Ever go to a meeting thinking you were getting promoted, but you got fired instead? Or gone to a family dinner where your Uncle said just the wrong thing? These people have. Sometimes, it doesn't take much for an occasion to turn sour on a dime. We asked people from around the world to share the one little thing that managed to turn a whole room angry.
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39. Pint, pizza, and disappointment.
Once at my work my boss arranged a 'Pint, pizza and paint' night. The company had no budget for overtime so the bosses promised us that they would buy us booze and pizzas to encourage us to paint the giant store with them. So a big group of us volunteered just to get there and have the manager leave early, promising the pizza and beer would be along shortly. It never arrived.
38. No grace period.
We had to work on a holiday but management didn't so there was nobody there to unlock the building. We waited outside from 7am until 7:45 and were told that if we didn't get in by 8 we could go home. 7:55 the manager shows up and lets us in. There was some grumbling to be sure.
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37. Domestic whodunnit.
Family gathering was going great until the host realized she was missing thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. She started accusing everyone of being thieves until her husband said he put it away without telling her.
36. Good job, get out.
I was on a team of about 15 people for a special project for a regional Internet Service Provider. During the bi-weekly team meeting the manager was super pumped about how far ahead of schedule we were due to some new processes we came up with.
After about 20 minutes of atta-boys, the manager concluded with telling us all we were being laid off in the same tone of voice she used for the whole meeting issuing a bunch of praise.
Most of us awkwardly laughed for a couple seconds thinking she was joking. She was not.
35. Double standard.
Not exactly a room, but our plane landed home after my company spent a year in Iraq. Our company commander previously told us to tell our families that they shouldn’t come out to the tarmac to welcome us back because “it would be a complete circus and you’ll just see them later anyway.” Stepping off the plane, who are the first and only people we see? Our commander’s own wife, three kids, parents, grandparents, brothers, and numerous cousins/friends.
Pixabay
34. Delivery's gonna be late.
One day at work we had an hour meeting followed by a planned pizza party as a reward for meeting some safety goal. They'd been telling us all week not to worry about food because they were getting pizza. Well after the meeting were sitting around waiting for the pizza to get there when out boss comes in and tells us there was a failure of communication and no one actually ordered the pizza. If you want to see 50 factory workers go from excited to murder ready in less than a second that's what you tell them.
33. This flight's all wet.
I was on a Chicago to NY flight. We all get on the plane, but were delayed taking off due to a heavy storm going on. About 20 minutes in, everybody was still pretty calm until the pilot announces they're working on getting our baggage loaded, because it's been sitting on the tarmac this entire time. The entire plane looks out, and sees all our luggage just sitting there in the pouring rain uncovered, and starts freaking out.
32. Cuts in all the wrong places.
In grad school we were gathered in a room to hear about how the last term of classes in the program was going to be cut due to a new law regarding educator requirements for the state. Everyone was stoked because it was gonna save us like 5-8 thousand dollars.
Then they told us that due to “state budget cuts,” our total tuition was going to double. Cue the shouting.
31. We can see into the future.
I was in Portugal during the world cup. Get there early to find a street bar in the center with a big screen. Place is soon packed. England start really well and everyone is singing and laughing. All of a sudden the bar up the road erupts into massive cheers. Lots of people go out into the road to see. Apparently someone just dropped an entire tray of drinks? We all laugh and go back to watching the game. 10 seconds later England score. Our bar erupts and we spill into the street. The bar up the road is deadly silent now. Weird.
The game starts again and the bar up the road starts shouting again. Nothing in the game. Whats going on? People look up the road again. Can't quite work it out.
Then a really bad tackle goes in and the penny finally drops: Our bar's TV is the only one using satellite and all the other bars have cable. Our feed is about 20 seconds behind everywhere else. Every exciting moment is audible about 20 seconds before we get to see it. Have never seen a bar empty so fast in all my life.
Photo by Daria Sannikova from Pexels
30. Taking advantage of a bad situation.
This dude I worked with decided to pop the question to his girlfriend... at a work holiday party.
She said no.
Both parties began to cry inconsolably. All the guys in the room tried to cheer up the guy with their tales of woe. All the women in the room took the woman aside and did whatever the female version of the above was.
Went from a fairly happy event to a complete disaster within minutes.
Plus side, while all of this was going down no one was hitting the buffet so I got a whole feast to myself.
Pixabay
29. The rules of the game.
I made the mistake of playing Scattergories with my mother. She said "No foreign words, you have to use English words." Fine, fair enough. She then called out someone for using a foreign word (I can't remember, it's been 10 years). He took off the points. The next round she used three foreign words. I called her out on it and she said it was no big deal, it was just a game. I argued that not only had SHE set the rule, but that she already called someone out for doing it.
She called me a [BLEEP] and left the room. The Thanksgiving family time was over as pretty much everyone decided that was the time to leave. Total time from game start to end of the family time? 6 minutes.
Cauldrons and Cupcakes
28. Aloha means hello and goodbye.
My friend used to work for a company that has always promised our IT department a trip to Hawaii for working through a couple of rough years without pay raises and on the flip side we won't get any personnel cut. It was a verbal promise that once we are back to profitable, the IT department would get an all expense paid trip. Back around October of 2015, they were gathered in the largest meeting room for a meeting with the president. There were snacks, drinks, pizza, etc. It was assumed that it was a celebration for a good year and they'd get the promised trip. Instead, it was a mass layoff since IT has been outsourced. All credentials were locked during the meeting and everyone was asked to leave the premises right after the meeting.
Image by mcyumyum from Pixabay
27. The definition of awkward.
We were discussing road safety with the headmaster. One of the pupils pointed out that there had been a car crash right in front of her just as she had been about to step out onto the road, earlier that week, which had been really scary. The headmaster laughed and asked her what she was wearing and if it had been her fault. Absolute silence for ten seconds as he squirmed and then mumbled “I mean were you wearing a ball gown, or...” as if that had been what he’d meant. Pathetic and excruciating. A 50 year old man to a teenage girl.
Pixabay
26. No love for the substitute.
This story took place my freshman year of highschool. I was in an extremely small 5th period theatre course with maybe about 10 or 15 other people in it. We were a very well behaved class that acted more like a family than anything else. It was fun. HOWEVER one day we got a substitute teacher who I'll call Dee. Dee was old. She had short white hair, permanent scowl, and always wore a jacket that looked like a duster. That particular day she was angry and you could tell. She had a difficult time with the computer playing the movie so she was yelling, fussing, and blaming her ignorance on us. In our class we had several tech savvy people but she refused all help because we were too "frisky." Eventually she gets it to work giving us the chance to ignore her. Around 10 minutes into the film someone realized she hasn't said anything in a while so they look over and see her eyes opened, still, and unresponsive. They turned to the rest of the class (who were still focused on the movie) and alerts them. Everyone begins to freak out. People are taking flash pictures of her, waving, ect everything to get her to respond. Eventually she woke up, yelled at us, then went back to sleep with her eyes open once more. It was the freakiest situation ever but the good news is that I never saw that sub working for my school again.
25. Pied dans la bouche.
Back in high school, there was a classmate of mine whose father had died. The circumstances of his death were tragic enough (he died the same day my classmate was born) that all of the school knew about it. One day we were messing around, nothing too rowdy, just cracking dumb jokes the way 15yo kids do, and our French teacher singled him out and said: "Your father would be so disappointed by your behavior."
The class became completely quiet, my classmate froze staring at the teacher in utter disbelief. Then *every single one of us* started shouting at the teacher. She even went to get the principal, which turned out to be counterproductive for her, because we were the best class of our school, and the principal didn't doubt our word for a second.
Image by rawpixel from Pixabay
24. No speech necessary.
The President of our company got completely plastered at our Christmas party. His speech started off funny because he was slurring hard and he was playing on it. Then he started talking about how he came from nothing and became something. Then he proceeded to tell us how if it wasn't for us working so hard and keeping our clients happy, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish building his mega mansion for him and his family, nor would he have been able to afford his new benz. Awkward muttering, followed by him directing us to "drink up & enjoy, because due to budget cuts, the future Christmas party/bonus budget is cancelled from here on out." Many of my coworkers relied on that bonus. No one was impressed. Except for 1 person, the rest of us quit within the first few months into the new year.
3. Reckless endangerment.
Bad snowstorm started about 4am a few years ago. My co-workers and I were texting each other thinking no way would they make us come into our job today (we are non-essential workers). We're all home waiting for the email to go out regarding whether or not our boss would give us the day off. Email finally goes out around 7:30am saying that we would have a shorter day but everyone must show up for work by 9. So I layered up, cleaned off my car, shoveled out of my parking spot and headed to work on VERY precarious roads. I got to work on time and was greeted by my co-workers who were all pretty happy just to not have gotten into an accident on the way over. All of the clients and meetings had been cancelled so there was a party like atmosphere. Just as we were talking about playing charades, we get another email from the boss saying because road conditions were so bad they were closing the agency after all and everyone had to go home. This was 20 minutes after we had all gotten there. I have never seen 20+ people all scream ARE YOU KIDDING ME at the same time before. It was absurd and everyone was mad.
2. Caught red-handed.
When I was a kid, there were about 6/8 families in our area who were a good group of friends. Regular holidays together, kids all close friends too and in the same classes at school etc. The backstory was that one of the families kept noticing money going missing from a drawer in the master bedroom. They had an older son who was getting the blame but was denying it.
Fast forward a few weeks and it’s their younger kid’s birthday, and everyone is at their house. Usual script was the kids party would be late afternoon, then in the evening the kids would end up playing games in some bedroom as the adults had a few drinks. Kids were happy because we got to stay up late with all our friends, parents got to have a few guilt free drinks. This night was going as normal until we’re all shuffled out and home earlier than usual. We got the full story the next day.
Once the kids were out of the way, the owners of the house had turned on their tv and pressed play on a video. On screen there was cctv of the bedroom where the money had been going missing. Clearly in the video you could see the wife of one of the other couples, sitting in that very room, going into the drawer and taking money. Apparently the switched off the video, said “what you saw is exactly what it looked like” and asked that couple to leave. Everyone else left shortly after.
Image by HeatherPaque from Pixabay
1. Here's the good news.
I didn't witness this; my pops did when he was a teenager. It's just one of the funniest stories I've ever heard in my entire life, so I tell it with his blessing at every opportunity.
My dad is mixed: his father (Opa) is the big white dude (and an atheist), and his mother (Mimi) is Indian from a Muslim family. My Mimi was apparently treated like utter crap by her whole family growing up except for her youngest brother. This got worse when she got older, and they started trying to foist her off on this other guy. Long story short, my Mimi ended up meeting my Opa, and they ran off together without anybody knowing about it. Pops says it was due to romance only, but I can also do the math on his birthdate versus what it says on the marriage certificate, if you get my drift.
Anyway, years go by and the only one from Mimi's family who even acknowledges she's alive is my great-uncle. That is until Mimi's father gets cancer. He starts talking about family and making amends and all that jazz, and basically invites Mimi and Opa, and all their kids together (my dad's half brother and half-sisters from Opa's previous marriage weren't invited) over for his birthday.
But things are apparently going well. They are sort of tensely accepting my Opa. Finally dinner winds down and while the ladies are taking care of things, my great-grandfather invites Opa and my dad into a room with the other guys to have coffee and stuff. At some point, coffee turns into stealth booze, which like? I thought was a thing religious people didn't do, but oh well, this story would not exist without a few illicit nips, and the fact that everyone in there, thought it was brilliant to give my 15 year old absolute mess of a dad a drink.
Anyway, the jokes start getting bawdier and bawdier, and at one point someone basically implies my Mimi was easy who never discriminated against a male, and without missing a beat while everyone but my dad, Opa, and younger great-uncle are laughing, my dad just looks at his dad and says:
"And all these years I thought I got that from you."
And then he apparently instantaneously sobered up and realized that that would be how his mother's entire, religious family found out he was gay.
Absolute legend.
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