“It Was Biblical”: 35 Horrible Experiences People Have Gone Through That Still Make Them Cringe
Pain, sadness and loss are some of the big emotions that come up when someone asks about bad experiences. But chances are, you are a lot more likely to encounter that horrible, grating feeling of embarrassment on a “regular” day. But as they say, comedy and tragedy are a matter of perspective.
Someone asked “What’s the most uncomfortable situation you’ve ever had to sit through?” and netizens detailed the worst experiences they went through. So get comfortable as you read through, brace yourself for the second-hand cringe and be sure to share your own stories below.
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We had a farewell party for a colleague who was leaving our workplace and during her goodbye speech in front of everyone including our bosses, she started talking about how stressful the job was, didn't get much support, wasn't able to take proper breaks and that no job is worth the mental stress.
Needless to say, the room fell in awkward silence and our boss's face looked uncomfortable.
At my nans house I used to sleep in her bedroom on a sofa bed, there was a curtain separating my section of room from hers. When I was 14 and staying there for some time, I came upstairs to bed one evening after playing xbox, and got into bed. I then hear the unmistakable sounds of them boning and dirty talking eachother. They hadn't heard me come up so I had the awful decision to make, either sit through this absolute pain for however long it lasted, or try and sneak across the incredibly creaky floorboards back downstairs without letting them know I overheard them.
Somehow (God was with me that day) I managed to sneak back downstairs, played some more xbox for a couple hours while contemplating my mental scarring, then went back to bed.
Not me but a friend who worked in tech support. A client complains that, whenever the phone on her desk rings, weird character strings appear on her screen. He goes over there, she uses a basic landline and a word processor, no connection between the two.
Then, while he is there, her phone rings. She reaches over to it, leaning her huge bosom over the keyboard and of course, a string of characters begins to populate the word processor window.
He had to explain it to her.
I misunderstood this at first. I was picturing these weird character strings on the caller ID screen and her just never having had it or something? Lol but the computer screen makes a little more sense since she’s leaning over it to answer the phone. But that must’ve been an interesting chat
So are you two dating?’ He said yes at the same time I said no, to which his friend told him ‘I told you you didnt ask clearly enough’.
A new boss was hired for my department at work, and a high level woman from corporate was brought in to show him the ropes.
My new boss was a sleazy little weirdo. He sort of looked like Beans from “Even Stevens” crossed with Mads Mikkelsen. He kept awkwardly trying to flirt with this incredibly professional and visibly uninterested woman who was just trying to do her job by teaching him how to do his.
Things reached peak weirdness on her last day.
There we stood, my new boss on one side of the room, our guest on the other side, me in the middle doing some work.
New Boss: Well, are you ready to go to lunch? Corporate Woman: Yes, just let me run to the restroom first.
New Boss: Oh, why, you gotta POO-POO?
I have never in my entire life wished that I could turn into a puddle of liquid and slide out of that room, Secret World of Alex Mack style, than I did at that moment.
Fun Fact: He was fired a few months later, but that’s another story for another day.
The professional term for needing to go to the toilet for number 2 is "Excuse me whilst I just go release the kraken."
I had to tell an acquaintance/friend that his 15 year old son was sending me highly inappropriate (and illegal) texts. I’m a 41 year old man.
When I was about 16-17, I used to get really bad rashes under my breasts. It was painful, itchy, and gross. So I went to a dermatologist to help determine what was going on.
I've always had big boobs. But I was kinda introverted, shy and *very* self-conscious about my body. So, I was in the examination room, naked from the waist up, waiting for the doctor.
In walks the doctor, followed by about six interns or medical students. Nobody had asked me if it was okay to have a crowd staring at my breasts! While I sat and squirmed uncomfortably, the students all "thoughtfully" looked at my breasts. It was pure hell.
This was in the 70s.
I started using cotton-only bras and--surprise!--the rashes cleared up.
I hate that! Normally, doctors have to ask the patients if they want to bring students in to see a procedure or special case. But, the privacy at the doctor's have become worse and worse. Respect the patient.
I'm a dental hygienist.
I had a patient that was flirting with me pretty heavily and telling me how pretty my eyes were. I'm used to compliments and got good at brushing them off, so I managed that this time.
I kind of forgot about him he rebooked 4 months later for another cleaning.
This time, he was more forward, saying how I'm young and beautiful.. and then he straight up asked me for an affair WHILE HIS WIFE AND KIDS WERE IN THE FRONT LOBBY WAITING.
I politely declined and finished my work, informed the Dr's about it, and he was promptly banned from our office.
Alright everyone buckle up. Years ago my editor assigned me to do a story: an old civilian air command guy had died and his kids were going to spread his ashes from a plane over the lake where he helped find a downed aircraft decades ago. Nice local human interest piece. Two kids: son and daughter, both adults. The whole flight aspect was organized by a local, well-meaning family friend, let’s call him Jeff.
I drive to the tiny regional airport, walk to the tarmac and the son is there already. We shoot the s**t with the pilot and the son and Jeff when the daughter arrives. She’s extremely obese. The pilot and I realize we have a major problem. The pilot and Jeff and the son talk, then the son goes over to talk to his sister.
The wailing that came out of this woman, when told she couldn’t scatter her dad’s ashes because she was too fat, is burned into my brain. It was biblical. This woman was shrieking and sobbing and we could do nothing but watch as she collapsed on the runway and had a complete meltdown. I blame Jeff for not thinking ahead.
Every instance of my friends getting yelled at by their parents while I'm just standing there watching awkwardly.
Or vise versa.
It’s even more awkward when you walk in just after everything happened and you have to pretend that nothing happened
In the cinema. I interlocked my fingers with the kid sitting beside me for a full minute.
Turns out, he wasn't my kid.
I had a lady next to me stroke my thigh during a show once, before she realised that her partner was sitting on the other side of her. At least she apologised.
Helping my friend pack up her stuff when leaving her husband. While he sat on the couch and cried.
Maybe not the ‘most’, but I once had to sit through an hour of my incredibly sleazy and abusive ex-boss crying in front of all of us staff, and contain my urge to laugh.
Apparently he was feeling super ‘depressed’ and ‘stressed’ from how hard his life was. All the while embezzling money from us, forcing us to work without supplies or even electricity/internet, and blaming us for lack of productivity or income.
For an hour I strained to hold it all in while he sobbed like a hypocritical little b*tch in front of us. I later found out afterwards that everyone else was doing the same.
Most staff quit the workplace after this and the whole business went under from the boss’s shady money antics.
We were getting internet installed when I moved to the town I live in. I was 16 at the time. I had surgery the day before and was bleeding slightly off and on and kept a hand in my pants to prevent the material from sticking to my wound.
Anyway I thought the internet maintenance guy had left. I went to the living room and turned on the tv. It immediately was on some kids show. He walked back into the room and saw me with my hands in my pants.
In his view it could only possibly look like I was touching myself to kids shows. The silence was horrible as he slowly crept back out of the room.
That would be the time in college that I got invited to a surprise birthday party for two of my other friends who shared a birthday. The party was very nicely planned with cake and presents for them, but I honestly shouldn't have even gone... because, as some of the people at the party belatedly remembered, the party was being held on the day of _my_ birthday. I ended up third-wheeling a birthday party on my birthday. All the while some of my friends tried to forcibly include me in the festivities even though it had obviously not been part of the original plan.
I was able to at least leave early, but my friendship with that group was never really the same afterwards.
I was looking at my moms phone cause she wanted to show me some pictures from what she did that weekend. I swiped one too many times and came across one of her nudes. I felt my soul jolt out of my body seeing that s**t
A few years ago I went on a weekend girls trip with a friend. Her marriage was rocky and she needed to get away. Her husband dropped us off at the airport and picked us up after the trip, and we chatted casually in the car on the way back to their house. Everything seemed normal. Unbeknownst to me, he had specifically told her that if she went on this trip, he would leave her. Midway through the drive he told her he had a group of people at their house for her "intervention," and that her car was already packed with her belongings and to get out. (I don't think he knows what an intervention is, but whatevs.) So now I'm stuck in the backseat watching their marriage dissolve. We get to their house and people are standing on the front porch observing. The couple starts arguing in the driveway and I just wanted to leave so badly, but I needed my suitcase from the trunk. I had to interrupt them to ask him to open the trunk. And then my car was blocked in by the vehicles from the "intervention team," so I had to interrupt again to ask how I could get out. It was so, so awkward.
Could have stood by your friends side... she probably needed someone on her side
When i was a kid, we were on holiday and decided to go to a church. While we were there i decided that i would be funny if i would slap my dad's a*s with both hands. So i ran in full speed to maximize the impact of the slap. I ended up slapping a stranger who also happend to walk next to a woman with a stroller in his hands which made me think it was my dad. It was even worse that my parents saw it as well.
Oh I got one for this! In highschool, we had a "game" of who can slap someones bum the loudest, all within friends. Well, one bum just presented itself, as bumowner was leaning over a table. I swear you could see my friend raising her hand in slow motion, everyone turning going "noo!" But too late. You could hear how that slap hurt, as our (female) teacher turned around mortified to her female straight A student. Her equally mortified stuttering "oh fu**, I thought you were Michael!!" did not help. Teacher was actually a good sport about it, but never let her live that one down (E.g. Laura, am I presenting this well enough or will you slap my bum again?).
I was at a wedding and the best man went off the rails during his speech at the reception. It was your stereotypical drunken rambling but it was the guy’s second marriage so he was talking about his first wife and how he’s good at most things except relationships, etc. People were audibly groaning and booing the guy and telling him to sit down. It was a truly Michael Scott moment. So awkward.
Was at work and we were in a conference room about to have a meeting. Not sure what the meeting was about but my coworker "JT" thought he
It was a good idea to go around and ask us if we have ever cheated on our spouse. (He seemed to enjoy being on the cusp of being sent to HR)
I wasn't married at the time so I said no. Every one says no. "BH" says yes. Now BH is a 60 something woman who's as wholesome as Mr. Roger's. Her voice is so soft. She was my first trainer when I started. She would talk and I'd get lulled to sleep..I had to drink 3 cups of coffee to avoid passing out. I hate coffee.
So when she says yes every one turns and looks.. JT is excited he's like, "Ooohh, how many times? With who?" She says, "All the time, in my mind of course."
He asks this lady who had worked at our agency in the past and left. She had just come back. JT asks her if she's ever cheated.
She says no. "But my boyfriend constantly cheats on me. He doesn't even try to hide it. He brings them to the house. But what am I going to do? I can't afford to live on my own so I just sit there."
JT is speechless. The rest of is don't know what to do or say. It feels like we're just sitting there for so long. Finally JT starts the meeting and we just start talking about our audits. It was so uncomfortable and sad.
We had a business meeting with a big client. We’ve done work with them before and now we had to present our progress and if good, we’d be in big business. I presented first and all was good and nice. Next was my colleague. He had nothing. Like “dog ate my homework nothing”. What followed was an hour long rant from our big client at my boss and the colleague who screw up on how much time and money was wasted on this investment, how insulting this was, that they gonna cut their loses, never do business with us again and potentially sue us. Only for them to turn to me and say “no hard feelings, we liked your presentation”. Afterwards we three sat in the car back to the office in complete silence.
Having my friends mom drive me back to my parents' after we totaled said friend's car ripping it around through a corn field. She couldn't even like form full sentences, she just kept repeating different iterations of "... what were you *thinking?!*"
2 situations.
1st I did to myself. Long story short I didn’t get my suit fitted in time for my brother’s wedding and it was WAY too big. I looked like a fool and have never been more embarrassed. Him and his wife give me deserved s**t (all jokes, no bad intentions) but good lord I will never forgive that
2nd was recently when I went to see my cancer doctor for routine appt and while I was waiting a nurse came in to do quick vitals. She walked in and I politely asked her how her morning was and her answer was “my adult nephew was found unconscious last night and now might not live through the day”. Almost broke my neck with that verbal whiplash.
Well to be fair, as someone who worked in healthcare for 12 years, the nurse shouldn’t have brought her personal life to work with her. I get she was going through stuff, but people asking that question are usually just being polite. Even if your day has been s**t, don’t bring up your personal troubles. Even if she didn’t want to lie she could’ve just said “eh, it’s going”. I’ve been to work after literally fist fighting my ex and being thrown across the room, etc and have used that line many times but still never brought that s**t upon my patients. 🤷🏼♀️ leave your personal life at the door when you arrive. Leave your work life at the door when you leave.
It was my senior year of high school. I was sitting in the library during a study hour with two girls in my class, I’ll call them Amy and Jane. Jane and I were actually fairly close, Amy didn’t really interact with us much outside of class but we got on with her well enough and neither of us had any other friends during study hour.
Jane had told me, just the day before, that she was pregnant. She was feeling a lot of mixed emotions about the whole thing. My high school had a very high teen pregnancy rate (there was a daycare in my school) and somehow the topic of another pregnant girl in my school came up.
Amy went on and on about how stupid it was to get pregnant in high school, how teen mothers aren’t good mothers, and that they’re just throwing their life away. Jane and I were both sat there, knowing she was pregnant. Finally, when Amy was done with her rant, Jane just looked at her, said “Amy, I’m pregnant.” She got up from the table and walked out of the library. Then I had to sit there with Amy for the rest of the hour and it was one of the most awkward hours of my life.
Excuse me, this hs had a daycare??? Maybe, just maybe, time to invest in some sex-ed?!
My cousin's wedding... His brother doing the best man speech.
He started it off with "You know what they say when a brother is the best man... No friends" and it spiraled downhill from there. It was so bad even their mother was trashing the best-man brother's performance to me best time I saw her.
Got to love a terrible best man’s speech. Watching the last series of Married at First Sight Australia, there was a classic. Best man told a story of groom eating 3 day old chicken at a festival and ended with the punchline to the bride, so no matter how bad you taste, he’ll still eat you…..
A joint therapy session with me & my therapist and my ex & his therapist. We all just sat there after I’d made a few points and waited for my ex to talk. After a while, it was so unbearable that I said “I don’t think this is working”.
Turns out my ex (and the therapists) thought I was talking about my marriage. Which…was also correct, but I was talking about the joint therapy. So I kind of accidentally ended my marriage that day, even though it wasn’t finalized for another year or so. I’m still embarrassed about it.
I similarly got engaged out of an unintentional statement, in a restaurant with parter and their parents... Awkward and still living the consequences.
Family dinner with my brother and his high school girlfriend about twenty minutes after I had accidentally walked in on them. My brother kept sending me glances that said "please don't tell mum and dad." I kept that secret until I was an adult, I mentioned it to mum randomly one day and she just goes "oh, you poor thing! That must have been so traumatic! I had no idea!"
An autistic boy with a fixation on the Vietnam War sat next to a Vietnam veteran. I realize the boy couldn't help it, but his mother sure as f**k could've.
We got free tickets to a small time comedian. We live in rural Nebraska. So we show up to the comedian at a local "club" and they have rappers opening for them.
So there was a bunch of middle aged/older white people in what you would imagine farmer clothes to look like in a club that seemed like it was trying to emulate what us hicks would think a big city club is like with two black dudes on stage dropping n-bombs mother-fers. Sort of a toned down gangster rap. And the crowd just sat and watched politely.
It wasn't terribly uncomfortable but was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
Little did you know that Farmer Brown down the road secretly jams out to Gangsta Rap music all the time while he plows his fields.
Was at a cafe alone, sitting a table. I saw my friend's brother, let's call him Matt. I hadn't seen Matt in maybe 5 years at thia point but figured I would say hi. Matt sat down ans proceeded to have a weirder and weirder convo. What started as a rant about his favorite Assassin's Creed game (bad social etiquette but not too weird) eventually morphed into government conspiracies. Couldn't get out of their fast enough but also didn't want to be too rude so sat through it for about 20 minutes. Told my friend and she was like "Oh yeah Matt has veen going through some stuff. Definitely don't recommend talking to him."
*takes notes* Don't talk about Assassin's Creed to casual acquaintances. Hmmm a lot of stuff makes sense now. That being said, I loved Odyssey but perhaps I loved Origins more. Hard to decide. I haven't played Mirage or Valhalla yet, but I expect I will eventually. Looking back on the earlier games, I would have to say that the weakest part of the games are that they can tend to be repetative, but I personally don't mind that too much....
I was visiting my cousin's house. For some reason, her mom was asking her about her childhood and if she had any trauma or something like that. What followed was my cousin lowkey trauma dumping while clearly still mad at my aunt for some parenting failures. Both were trying to stay polite-ish but dear god it was so tense and awkward. Aunt kept deflecting just about anything the cousin said too. Couldn't really leave the room because cousin was blocking the only exit.
Afterwards, Aunt asked me if I had any grievances. I kept my mouth shut.
At church, 4th of July, and our pianist who thought she could sing (she couldn't) singing Lee Greenwood's I'm proud to be an American in the most god-awful high-pitched voice for the entire song. (She was using head voice the entire time for those in the know.) My husband and I were literally sitting there in shock, heads bowed, totally embarrassed with second hand embarrassment for her. This was about 20 years ago and we still talk about it around the 4th of July to this day. Had to be the longest few minutes of our lives.
If someone singing badly 20 years ago is the most cringe thing you remember, you habe lived a very sheltered life
My baseball team was at a hotel and we loaded like 30 guys in an elevator and it got stuck. We were packed in there unable to move for like 2 hours.
A couple of years ago my business partner wanted to get massages (something I really, really don't like) and she found a special for two. However, it was clearly meant for like, romantic twos. It was at a "spa" that was really just a converted house and the "massage room" was like the size of my bathroom. Small.
There was no sort of privacy between the beds and I am hugely conservative in that regard, whereas she was quite happy to rip all her clothes off in the room (no underwear even).
It was insanely uncomfortable and as soon as the massage was over, I got dressed and went to the bathroom. They still had to do a facial but I just did it in my actual clothes, no thank you.
Accidentally agreed to a date, went with it anyways. I just wanna preface this by saying I was kinda out of it when I agreed to it. I was looking for a partner for a dance cover. The guy that was supposed to be my partner asked if I was gonna watch the Thor movie at the cinema, I said smth along the lines of having no money for it. He said he'd pay, and for some reason, my brain went "well..you dont have an excuse to say no now" so I just said "ok" ?? Afterwards I thought "oh s**t I just agreed to go on a date."
Went to meet with him to talk about the dance cover then went to the movies after the talk. The entire time, throughout the whole movie..he just had his arms around me, no no.. not having his arm over my shoulder, as in he was hugging me..closely. It felt so awkward, I didnt really know the guy, we've barely talked. I tried setting myself free from his grasp but he pulled me back in anyway.
"Why didnt you just leave?" Idk. I have a tendency to just be frozen went put in r e a l l y uncomfy situations with worse experiences than that date, so thats my guess as to what going through my mind at the time.
After the movies he asked if he can come escort me out the mall and I said no twice cuz he insisted and then I left. After all that I msged him when I got home and said that what he did was inappropriate, he said sorry and he made some excuse about being a lonely guy and I cut him off after that.
Now that I think about it, he probably thought because the dance cover was spicy for the genre that I was giving him a sign or smth? I never flirted at all with the guy when talking to him.
Btw I was also around 18 or 19 at this time and the dude was like 27 or 28.
Sitting with my siblings after our parents divorced, hearing dad’s side of the story after our abusive egg donor had been bitching to us all for years about his affairs. He’d never had one, it was all her. She even instigated swinging with mutual friends (who we knew) but after she spent the night with the friend’s husband, declared she would be too jealous, couldn’t stand the idea of dad with the wife, so he didn’t go through with it. She carried on an affair with the husband for several months behind dad and her friend’s backs. The friends divorced over it. But that wasn’t the worst. All of us had some doubts about our youngest sibling’s paternity; her coloring was so different to the rest of us and at least two of us knew she was carrying on with a teacher at our school; he had similar coloring. Dad went on to explain he wasn’t sure about ANY of us! He followed up with “doesn’t matter, I loved you from the moment she told me she was pregnant. You’re all mine, no matter what.”
At a Catholic-run retreat for engaged couples. There were about 10 couples. We all sat in our chairs in a round circle facing each other. The counselor has us share what we wrote in our journals based on the prompt we were given. My husband mentioned to the group a past relationship. This relationship was no big deal. I knew about it, it wasn't a big relationship in my then-fiance's life, zero problems. But the counselor needed to lead a discussion so she decided to zero in and try to create drama about this past relationship where there was none. Insinuated I was jealous, or not over it, and why didn't I want to talk about it if it really was no big deal? So uncomfortable to try to shut this conversation down in front of a bunch of people without looking like I'm the weirdo. Spoiler: that was in 2006 and my husband and I are still happily married.
Saw an acquaintance while dropping my kids off at school. Knew she was going through a divorce and asked how she was doing. She trauma dumped in a HUGE way in the drop-off line. SA, DV, Child A, PTSD, Custody battle, Military deployments...the whole shebang. It was graphic. We were not friends- had had maybe 10-12 brief, small talk conversations. Don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.
Sitting with my siblings after our parents divorced, hearing dad’s side of the story after our abusive egg donor had been bitching to us all for years about his affairs. He’d never had one, it was all her. She even instigated swinging with mutual friends (who we knew) but after she spent the night with the friend’s husband, declared she would be too jealous, couldn’t stand the idea of dad with the wife, so he didn’t go through with it. She carried on an affair with the husband for several months behind dad and her friend’s backs. The friends divorced over it. But that wasn’t the worst. All of us had some doubts about our youngest sibling’s paternity; her coloring was so different to the rest of us and at least two of us knew she was carrying on with a teacher at our school; he had similar coloring. Dad went on to explain he wasn’t sure about ANY of us! He followed up with “doesn’t matter, I loved you from the moment she told me she was pregnant. You’re all mine, no matter what.”
At a Catholic-run retreat for engaged couples. There were about 10 couples. We all sat in our chairs in a round circle facing each other. The counselor has us share what we wrote in our journals based on the prompt we were given. My husband mentioned to the group a past relationship. This relationship was no big deal. I knew about it, it wasn't a big relationship in my then-fiance's life, zero problems. But the counselor needed to lead a discussion so she decided to zero in and try to create drama about this past relationship where there was none. Insinuated I was jealous, or not over it, and why didn't I want to talk about it if it really was no big deal? So uncomfortable to try to shut this conversation down in front of a bunch of people without looking like I'm the weirdo. Spoiler: that was in 2006 and my husband and I are still happily married.
Saw an acquaintance while dropping my kids off at school. Knew she was going through a divorce and asked how she was doing. She trauma dumped in a HUGE way in the drop-off line. SA, DV, Child A, PTSD, Custody battle, Military deployments...the whole shebang. It was graphic. We were not friends- had had maybe 10-12 brief, small talk conversations. Don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.
