An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason

Sadly, we will all go through the experience of losing people we love. It’s part of life, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly painful and gutwrenching.

A woman on Reddit lost someone important in her life and she turned to people on the Internet to help her get through the tough time. The title of her post was, “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Photo Credit: Pexels

That’s when the self-proclaimed “old” person offered up their advice. Be sure to read his entire post, because it is pretty incredible.

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes.

Photo Credit: Flickr,michael_swan

My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

Photo Credit: Pexels

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

People were deeply moved by the old man’s eloquent words.

“I’m reading this now as I lay bedside by my mother who has had cancer for 6 months, and cancer won. She’s been on a morphine drip for the last few days. I’m trying to cope, and came across this. Thank you.”

“This is beautiful. You have helped more people than you know by posting this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“As much pain as it’s caused, the memories I have of my friends and family are much more pleasant. And when I feel like I’m floating, I hang on to those memories like a life preserver, and you know what? They work really well.”

Thank you for your thoughtful words, sir. I think they brought comfort to many strangers who needed them at exactly the right time.

The post An Elderly Man’s Moving Advice to a Grieving Woman Went Viral for Good Reason appeared first on UberFacts.

21 People Explain How They Got Their Bosses Fired

This question on Reddit was quite intriguing:

“People who’ve gotten their bosses fired: how?”

Some stories were funny, and others were pretty shocking. How can people do those kinds of things in the workplace?

Here are 21 of the most interesting tales about someone getting their boss tossed out the door.

1. What an asshole!

He grabbed the back of my neck and said “If you ever say I’m wrong in front of a customer again I will beat your ass.”

I went to the GM and told him and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about 5 minutes later

2. Caught red-handed

I took a cell phone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing she’d blame it on me.

She was so stupid that she didn’t realize she should stop doing that while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out and facing her.

3. Well, that backfired!

The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work.

I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office.

4. How do people think this won’t catch up with them?

It was my supervisor.

It got to the point that I had decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse, but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting. Supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments) and my Supervisor would make sexual comments about threesomes (with him – ewww), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, shit like that. It was so bloody uncomfortable. Apart from this he spent most of his supervising time outside smoking. Problem was Supervisor was “one of the guys” and I was the only girl.

Turns out his boss was disgusted, told his boss who lost his mind. They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff – they corroborated what I said. They checked the security cameras, saw he was spending most of his work day outside smoking. And was fired.

When he was told he guessed (wasn’t hard!) that I was the person who complained and tried to get to me to “apologize that I took it the wrong way”. The best feeling was my co workers surrounding me as he was waled out. That was a lovely ending to it all.

5. Document everything.

Was working maintenance at an ice rink.

The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the zamboni doors open, you get the fuck off the ice. Some dick-head decided to ignore the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway, and decided to rip off one last slap-shot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head.

I was OK, but reported it to my boss, because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that. The boss asked “Are you OK?” I said I feel OK, then he responded with “Well, we don’t really have to report it then do we?” I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn’t want to do it. Since he wouldn’t do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident up to the administration, because I felt there should be some sort of documentation/paper trail in case god-forbid I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later.

The boss was fired by my next shift.

6. He doesn’t know how sound works?

Our desks were separated by a 5 foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls including those with his boss’s fiance. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it.

Well there was a position in another department that I was interested in and as per procedure I handed in an application to my talkative boss. Didn’t hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. Filled out another one and handed it in. As I return to my desk I hear the boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me.

I go to boss’s boss and angrily offer my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls like with <woman’s name> and <woman’s name> and <boss’s boss’s fiance’s name>. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he’ll take care of everything. The next day I come in and boss is gone. The day after, I have an interview with the other department (got the position).

I tend to avoid office drama, but really, he should have stuck to screwing his boss’s fiance, and not tried to screw me as well.

7. Damn! This is actually pretty vindictive…

Phoned him to tell him I won’t be at work for the rest of the week as my mum is terminally ill in hospital.

The next day (about an hour after she passed away) he phoned and asked why I wasn’t at work, I just hung up on him so I wouldn’t say anything that would get me in trouble.

The next day I sent the area-manager a Whatsap message explaining what he’d be done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum which cost the store nearly £5000 in lost stock and the repair costs (which he’d told the AM it broke on its own).

He got fired that day and I got 2 weeks off with full pay

8. Creepers gonna creep…

In college I worked in a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school.

I was 17-18 years old (back in 2007/2008) and my boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper. Hitting on me, touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite me asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether.

I told the assistant manager what was going on (which I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to the assistant) and he reported what was going on to upper management– boom, manager was fired. I worried for a while if he was going to come after me for that.

9. Yeah, this isn’t gonna turn out well for you…

About 13-14 years ago, I was working as a web designer for a dot com. In our immediate group were a creative director, a creative manager, and 2 of us who were designers and we were all part of the marketing dept.

The creative director was a joke. Brought in by the previous VP of Marketing who he was friends with, he hardly did any work himself, and just played online poker waiting on us to send him things for approval. And he’d never stick around late when the rest of us needed to stay late to hit a deadline or deal with a crisis, etc. The creative manager, who’d been in charge for a couple years before the creative director’s hiring, still ran the day to day.

So the creative manager gave his notice that he’d accepted a new job, and when I met with the current VP of marketing to discuss transition, I mentioned that the creative director would need to step up and pull his weight. I guess a similar message was expressed by a number of people, and less than a week after the creative manager’s last day the creative director was fired!

This kind of sucked because we went down from 4 to 2 people in our group. I was appointed acting creative manager, and we eventually did hire one more designer. I left the company a couple months later, too, after the latest VP of Marketing was let go and there was going to be a 10th different person overseeing marketing in my 5 years there.

And the asshole creative director? He’d reached out at some point (looking for files for his portfolio, I think?), and it happened to be in the 2 week window where I’d accepted my next job but hadn’t yet started so I mentioned my new position. Well, he fires off a copy of his resume to the company president and tried to poach my new job out from under me! On my first day at the new job, the president mentioned that somebody else from that same company also applied for the job and forwarded me the application email to see if I knew him… saw that the date was after he and I had last communicated!

10. Turnabout is fair play!

I was fired because I “abandoned my job” while on short term disability, because wile on approved leave, they are a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn’t return to work… i was fired.

The locker I had at work had my work boots in it that the company pays $90 a year towards. However there isn’t a pair under $100 available. So you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out, I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired.

11. A happy ending…

About 15 years ago, I worked at a major university in the IT department. After I was hired, it took me a couple of months to realize my boss was a sociopath as was his #2 guy.

Once I realized what I was dealing with, I just tried to keep my head down because I didn’t want to job hop so soon after leaving my last job. But they made that impossible.

We had a database administrator and I was interested in becoming a DBA so I talked to him a lot about what I should do to transition from a programmer to a DBA. The VP of IT, my bosses boss, would stop by and talk to me and ask me about my aspirations, so I told her about wanting to be a DBA and that I was actually taking night classes so I could. This was a woman who my boss referred to as “she who must be obeyed” in a totally disrespectful manner.

As the months went on, I saw more and more egregious behavior by my boss and his #2 toady. We had a large corporation consulting on transition to their database. This included a young guy who was doing the database install including ordering the right equipment and migrating the data.

We also had student workers in our department. They were students who worked part time hours. One of these was a young woman. The big corp young guy and the young woman started going to lunch together. Apparently this was offensive to my boss, who threatened both of them with termination for “fraternization”. The university had no such rule, my boss was just making it up as he went.

About 6 months after I was hired, the DBA quit. I went into our weekly staff meeting and at the end, my boss announces that I’d been promoted to DBA. My spidey senses were tingling because of his tone of voice and because this was the first I was hearing about it.

After the meeting, I went to his office to thank him and tell him I really appreciated the chance. He was very angry. Apparently, his boss had made him promote me. I had no idea.

The next thing I know, I’m being called into my boss’s #2 guy’s office. He tells me that performance reviews were coming up and I would have to be reviewed on job description of DBA rather than the job description of my old position. That is, unless I turned down the DBA position. Yep, he was threatening me to get me to turn down the promotion. I asked him to see the written description of my old position as well as the one for DBA. He couldn’t give them to me because they didn’t exist. Now, I can be a pretty stubborn bitch, and this really pissed me off. I didn’t do anything wrong and now my job was being threatened.

Part of my job duties during the 6 months of my employment involved working with the head of every department of the university, including the legal department. I had a good working relationship with every head of every department.

So I made an appointment with the university’s head counsel. I explained the situation to him including my boss’s boss making him promote me and my boss threatening me with my performance review. I told him that, although I was studying to be a DBA, I was really not qualified to be one without some hard work and if the university didn’t want me to take the position, I would absolutely turn it down. I also mentioned my boss’s nickname for his boss and the issue with the student worker and the big corp guy. Apparently, the student worker had already filed a harassment complaint so the head counsel knew about it.

He told me I had been promoted by someone (boss’s boss) who had every right to promote me and I should not worry about anything. He said if my boss gave me any more trouble that I should let him know.

A week later my boss and his #2 toady were fired. My boss ended up working at a small city college and is there to this day. I pity his employees.

I left the university about 2 years later and had a successful career as a DBA.

12. Boss gone AND more money?!

My manager wanted to prove I’m slacking off so he could write me up. So he watched CCTV footages then wrote, printed out and SIGNED a detailed 17 pages worth of Word document what did I do in the past two days. With timestamps (like, 07:59 arriving, 08:01 speaking with co-worker A and B, 08:07 sitting down to my desk, etc.). He told me that he’s not happy with my work ethics if I won’t improve my efficiency, I’m fired.

I took the papers and showed to his boss and told her that I’m not happy with my managers work ethics and his efficiency might be better if he wouldn’t watch 17 hours of CCTV footages to spy on an employee. She was terrified (it would’ve been a rock solid lawsuit for me – but I love my job) and we had to search for a new manager.

Also, my salary raised.

13. The ole email trick…

I left my last company due to a bully of a gm.

Many people were leaving over him causing problems, being sexist, racist, doing things people could easily sue them for claiming sexual harassment. List goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews, hell he even tried to make my exit interview not happen. Though they still weren’t doing anything. I had been at my new job for a couple months now and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily.

So I made an email account and named Concerned company name Crew. Sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior.

They fired him within the week and my old crew thanked me.

14. Poachers getting punished…

One summer I volunteered to help a conservation society in East Africa. The aim of the project was to educate the local rural population about poaching and to get them to help us stop it from the ground up.

Anyway, I was staying with the lead ranger and his family and on numerous occasions he served us meat that I’m 100% sure was poached. He tried to tell me that it was pork, but it was dark and gamey with lots of small bones. I think that it was small antelope like dikdik or duiker.

When I returned to Nairobi I mentioned to my grandpa (his boss’s boss) that we’d eaten some odd meals. He investigated, and found out that my boss had a poacher friend who was selling him illegal meat. He was fired, I didn’t feel guilty. Poaching is awful.

15. And…. you’re gone!

I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. Middle manager came up and screamed at me. Yelling about how I was not allowed to take calls for clients while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company.

The CTO’s office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done I just looked over at the CTO and said “it’s him or me and at the moment I don’t give a fuck which you pick.” CTO walked the middle manager out right then.

Funny thing: I didn’t hang up throughout the incident. And it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in.

16. The breaking point…

Complained for months about her breaking company policy (and thus state labor law, since the state considered a signed employee handbook to be a binding contract for both sides) — nothing. Tricked her into saying the things I’d been complaining about for months on a conference call with her boss and her boss’s boss, fired that day.

Context: My boss tried to tell me I couldn’t take breaks. The company policy handbook, which I had signed and thus became a binding contract by state law, laid out lunch and/or breaks based on length of shift scheduled for. When I pointed this out she switched to scheduling me by myself and then strolling by the store to check up on me occasionally, writing me up when she ‘caught me’ having closed the store in order to take breaks/eat lunch. Called her boss (regional director) and complained, got the write-ups removed, listened to her tell my boss to chill the fuck out and let me take my breaks, she still didn’t do it. Further (formal) complaints resulted in no changes. I knew there was a quarterly conference call coming up so I developed the habit of walking into her office and saying, ‘It’s time for my break,’ and making her say, every time, that I wasn’t allowed to go. She got in the habit of doing it kind of absent-mindedly in an increasingly aggressive tone. So then I did it again in the middle of the conference call and she blew a gasket, ranting at me about how many times she’d told me that I was not allowed to take breaks, under any circumstances, etc. The call, which she always put on speakerphone, went dead silent. It took her about 5 seconds to realize what she’d just done, and then before she could try to begin damage-control her boss politely cleared her throat and said, ‘Boss, I’ve told you before that that is incorrect.’ I grinned a big ol’ shit-eating grin and went back to work, and there was a temporary manager from another store there the next day.

Turns out she had had my formal, written complaints intercepted before they got to her boss, which I wasn’t aware was possible (apparently she had friends in high places), so I imagine that didn’t go well for her.

17. Gross!

He’d show up every day and tell us a tale of his sexual exploits. Whether true or not, none of us wanted to hear it.

If an attractive looking female comes in, he drops what he’s doing and stares at her, drooling liking a dog in a dog treat factory. After she leaves, he had to say a comment about her appearance.

After talking on the phone with a certain manager, he always comments on how nice her ass is.

He’d bully us employees and other managers. Called us bitches a lot despite us getting onto him for it.

My female coworker reported him. We all had a phone meeting with our district manager and HR. He was suspended until the investigation was over and they ruled to terminate him. Surprisingly HR worked for us that day.

18. Why can’t people be, yanoo… nice?

He was presenting a PowerPoint that I had put together to all the managers in the building. There was something he wanted to add at the last minute that he had never told me about, and when it wasn’t there, he verbally abused me for like 5 minutes straight. Yelling, name calling, telling me to prove to him that I had a college degree and wasn’t just making it up. I was a contractor so I was afraid to complain to HR because I assumed they’d just fire me, but a lot of other people in the room did.

After the meeting, I went into the share drive folder to find the presentation notes where the extra information was supposedly located. I watched the last changed time change from a day ago to the current time, then he immediately called and said it was right there in the notes file.

He was fired the next day for unprofessional behavior.

19. Everybody has encountered a “Linda”. Sorry in advance if your name is Linda…

My direct supervisor, Linda, was a cantankerous older woman with poor education and even worse people skills. About 3 months after I started, I got her so pissed off, just by doing my job, that she cursed me out, got up from her desk and quit.

I don’t even remember what I said that set her off. I probably asked her if she was done with her half of something that I needed in order to finish my half, and became exasperated when she wasn’t, because she’d been farting around all morning. It was a common occurrence.

After Linda walked out, our boss refused to hire her back when she begged (even though she’d been there something like 15 years), because “her attitude was so terrible and she’d become such a toxic, pathetic excuse for a human being.”

I got a pretty solid raise, most of Linda’s tasks (our boss was not unkind and took over some things herself, while giving me more practical things that I enjoyed doing), and even though my car was fine, she’d always have me drive her car to go make coffee runs, deposit checks, run errands, etc. It was a Toyota Solara convertible, and she’d tell me to take the top down and have fun.

I liked that job, I learned quite a bit, and if I hadn’t found something closer to home, for even more money, I probably would’ve been there quite a while.

20. Sometimes you just have to do it yourself…

I quit and his company collapsed without me. That kinda counts, right?

When I was 16, I had a stint as a small-time social media star on Twitter — not because I’m particularly interesting or anything, but for two reasons: a) I got on Twitter really early in 2007 when it was way easier to get followers and engagement due to the site being less noisy and more ‘stupid’ in terms of algorithms and b) I stood out from a lot of other minor Twitter stars because I didn’t let it get t my head; while a lot of them were egotistical and haughty, I followed everyone back, turned ‘haters’ into friends instead of retaliating, etc.

Through this fleeting fame, my former boss found me. He said he was setting up a regional media studio to help small- and medium-sized local businesses with their social media marketing, and he planned to eventually franchise the business into other cities. He hired me on the basis of my large social following (81,000 followers at the time). Obviously, having a large social following doesn’t automatically mean you know how to market businesses on social media, but I adapted and studiously researched how to do my job properly.

My boss didn’t come from a creative background or a marketing role — he came from a property background, and was just sort of winging it in finding an alternative source of income after the housing crash. Being as young as I was at the time, I didn’t really think about any of this stuff. The outcome was that I never received any training, had no real guidance in what I was doing, and was generally left to my own devices. Younger me thought it was great! I saw it as ‘freedom’, but looking back, I realize it was far too much freedom.

The side effects of this disparity between my social media skills and his inability to communicate creative ideas manifested themselves as people trying to cut past the business and come straight to me, to ask me directly as an individual whether I’d do work for them, rather than giving my boss the money. I was respectful (or naïve) enough to open up to my boss about this, and that’s when things started getting a little bit manipulative. He told me I could go my own way or remain part of a business that’d soon be growing across the country.

Fair enough, I thought. So I stayed, and one year in (I was 17/18 at this time) I realized that managing brands via social media had naturally morphed me into something of a graphic designer. A lot of my time was spent creating eye-catching visuals in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign etc. and so I suggested to my boss that we expand our media offering to include logo, graphic, and print design, and visual branding consultancy. Again, I received no training — I worked all day and studied by myself late into the night.

This pattern snowballed over the coming years. By the time I was 21, I was a social media manager, visual branding designer, copywriter, photographer, video editor, and web developer — all skills I nurtured independently with no input or guidance from my boss. The business was still operating in just one city, and my boss had started spending less and less time in the office. I still didn’t realize this wasn’t particularly normal, until clients who came to the office to meet me constantly asked where he was.

One day, a client went as far as to say: “You’re basically running the business at this point!“ It was a huge ‘glass shatter’ moment for me, and I suddenly realized that, yeah, although I wasn’t actually managing the business and its admin work etc., without me, there wouldn’t be a service or product to sell. What’s more, my wages hadn’t gone up, even though my ‘this is great, I have so much freedom!’ mindset had motivated me to continue working on stuff related to the business when I got home.

As I was nearing 22, the owner of the building where the business’ office was located asked me if I’d help him fix his computer (it was just running really slowly because he hadn’t managed his files very well). Not really thinking of it as work, I agreed, and headed into his office after work to help him out. As luck would have it, my boss walked in to hand over that month‘s rent, so he saw me there. He looked surprised, but didn’t comment — he just gave the dude the rent and left the building.

The next day, my boss wasted no time in probing me about what I was doing. He was speaking to me like a cop would speak to a suspect, asking me how long I’d been doing work for the landlord, what kind of work I was doing, why I hadn’t folded the work into the business, etc. I explained I was just fixing up his computer, and he leapt into a lecture about how we needed to keep all work inside the business, or else we would never be able to grow into other cities.

I turned 22. I’d been there for five years, my wages hadn’t gone up, I wasn’t allowed to do any work outside of the business, I hadn’t witnessed any of the growth I’d initially been promised, my boss was only in the office 25% of the time, and I saw him uploading Instagram Stories from him lunching, working out at the gym, walking his dogs, taking day trips etc. while I was at the office managing everything. A lot of the time he didn’t even warn me he’d not be in the office. It became the norm that if he didn’t turn up, I’d be running everything for the day.

Because I’d grown with the business from my youngest working age, I didn’t know any different, so all of this felt completely normal to me. And because I worked all day and all night and had no firm social life, I never got any outside perspective. Until one day, on a whim, I opened up to the landlord about it. He hadn’t even realized I was the one doing all the work — he figured it was split fairly 50/50. He said the amount of work I was producing was on the same level as an agency with three or four employees.

I started managing all of the branding, social media, and website maintenance for the landlord’s business, but didn’t broadcast that news to anyone. As I was nearing the age of 23, I met my now-fiancée, a perfectly feisty woman who, as soon as I told her about my situation, passionately advised I start my own media studio. This is where I entered the ‘long breakup’ period of my job, where I got increasingly depressed at work and physically felt my productivity slow to a near-halt.

My boss noticed, but never talked to me about it face-to-face. He started sending me irritated emails full of swear words demanding explanations for why I hadn’t delivered certain work by certain times and dates, while he was off sunning it up at the beach. It was like someone had pulled out his cork and let all the toxicity out in one torrent. My girlfriend hated him, and gently pushed me to the point where I felt like I was ready to confront him about the dead end we’d wound up in.

I asked a few of my friends about it, just to get a wider set of viewpoints on how I should go about it. They asked me things like, what does your contact say about you leaving the company and working with other businesses independently? Legal stuff, y’know. And that’s when I realized my lack of training over the past six years had also left me ignorant of the formalities of employment — I never had a contract! The real kicker was, I never had employee liability coverage either. My boss wasn’t even doing the admin stuff properly.

Obviously, that meant he also had no control over me when it came to contracts, so I literally just walked in (without my laptop — I’m now just realizing he never provided equipment either, yikes) and sat there waiting for him to arrive. Thankfully, it was one of the days he decided to turn up. He went and sat down in his chair, asked me where my laptop was and why I wasn’t working etc., and so I just straight-up told him that I was leaving the company to start my own media venture.

He laughed a patronizing laugh and simply said, “alright, good luck then.” Part of me felt like this was normal, because he was usually quite cold like that, but another part of me knew that there should have been some sort of emotion and deeper discussion in that moment. I wanted to say “so that’s it, then?” to try to flesh the talk out, but that really was it. He just turned to his computer and typing away as if I wasn‘t there. So I just turned around and left, went home, and that was it.

He did WhatsApp me a message later that day (all his caring and considerate communication came through digital means — perhaps he hired someone on a zero-hour contract to inject emotion into his texts?) asking if we could meet at the pub for a proper goodbye. And we did. It was a nice gesture, but it felt very awkward and forced, as if he’d spoken to someone about it and they’d coaxed him into doing it. He shook my hand, wished me good luck (much more genuinely this time), and we parted ways.

Three months later, I’d tripled my income as a freelancer. All of those clients who’d try to come to me directly over the years — it was like a floodgate had opened, and they all came rushing to me. I hadn’t told them I’d left, but obviously, they realized it themselves when they went to the office and I was never there. I felt bad about ‘stealing’ clients away from my former boss, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just abandon the people I’d been working with just because of morals. That‘d be immoral, if anything.

I continued working with the landlord and even traveled with him a few times to build my solo filmmaking portfolio by documenting his brand’s work across the UK, including his talks at business seminars. We developed a very close working relationship, to the point where just my work for his company was earning me more than all the work I did for my former boss. He started sharing a few bits of gossip with me about how my old boss had begun paying rent later and later. I figure perhaps his cash flow had something to do with it, but the landlord also showed me an email my old boss had written in which he’d expressed his anger at the landlord for ‘colluding’ with me and pushing me to leave his company.

The further I distanced myself from the company, the more I realized how toxic he behaved towards everyone he came into contact with. I could never see it from the inside. Every time I checked the old company’s website, a new service had been removed, because it wasn’t something he could offer anyone anymore.

Back in November 2018, the landlord told me that he was kicking my old boss out of the office after he failed to pay rent for three months. A few weeks after that, the landlord proposed that we go into business together to create a separate media studio solely focused on the industry his business operates within. He said that we’d take the old company’s office once my former boss had moved out, and that I could also use that office for my own freelance venture, free of charge.

One year after leaving, I’ve taken 25% of my old boss’ clients, occupied his office, and quadrupled my income.

There’s a part of me that feels guilty about all of this — he’s a guy who didn’t quite know what to do after the housing market crashed and tried something out which didn’t go too well. But at the same time, I can’t feel too bad for someone who I believe took advantage of me for half a decade. If you treat someone with disrespect, you end up with very little. If you treat someone with respect, they give you a free office and offer to start a new business with you.

TL;DR: boss never did anything properly — no training, no contracts, no insurance, very little respect, not much guidance, empty promises about business growth, etc. Everything I learned independently resulted in me quadrupling my income and taking over his office within a year of leaving his company.

Damn! That last story was EPIC!

Good for him!

The post 21 People Explain How They Got Their Bosses Fired appeared first on UberFacts.

Endearingly Honest Illustrations Show the Real Side of Any Relationships

Growing up, you see a lot of relationships depicted on TV and in movies, and it all seems so romantic and beautiful and perfect. The whole “happily ever after” thing, you know?

But then you grow up and you realize that, while being in a stable, loving relationship certainly does have those elements to it, there are also plenty of moments in between that aren’t TV-worthy, but are the essence of what being in a relationship entails on a daily basis.

Artist Amanda Oleander is based in Los Angeles, and her illustrations bring viewers behind closed doors to show what relationships are really like when no one else is around.

Scroll through these photos and let us know if these scenarios look familiar.

1. I can help you with that

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24 Hour Print Sale Now available on the site. Link in bio to see the rest available. 29 prints available this week + giving away pins to the first 20 orders—————————————— Nuevo arte ahora disponible en el sitio durante 24 horas. Enlace en bio. ———————————————————————— Nova arte agora disponível no site por 24 horas. Link na bio. ———————————————————————— Nuovi dipinti ora disponibili sul sito ———————————————————————— New art now available on the site for 24 hours. ———————————————————————— هم‌اکنون سری جدید نقاشی‌ها به مدت ۲۴ ساعت برای خرید از طریق وبسایت قابل دسترسی هستند. ———————————————————————— رسمات جديدة متوفرة في الموقع على مدار الـ ٢٤ ساعة . ———————————————————————— International shipping available ———————————————————————— ? Gifting a print to a random person in the comments. To enter the giveaway tag someone that you think will appreciate an art print as a gift! ♥

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2. Making meals together

3. Binge watching

4. Don’t fall asleep yet

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Me last night staying up until 4 a.m excited about all of the projects and events coming up this year. —————————————————— Title: Stay awake with me —————————————————— Título: mantente despierto conmigo —————————————————— Título: Fique acordado comigo —————————————————— Titolo: Resta sveglio con me —————————————————— Titre: Reste éveillé avec moi —————————————————— Titel: Bleib wach mit mir —————————————————— Название: Просыпайся со мной —————————————————— Başlık: Benimle uyanık kal —————————————————— הכותרת: להישאר ער איתי —————————————————— タイトル:私と一緒に目を覚ます —————————————————— العنوان: البقاء مستيقظا معي —————————————————— با من بیدار بمون ——————————————————

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5. Dining in

6. In the bathroom

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24 Hour Print Sale Now available on the site. Link in bio to see the rest available. 23 prints available this week + giving away pins to the first 20 orders—————————————— Nuevo arte ahora disponible en el sitio durante 24 horas. Enlace en bio. ———————————————————————— Nova arte agora disponível no site por 24 horas. Link em bio. ———————————————————————— Nuovi dipinti ora disponibili sul sito ———————————————————————— New art now available on the site for 24 hours. ———————————————————————— هم‌اکنون سری جدید نقاشی‌ها به مدت ۲۴ ساعت برای خرید از طریق وبسایت قابل دسترسی هستند. ———————————————————————— رسمات جديدة متوفرة في الموقع على مدار الـ ٢٤ ساعة . ———————————————————————— International shipping available ———————————————————————— ? Gifting a print to a random person in the comments. To enter the giveaway tag someone that you think will appreciate an art print as a gift! ♥

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7. Happy tears

8. Spring cleaning

9. Reading in bed

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24 Hour Print Sale Now available on the site. Link in bio to see the rest available. 24 prints available this week + giving away pins to the first 20 orders—————————————— Nuevo arte ahora disponible en el sitio durante 24 horas. Enlace en bio. ———————————————————————— Nova arte agora disponível no site por 24 horas. Link em bio. ———————————————————————— Nuovi dipinti ora disponibili sul sito ———————————————————————— New art now available on the site for 24 hours. ———————————————————————— هم‌اکنون سری جدید نقاشی‌ها به مدت ۲۴ ساعت برای خرید از طریق وبسایت قابل دسترسی هستند. ———————————————————————— رسمات جديدة متوفرة في الموقع على مدار الـ ٢٤ ساعة . ———————————————————————— International shipping available ———————————————————————— ? Gifting a print to a random person in the comments. To enter the giveaway tag someone that you think will appreciate an art print as a gift! ♥

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10. Going gray

11. Taking it easy

12. Chilling by the pool

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Drawing 46/100 of the drawing a day for 100 days challenge challenge. This is inspired by this past weekend laying by the pool with @joeyrudman he was looking at me without saying anything for a bit and then said “I love looking at you.” And I immediately said “I’m drawing this.” We tried to get a photo of us this weekend but they were all posed of course since we don’t have a personal photographer photographing us candidly so here’s an illustration of what really happened. (Posting photos from this past weekend on my ig story) I cannot wait for more summer pool days coming up. ————————————————— Title: I Love Looking At You ————————————————— Título: Eu adoro olhar para você ————————————————— Título: Me encanta mirarte ————————————————— Titre: J'aime te regarder ————————————————— Teideal: Is breá liom Ag amharc ort ————————————————— Titel: Ich liebe es, dich anzuschauen ————————————————— כותר: אני אוהב להסתכל עליך ————————————————— タイトル:あなたを見ているのが大好き ————————————————— Название: Я люблю смотреть на тебя ————————————————— Eser: Sana Bakmayı Seviyorum ————————————————— العنوان: أنا أحب النظر إليك ————————————————— عنوان: من دوست دارم به تو نگاه کنم ————————————————— Mi piace guardarti ————————————————— P.S doing giveaway contest in my IG story.

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13. Wearing retainers

14. Couch potatoes

15. Hanging in the kitchen

Pretty true to life, AmIRite?

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11 Women Share Their Shocking “Stealthing” Experiences

“Stealthing” is the term used for an incredibly disturbing new trend of men sneaking off their condoms mid-intercourse without informing their partner.

Yeah, that’s seriously f***ed up. Here are 11 women who have been “stealth-ed,” but we warn you – these aren’t easy to read.

1. Hmmmm… this is strange…

Photo Credit: Whisper

2. Maybe he wants a baby? But not like that!

Photo Credit: Whisper

3. Lots of raw emotions here!

Photo Credit: Whisper

4. Yeah, it’s sexual assault in some countries.

Photo Credit: Whisper

5. Boom. Taking control of your life FTW!

Photo Credit: Whisper

6. Absolutely devastating.

Photo Credit: Whisper

7. Hopefully you can accept yourself for who you are. Herpes is pretty commonplace.

Photo Credit: Whisper

8. Isn’t that rape?

Photo Credit: Whisper

9. What a POS!

Photo Credit: Whisper

10. Reverse stealthing?

Photo Credit: Whisper

11. Yeah, get out of there!

Photo Credit: Whisper

There is absolutely no room for this insane behavior.

If somebody EVER stealths you, leave them IMMEDIATELY. They can’t be trusted.

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10 People Who Love Their Career, Even If Their Parents Disapprove

We all love our parents, but let’s face it: they can be really judgy sometimes.

“Why do you have to have those tattoos?”

“Why aren’t you in grad school by now?”

“Is that really what you’re gonna do the rest of your life?”

I’m grateful that, although my parents certainly don’t stop asking these questions, they still support my choices at the end of the day.

These 10 people, however, aren’t as lucky.

1. Well, that’s a fucked up reason. Jeezus…

Photo Credit: Whisper

2. Those are SUCH different fields. Choose wisely…

Photo Credit: Whisper

3. I mean… he may be proven right, but why not try it first?

Photo Credit: Whisper

4. Because he’s not happy with his own life. Otherwise he wouldn’t be focusing on yours.

Photo Credit: Whisper

5. Yeah, can’t argue with that.

Photo Credit: Whisper

6. Boom! Artist!

Photo Credit: Whisper

7. Yeah, what does dad know anyway?!

Photo Credit: Whisper

8. You might gain lots of money if you save….

Photo Credit: Whisper

9. Omg… don’t do this to yourself!

Photo Credit: Whisper

10. Do. What. You. Love.

Photo Credit: Whisper

Parents… keep your nose out of your kids adult business.

Love them. Period. End of story. That’s it.

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This Woman Went on a Tinder Dream Date, and Ended Up Getting Scammed out of $200,000

A lot of us have had bad dates, be it on Tinder or elsewhere, but few of those terrible dates probably compare to the experience Cecilie Fjellhoy had recently. The 29-year-old London resident went on a date with a guy who seemed absolutely dreamy… until he swindled $200,000 from her and vanished.

It all started when Cecilie matched with Simon Leviev. Simon told Cecilie that he was an Israeli millionaire and diamond dealer; he claimed that his nickname was the “Prince of Diamonds.”

Sure, that might sound like a scam immediately. But Simon took Cecilie on a private plane ride to Bulgaria as part of their first date, so his story kind of held water. He swept Cecilie off of her feet.

Photo Credit: iStock

“This was the first time where I felt like, ‘Oh my god I really like him. And it seems that he really likes me back as well,’” Cecilie told ABC News . “He’s texting and he’s calling and he seems to really want to get to know me, and I think I fell a bit for that.”

Eventually, Simon started claiming that he was in danger because of his line of work. He asked Cecilie to extend her line of credit to him so that nothing would be in his name and there wouldn’t be a paper trail. He even went so far as to send Cecilie videos of him and his “bodyguard” in the hospital after an “attack.”

Unfortunately, it was all a ruse.

Simon turned out to be Shimon Hyuat, a 28-year-old convicted Israeli con-man. He has a long history of defrauding women to fund his lifestyle, including the private plane that he used to woo Cecilie.

In the end, he took Cecilie’s money and disappeared. She was so heartbroken that she had to get psychiatric help. Meanwhile, Shimon is living it up in Panama, where he is denying allegations of defrauding Cecilie.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

So, is Cecilie still on Tinder? It’s unclear, but she is continuing to meet new people — with a lot more skepticism.

“[I’m] much, much less naive,” she said.

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Therapy Dogs for the Survivors of the Parkland School Shooting Get Their Own Yearbook Page

It’s graduation season all across the country, and students everywhere are saying their goodbyes for the summer (or longer, if they’re graduating seniors) and of course, getting their yearbooks signed.

Unfortunately for the students of  Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the festivities are still clouded by the looming shadow of the tragic shooting that happened in February 2018, claiming the lives of 17 students and teachers. Staff and students are still dealing with the trauma of that day, a burden they will likely carry with them for years (if not the rest of their lives).

In an attempt to help its community cope with that trauma, Stoneman Douglas High School enlisted the help of 14 therapy dogs, and this year the helpful animals got their own yearbook page.

The yearbook’s editor-in-chief, Caitlynn Tibbetts, said:

“It’s a balancing act. After the shooting we wanted that yearbook to be perfect and had to cover as much as possible. This year, we wanted to give proper representation of our school and who we are now without giving so much focus to what happened to us in the past. The therapy dogs are the one thing from last year that is permanent and positive.”

The dogs attend classes with students and hang out in the courtyard outside the cafeteria as students go to and from lunch, so the students can stop for a quick pet.

Teacher and yearbook adviser Sarah Lerner was thrilled with the addition of therapy jobs to the Stoneman Douglas High School campus. Lerner said, “There’s nothing a dog can’t fix. I’ll be teaching and in comes a dog and these big 18-year-old adults all the sudden become mushy 5-year-old kids and it’s been such a comfort for us.”

Lerner had the idea to include the 14 therapy dogs in the school’s yearbook: “We sat them up on chairs, they were smiling for the camera. It was the greatest day of my life.”

A few of the pooches even ended up going to the prom.

A great, uplifting story that was born out of a tragic day that these students and staff will never forget.

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People of Twitter Share Their Pettiest Grudges with Celebrities. These Are Hilarious

It started with this tweet…

This woman’s mom is NOT having Queen Latifah over for dinner anytime soon…

And yeah, the Twitternet wanted to share.

Brian McKnight just forgot to bring a gift?!

Olivia ain’t going to the candy shop with this former fan…

Eddie Murphy has some people who hate him…

Because he was apparently not so nice…

But thankfully he does know how to apologize…

Damn LL… you done messed up!

Somebody hates Danny Glover?!

Earth, Wind and Fire Her! is more like it…

Bruno! Clean yo dishes!

Some of this shit even happens on Twitter? Shocker…

Well, this isn’t common, is it Common?

Brandy need to CALM DOWN!

Patrick Ewing using kindergarten tactics!

Listen, everybody has bad days. It happens. We can’t say these interactions represent who these people are.

Except Eddie Murphy. We can now definitely say Eddie Murphy is a dick.

At least in the ’80s…

The post People of Twitter Share Their Pettiest Grudges with Celebrities. These Are Hilarious appeared first on UberFacts.

13 People Who Met Their Online Friend and Regretted It

These days, it’s pretty common to make friends with people online whom you’ve never met. Maybe you both joined the same Facebook group, or maybe you play the same online games. These friendships tend to be generally harmless, and sometimes they can even lead to great real-life connections. Other times… not so much.

Someone on Reddit recently asked people to share horror stories of meeting up with online friends… and boy, did people have some stuff to share!

1. Who is he/she?

Not a horror story, but definitely weird. At 13 years old, I went to a show where my male online friend was also supposed to go. Not a big show and I was with my father, don’t worry.

We were supposed to meet at one of the entrances, but he never showed up. When I asked him about it later, he said he must have been at the wrong entrance.

Over time we stopped talking for no reason really. A few years later, one of our mutual online friend told me she learned that the guy in question was actually a girl. I don’t care about the gender, the thing is that she wasn’t the one on any of the pictures she sent to us and our other friends, and her name wasn’t her real name, she totally invented another identity.

The worst part is that another of our friend even told us she got pregnant from “him”. I don’t know if she asked her to fake a pregnancy, or if it was her own idea, but that was really weird. Wonder what other thing she lied to us about.

2. Well, that took a turn!

We were friends online for years. We’d meet up every so often and when we started families we’d meet up and take the kids to the zoos or whatever. She wanted us to go on a cruise together, with our husbands and kids.

I made the comment towards the effect of “We can’t afford that”, and she went nuts. We shouldn’t have had kids if we can’t afford them, we shouldn’t have more children, our life sucks blah blah blah because I didn’t want to go on a goddamn cruise with her and her bratty ass kid.

Sounds like a nightmare.

3. This doesn’t sound like a very chill set up…

I don’t know if it’s a horror story, but it how I ended up where I live now. I played WoW for years with a pretty regular group, got to know them offline and at one point two of them, a couple, invited me to move across the country.

At the time I didn’t have anything tying me to where I was, so I packed up and moved. Got out here, moved in with my friends and everything seemed okay. My buddy was a long haul driver so he was always gone for days at a time. His girl would try to set me up multiple times with two of her friends at the same time (one in Minnesota).

I ended up having a hard time finding work for a while, finally got a job though and was putting some money away while helping watch their kids. Out of nowhere one day my buddy accuses me of trying to fool around with his girl. Nothing had ever happened, but I had noticed her spending more and more time in my room when he wasn’t there. I knew his history and his previous relationship had ended after she cheated with a friend of his.

He wouldn’t listen, so I got kicked out without any warning and they stole about $1k worth of my stuff and later moved.

Ultimately it all worked out for me. Got a good job here, wife, kids and then cut out the friend and the girl completely.

4. Learn your lessons…

I was friends with a bunch of people I met through an online game. After about 2 years, I decided to meet 2 of them. The 2 I was meeting were a long distance couple, one from one country and the other from mine. They had met many times and had spent 2 weeks together prior to meeting with me. We met in the city, said hi and hugged and did some touristy stuff, took their pictures etc etc.

But throughout the whole time, they weren’t really talking to me. At first, I put it down to anxiety as I was nervous too. But even after lunch, they were only talking to each other and I felt left out. I even took a sneaky video of them talking to each other and sent it a friend, who agreed it was odd.

When it was time for me to leave, I told them I had to go but I had a nice time, and they continued to chat to each other. I said it again but no response, so I started to walk away, until one of them said “Oh byeee”

I was really hurt. It was like they didn’t want me to be with them. I had spent a lot of money getting down, especially since at the time I didn’t have a job. When I got back, I stopped talking to them. The friend who I sent the video to sent a message to them asking why they were ignoring me, and they tried to turn it on me saying that I was the quiet one and that I was being rude to them, especially “leaving without saying goodbye”. I blocked them all on the game.

A few months go bye and one of them finds my social media and tries to reconnect. Starts off well, and then goes back to blaming me. Haven’t met anyone from the internet since.

5. Absolutely tragic

He and I were part of the same forum many, many years ago. He was dealing with his issues and I was dealing with mine. I think we both went there to escape, where people wouldn’t judge. Also, because we were bored.

I’m not quite sure when we got properly talking, I think it’s when he told a terrible joke about kipper ties. We used to share everything with each other, over MSN. I’d give him advice about his love life and he’d listen to all my fuck ups.

It took quite a few fuck ups before we eventually met up. I think I already knew we were in love but seeing him in person really cemented it. We decided to give it a go, even though we lived 300 miles away from each other.

We had a lot of ups and downs. I was distant, he lived with his ex girlfriend for a bit even though she didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford her half of the rent. The same ex gf who I’d given him advice on, who he had nicknamed trouble and liked to claim she was pregnant every so often.

We got over that, along with many other things, and finally moved in with each other. I thought our issues were gonna be solved when there was no distance between us. Ends up, we were just very different people who wanted very different things and the distance wasn’t gonna change that. We broke up after three and a half years together.

None of that’s the horror story. Not the way he treated me, not the fact he probably cheated on me, not that I wasn’t a priority and used to cry myself to sleep.

About a year and a half after breaking up, he gets back in touch and we talk like it was in the beginning, when we were friends. After a few weeks, he asked if I want to get back together. I said no. I told him that he’d broken my heart again.

The next day, I got a phone call from his work because I was still his emergency contact asking me if I knew where he was because he hasn’t turned up. The police got in touch too. The last phone call that day was from his mum, to let me know that he’d killed himself.

6. The booger shrine…

I’ve been active in numerous online communities over the years, and have been fortunate enough to hang out with many of the friends I’ve made there in person. There’s only been one incident I couldn’t cope with.

He picked me up at the airport, which was very nice of him, and as soon as we got into the car, he started picking his nose.

There’s a lot that goes through your mind when you hop into a vehicle with someone you’ve never been alone with and you immediately catch them two knuckles deep in their rostrum. I looked quickly away so that he wouldn’t know I caught him and be embarrassed, if he was just trying to sneak one out before I noticed. If he did notice, he didn’t seem embarrassed, so I relaxed a little. I guessed maybe he was just so confident about himself and our friendship that he’d ascended past caring if I saw him take care of a quick boog.

Fine, sure.

When I finally looked back at him, he was wiping his fingers across his dashboard.

To this day I’m not really sure what to think, but this guy spent the entirety of the few hours we were together scooping out boogers and wiping them off on parts of his car or the table or wherever it was that we’d stopped at. I realized I was being transported in a rolling booger shrine and that there was nothing I could touch without needing to wash my hands. I was sitting on a crust of fossilized booger stuff. I had to be.

I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, he was a nice dude, but I wound up ollying out of our visit early because I couldn’t handle it. I don’t consider myself a clean freak, but as wiping started to stack it was all I could do not to throw open the passenger door and roll myself out into traffic to escape.

I still wonder if I should have done or said anything to save him some grief in the future but it didn’t feel like it was my place, you know? What do you even say?

7. Omg… helping a legit stalker do his thing?!

Guy I knew in college met a girl online and spent every day talking about her. She lived about 6 hours away, so he planned to take a semester off and pursue this relationship.

He got a job in her town and asked if I’d help him move out there since my car would hold more than he could take on a bus.

I had a long weekend off and figured, why not? A road trip cold be fun. I’d drive him out as a goodbye present, and the way back I planned to visit Yellowstone.

Well… We arrive and it turns out he doesn’t have an apartment lined up and… He found a job posting in his girlfriend’s town, he hadn’t actually gotten the job. Or even applied yet. I make a bunch of phone calls and find him a room to rent that will let him move in that day with just first, last, and deposit, even without a job.

I’m tired and disgusted with his lack of planning, but figure it’s worth staying the night and trying to end things on good terms with my buddy. Then he breaks down and confesses that he hasn’t actually met this girl. The nights he spent “video chatting” with her were really just him watching her vlog and jacking it. They’ve never talked. Never texted. Never even emailed. Hell, he’s never even left so much as a comment or “like” on one of her videos. She genuinely didn’t (still doesn’t) know he existed.

His plan was to hang out at this game shop she talks a lot about until she showed up and somehow create a relationship from that. He thought that they’d meet and she’d fall in love with him and move back to our college town to marry him… all before the next semester began.

That didn’t happen. Instead, I made my “buddy” buy a bus ticket for his ride back to school and left. He came back to school and got more cringey, not less.

I lost track of him after that.

8. Choked

I used to play WoW with my now ex. Our guild leader actually wound up moving to our state with his wife. My ex and I broke up before we got the chance to hang out with the guy, and right after the break up he messaged my ex essentially asking if it was cool if he and his wife got me drunk and took advantage of me. Ex showed me screenshots when I was getting my stuff from his place and I cancelled my plans to meet the guy and his wife.

My ex had been physically abusive and broke up with me to date the girl he’d cheated on me with. I’d tried leaving before but he’d fake suicide attempts and I was so scared he’d go through with it so I stayed. Even though he was in a new relationship he tried to keep tabs on me and control me, but I saw it as my chance to escape.

I happened to move right after we split and he didn’t know my new address. I blocked him on everything. Somehow he kept getting information on me though. Turns out the guild leader was feeding him everything, I hadn’t deleted the guy off Facebook cause I figured he was only a problem in person.

When I confronted him over messenger, bringing up the abuse, and the guy said, “He said he choked you because you guys were arguing and he was afraid he wouldn’t get the chance to speak. He still loves you.”

Side note, the choking was cause I was defending myself against accusations of cheating, which I hadn’t done.

9. Seized

I met a guy online, we really got on and he came over a few times so we could hang out. I did find him attractive and tried to hint that I was into him (note, I can’t flirt to save my life) but nothing ever happened. After a few “dates” he suddenly vanished offline. No social media, he wasn’t answering texts or emails, nothing. I thought he’d ghosted me. After 6 months he reappears, I asked him where he’d been and he said “I don’t want to talk about it”.

A few weeks after, there was a fad where people were googling their names and posting humorous stories they had found about similar people with their name (mine was about a ship that had my initials) and I started to google friends names just out of boredom/morbid curiosity, googled his name and found a local news story from his area, one of those “crime and courts” things that he had been done for statutory rape of a minor, online grooming and had his computer and phone seized as evidence.

10. The cancer patient…

This is way back in the mid ‘90s. Bulletin Board Systems were all the rage. I made friends with this guy from NC – he was friends with a bunch of us from my dorm, mostly females, which should probably have been a red flag but I was extremely naive at the time.

A couple months in, he mentioned he was coming to our state for a wedding and asked if he could come by our college to meet everyone. It was agreed he’d sleep in my dorm room since my roommate was almost never around. Now, there was no discussion or thought of sex, but I was pretty excited to meet this guy and see if he was as funny and charming as he was online.

Well.

Day arrives, dude shows up. I should mention that I and all my college friends were 18 or 19, this guy was 24. Or so he said. Guy looked like, and I’m not exaggerating, a cancer patient. Pale, gaunt features, long greasy pale blond hair except where he was bald on top, and just generally looked like he was about to die or he was dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. He insisted on hugging all of us.

I was trying to remind myself that looks don’t matter and that he was a cool guy despite his very unsettling appearance. But then, when we all started hanging out, things just got worse. He was asking really invasive questions of all of us, making weird comments to whatever was said, just all around creepy and distressing. I was sitting on the floor with another friend and actively rocking back and forth from discomfort.

I lied and said I had hurt my back and that sleeping on the floor helped, because that night he kept insisting we could share my tiny twin college bed. Nope nope nope nope nope.

Last time I ever met anyone from that site.

11. Bromo crush…

after college ended i was playing a game called EVE-online. i was in a corporation with a dude who i thought was the coolest. he had sold shit in game for real world money and had built a super computer. he had a smoking hot girlfriend, and had pictures of them rockclimbing doing some super cool shit. he was also like a head chef where he worked and since i was a chef as well… well… i had a little bit of a bromo crush on him.

he told me after i graduated that he could hook me up with a manager job and all i had to do was move up there. i sold everything i owned that day at a pawn shop and bought a uhaul and started driving.

1 hour before i got there(it was like a week long drive) he called me and told me the job was no longer available and i shouldnt come. when he found out how close i was he said to just come anyways. when i got there i was compeltely blown away. they lived in a disgusting section 8 apartment with 4 other people… in a 1 bedroom apartment… they had like 3 cats, which im allergic to, and a kid as well.

day one it was all drugs and partying. i did not partake. i was not enthused. day two i went into the city looking for a shit job to survive. i got one. it was shit. day three my “buddy” tells me where all moving out and into a nice apartment. week 3 we actually move into a new apartment, and the first night in that apartment he starts beating his smoking hot girl in front of their kid.

the second time he beat her, i called the cops. him and his girl immediately said i was the bad guy and that they were just loving each other… they had the cops escort me from the apartment.

so there i was, 1700 miles away from home, homeless at 2am, and its fucking raining on all my shit…

12. Red flags. Red flags EVERYWHERE!

Had an online friend for well over a decade. She lived around Atlanta and I went down there to visit my aunt and cousin.

Turns cousin was out of town and my aunt was too old to go around sightseeing. Hit up online friend and she and her boyfriend weren’t far from me so we met up. They were homeless and couch surfing at the time so I paid for everything. Didn’t really care I had vacation money to burn.

The trip was fine no real issues.

When I got home things started going sour they got kicked out of the friends place so the boyfriend asked me multiple times for money to get back on their feet. I sympathized but I spent all my spare cash on vacation so I declined. Eventually they broke up and she moved in with family.

She claimed he was abusive which I never saw signs of but he did tell her some ridiculous things. He said he had to get dick reduction surgery cause it was too big. Other equally ridiculous things about his military career. Made me realize that my friend was pretty naive about how the world works.

She never held a job. No higher education (which I don’t judge as a tradesman) never really had any sort of financial responsibility as she was entirely dependent on family or boyfriends. Basically in a state of arrested development.

So one day she’s texts me saying she wants kids but doesn’t want another man in her life. So she asks if I will donate my sperm to her. I’d have no obligation to the children whatsoever just be a donor. I agreed if she could proof she was financially stable first.

She flipped the fuck out said I was just another man trying to control her. I was raised by a single parent so I know how hard it is and I don’t want a child to go through that with a parent who can’t provide. She got more angry and I got fed up and told her off.

We haven’t spoken since. A fifteen year (ish) friendship died that day.

13. Well, this is the saddest thing I’ve ever read…

I was on MeetMe, met this guy who was super cool. We ended up texting every single day and i took the train out to Los Angeles to meet him.

When i got there, he was being kinda shitty and he told me that he hadn’t gotten much sleep becuz he was partying until 5am. We walked to his house and when I walked into his room, i was kind of shocked. It was a 8×6.5 room. All he had was a mat on the floor and a small little jewelry box full of mementos on top of his suitcase of clothes.

We took a nap together. Later, we went to get ramen and he asked me to pay. I didn’t mind. We went back to his place and we listened to music while we waited to go to a party.

Fast forward to that night..we met up with some of his friends and they were so mean to him. They kept roasting him and picking on him and he was visibly getting upset. I stopped him for a bit so his friends could walk ahead of us. I reminded him that it was all fun and games and to ignore them.

Ended up at the party and lots of people knew him. I sat out in the patio with a few cool people that i had just met while i waited for my friend to come back from saying hello to everyone inside…he never did. I was outside in the patio with these strangers for about 3 hours. People kept coming up to me and asking if i was alright. Idk if i looked sad or if i just looked like a plain loner.

I went to find him and it was so packed. Didn’t see him so i walked back. I seen his roommate and asked him to please tell my friend that I was gonna go get a motel. He went to tell him, came back and said my friend was being a dick & he would walk me back to the house instead so i didn’t have to spend money on a hotel.

We got to the house and I thanked him for walking all the way back home. I really appreciated it as my friend was probz inside doing coke or fucking girls. I went to bed in my friends room and he woke me up in the middle of the night kissing me, trying to get his freak on. I simply said no. I’m not interested in having sex.

His exact words were, “Are you serious? What was the point of you coming here?? You’re such a waste of time!”

My feelings were really hurt. I went back to sleep, woke up and left.

Never wrote him after that. He had texted me a month later asking to borrow $50. I simply ignored the message and moved on.

I mean… what do you say after a story like that?

Good thing you got out of the crusty, mucus mess!

The post 13 People Who Met Their Online Friend and Regretted It appeared first on UberFacts.

21 Couples Discuss Their Most Memorable Road Trips

Ahhh, I love a good road trip! I’ve had the good fortune to have driven basically all across the United States, and there’s something about watching endless miles of road stretching out before you, the landscapes gradually changing, the steady flow of highway traffic. It’s soothing.

Road trips also create some awesome memories. Some are sweet, some are hot, and others are no good. Here are some of the craziest memories other couples have made on the road.

1. Good answer!  ? ?

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2. I guess that worked out!

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3. Well, that happens sometimes…

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4. Poly is as poly does…

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5. OMFG… these gender stereotypes already…

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6. The call of the wild…

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7. Boom.

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8. Well, boom diggity!

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9. Def a keeper!

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10. Haha, whatever you say!

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11. Congrats!

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12. Well duh… they’re not blind.

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13. More road trips pls! kthx

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14. Yay!

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15. Awwwww… this makes me sick.  ? ?

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16. Ummmm…. wut?

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17. Okay, that’s adorable…

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18. The first few words says “With my BF.” Just FYI.

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19. Spontaneous road trip!

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20. Take that MOM!

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21. Love this!

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What’s your fave road trip memory?

Share this and let the world know! Don’t keep it a secret!

The post 21 Couples Discuss Their Most Memorable Road Trips appeared first on UberFacts.