7. "Don't tell the scammer you have a dash cam until he's finished lying to the cop."
8. "During World War II, the British had deciphered the German encryption system known as Enigma. They did their utmost to keep this a secret, including letting some deciphered attacks go through from time to time. Right up to the end of the war, the Germans had no idea that their unbreakable code had been decrypted and that the Allies could read almost all their radio transmissions."
9. "In a debate between Romney and Obama, Obama obliged and said, 'Please proceed,' to get Romney to say something about him that was easily verifiably false."
11. "The serial killer known as BTK was caught because he told police via a letter that he wanted to send them a floppy disk, but only if it couldn’t be traced. Police lied and said it couldn’t be traced. He believed them and sent them the disk. Metadata told police where the files had been copied, as well as BTK’s name."
12. "I once played poker against a guy wearing mirrored sunglasses."
13. "My friend let one of the directors of his electrical company go on a power trip. The director wanted to flip on a main breaker. My friend asked if he completed the hazard assessment paperwork properly before they started, and the director said no; he didn't need to. My friend got him a flash suit to wear, which the director promptly threw aside because he ‘didn't have fucking time.’ My friend took a picture of him without any paperwork or proper PPE, conducting fatally unsafe work, and sent it to the board. The board suspended him for two weeks without pay and demanded he complete (again) his entire workplace safety course before returning to work. The director took the 2-week suspension as a neat, unpaid vacation and tried to come back to work without completing the safety course, which resulted in him being further suspended while he had to come into work every day to go through the course supervised, or he would be removed by the board."
14. "Years ago, I adopted the workplace approach of ‘letting people fail.’ It's a great way to ensure that problematic people go away. If you see someone you don't like walking towards the edge of a cliff, you don't pull them back — even if the company suffers a bit. I had a terrible boss at one point; he was an absolute dictator dickhead. He had been a military officer, and this was his first job after getting out. He incorrectly assumed that military tactics would work in the corporate world. They don't. You don't bark orders at people. You don't call feedback ‘insubordination.’ You don't make everything into a fucking acronym nobody understands. It became clear that the approach with this fucker was going to be twofold — malicious compliance, and not walking him back from the cliff when he was about to make a fatal mistake."
15. "My apprentice, who was supposed to be fired that day for sloppy and negligent work habits, showed up at the workshop that morning wearing gloves as socks and Crocs because he had forgotten his socks and work shoes. This presented us with a great opportunity to explain our viewpoint."
16. "I had a supervisor in a previous job hounding me about very dumb shit that I had gotten approval for from a higher-up supervisor. He came over one shift and just went off on me. I looked at him and let him keep going until he stormed off. I then looked at my surrounding coworkers and asked if everyone witnessed that. They all said, ‘Hell yeah, we did.’ I immediately wrote a very professional email to the director, and within a week, he was fired because my response got several others to come forward about other incidents."
17. "He wasn't my enemy until he said this, but someone in a negotiation told a very fundamental lie, and I was able to verify it was a lie. I quietly put it in my pocket and let the negotiations go on for months, with him thinking I believed him. I brought it up in the last hour of the 6-month process, and he immediately folded."
18. "I had ordered a birthday gift for someone from Amazon and requested that the gift be wrapped. It was not wrapped when it arrived, so I spoke to the live support chat to try to get my $4 credited to the account for the lack of wrapping paper. While I was typing my next paragraph about requesting my $4 credit, they refunded the entire order — roughly $100 worth — without requiring me to send anything back. Like, okay, I mean, I'll take it. I only wanted $4, but if you're gonna hand me all of it back? I’m not gonna stop you."
19. And finally, "This reminds me of a reporter who asked someone who cut down trees to make paper and other things, and plant new trees back to talk about ecology. When the man explained that he used wood to build houses and bridges too, the reporter asked him why he didn't just use concrete. The man said simply, ‘You can't grow concrete.’ The reporter answered back immediately, ‘Yes, you can.’ Everyone stayed silent for a good 10 seconds to process the stupidity. That was funny."
Are you facepalming? Have you ever witnessed someone make a mistake that had you questioning humanity? Let us know in the comments. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can fill out the form below!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
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