1. "My cousin picked up a hitchhiker about 20 years ago. Nice enough guy. My cousin was hungry, so they stopped at McDonald's and grabbed the hitchhiker some breakfast, too. Then, they dropped him off where he said he was headed. No big deal."
"The next morning, my cousin's watching the morning news and sees that hitchhiker's face. Dude was a serial killer and had killed someone that picked him up. Cousin calls the cops and they have him come in. Turns out the hitcher had killed the very next person after my cousin who had given him a ride. He'd killed a few people who had given him rides, that was his MO.
They asked the hitcher why he didn't kill my cousin. He said 'Eh, I'd planned to, but he was a really nice young man, he bought me breakfast. I couldn't kill someone that bought me breakfast.'"
"I had something similar happen to me. When I was younger I was in Colombia and at some point, I was drunk and took a taxi back to my hotel.
I was hungry so I asked the driver to drive by McDonald's first. And I got a bunch of food and invited the taxi driver as well. We had a good conversation and later on, he dropped me off. Just before he dropped me off he told me that I should never just get a random taxi and that he actually intended to rob me with his buddies who were waiting a little further down the road at said McDonald's. But because I bought him food he didn't go through with it. Spooky."
2. "Someone made brownies with ground meat in them for a church potluck. My vegetarian friend discovered this when she bit into one. She was more confused and horrified about their existence than she was upset about eating meat. I thought she had to be wrong. Then I tried them. It was beef. I was disgusted and really, really, really confused."
"Years later, I found out that apparently, this was a thing. Someone came up with this (putting beef in brownies) as a substitute for walnuts for people with nut allergies. While this explains it a little, I'm still confused about why someone would assume that people who can't eat walnuts would prefer to eat ground beef brownies over just regular nut-free brownies."
3. "A guy I was seeing excitedly showed me a box of things he'd been collecting from me without my knowledge. This included strands of my hair taped up neatly, bobby pins and hair pins I wore to prom, my fingerprints, and a saliva sample he took out of the trash from our forensics class experiments. He thought this was a romantic gesture or something, but it just made me realise how creepy and obsessive he was."
4. "My roommate poisoned my food. She started out with 'harmless' pranks like putting salt in my jello before it set. Then she put bleach in my pasta water, as if I wouldn't fucking smell bleach noodles. She would steal my underwear, wear them during that time of the month, and put them back in my underwear drawer, unwashed."
5. "I asked my ocular oncologist what the long acronym 'FUE' he wrote that I had meant. He tried to pronounce it, shrugged, and said, 'We'll just call it Fucked Up Eye.' It's been called that ever since."
"During the same weird cancer episode, a neurologist said my brain was 'unremarkable.' I mean, he's right in so many ways, but I was delighted to hear it."
6. "I showered at my date's place after staying over and asked for a towel. He gave me one which had literal skin flakes on. I asked for a clean one, and he asked what I meant. He didn't realise that you need to wash towels, because 'they just have water on them, so they clean themselves.'"
7. "My date was on trial for kidnapping and manslaughter, but I didn't find out until he was found guilty of the kidnapping charges (not manslaughter, though). He kept trying to call me from jail."
8. "My ex-coworker got fired for sleeping with too many customers. We worked fast food, and he would write his number on drink lids at the start of every shift. If a woman he found attractive came in, he'd chat her up a little bit and send her off with a free drink. His success rate was low, but he did it so often that he had hookups booked every day of the week. Eventually, management caught on when several women were asking for him daily."
9. "A coworker brought homemade kimchi, but she admitted she didn't know how to make it and just 'winged it.' It was fermented wrong and covered in mold, which she didn't seem to understand was bad. The vegetables were basically half liquified, and it smelled like dumpster juice."
10. "I found out my girlfriend had several fake social media accounts that she’d use to bully strangers and harass women she knew — including my ex wife. Instantly dumped."
11. "My dad's first cousin is serial killer Kenneth McDuff. We saw the Americas Most Wanted episode when it aired and were so surprised to hear about a McDuff, not knowing he was a relative."
12. "My uncle and his girlfriend were hitchhiking down the mountains of Colorado and were picked up by a man. A little way down the road, he stopped the car and asked my uncle if he could check the tire, saying he thought he ran something over."
"My uncle got out and the man drove away with his girlfriend and pulled a weapon on her. She immediately opened the door and jumped out while he was driving.
My uncle and his girlfriend reconvened and were okay, but were trying to process what happened. At a later time, they saw a story on the news about a serial killer and it ended up being the man who picked them up. It was Ted Bundy."
13. "When I was very young, my family lived in a townhouse, and against all local bylaws, my mother decided to keep a horse in our backyard. Not only that, but it was an ex-racehorse that came as a package deal: the goat companion that slept in the closet of my nursery. I also later found out she was running a grow-op in the basement."
14. "The first night in the new shared apartment I was renting, my landlord slept on the floor in my living room on a rug. I thought that was weird, but I was not in a position to argue, as I really needed a place to live."
"Then, over the next couple of months, my landlord moved in and brought over eight family members, including a newborn baby, and they all lived in two bedrooms (and by bedrooms, I mean one was the living room!). When I complained, they locked me out of the apartment. I called the police, who let me in and scolded the family. It was a nightmare. I finally got out of there and never looked back."
15. "My date squeezed a disgusting amount of mustard in her hand then ate it."
16. "One roommate brought home two rats as pets, and we ended up with 29 rats in what felt like no time at all."
17. "Someone at work finally lost their shit at the photocopier. They unplugged it at the wall, opened the door to the fire stairs, and pushed the photocopier down the stairs — the noise and the mess (colored toner spread over five floors worth of stairs) caught everyone's attention. They were escorted out by security immediately."
—u/SplatThaCat
18. "I got a vasectomy, and the female doctor said, 'You've got really nice anatomy.' I couldn't believe what she had just said to me. She followed it up with, 'I just mean your skin (on your scrotum) is really thin...' Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions."
19. "I found out my father wrote porn novels under a pen name to make ends meet when I was a baby. I've been trying to find one ever since."
20. "My doctor told me to repeatedly hit my wrist with a Bible to get rid of some fluid buildup (a ganglion). It worked, too. For the record, any heavy book or hard object could work, he just advised a Bible."
21. "My coworker got caught jerking off into the milk carton in the lunch room fridge."
22. "My coworker was arrested and taken out by the feds for ordering nurses to kill hospice patients so he could get more Medicare cash. His wife, same... The nurses who complied are in prison, too. Two doctors gave their triplicate pads to him and signed off on the death certs. Yep; they’re in prison, too."
23. "I showed up at my girlfriend's house to surprise her after work but to my surprise a guy answered the door. Turns out he was her fiancé who was working abroad and had decided to come home early to surprise her also. I had no idea she was engaged."
24. "We had a potluck today, and someone brought some Doritos. People started eating them and complaining that they tasted like dirt. We looked at the bag, and it had a promo for Mockingjay: Part 1. The chips expired in 2014! This was a mixed department potluck, and we haven’t found the person that brought the nine-year-old chips."
25. "Serving John Cusack was terrible. He put his muddy boots up on the table and spent three hours drinking tea. Did not tip."
26. "One of the girls who cooked for our office potluck said, 'I'm sorry if you find any cat hair in the green bean casserole, my cat kept getting up on the counter to nibble at the edges.' Cue everyone looking at each other like WTF?"
27. "Years ago, me and my ex-husband went to see a movie with an older colleague of his. Before the movie, we had dinner at like a chain restaurant/steakhouse-type place — the staff on the floor were all in their 20s."
"I had never met this man before but in the first few minutes of sitting down and looking at the menu he very confidently told us how he came there a lot and flirted with the female staff because 'they love the attention.'
The best part? His daughter worked there. All I could think was how I would literally cringe myself through the floor if I was 20 and my 50-year-old dad came into my place of work and perved on my co-workers because he didn't understand that they only put up with him 'cause they are paid to do so."
28. "One of my roommates worked for a lawn care company; we lived in a house, and there were four of us. Somehow he got the bright idea to steal some of my information and sign me up for service without my knowledge."
"I owed hundreds of dollars to the company, and they sent me to collections. I was pissed. I called and told them what happened. After weeks of me trying to get the problem solved and talking to multiple people, they finally closed my account and fired my roommate. Then he lived there freeloading for months. I finally moved out of that place and never had a roommate again."
29. "My colleague evidently robbed a bank on their lunch break. Came back like nothing happened then the cops showed up and took him down, it was crazy."
30. "My dad (who is now the director of accounting for the school district I teach for) was talking about how my starting pay was way more than his starting pay. I said, 'Well, yeah...the cost of living has increased a ton since then.'"
"This motherfucker straight-up said, 'No it hasn't.' He started working there in 1992. This conversation happened in like 2017 (about a year after I started working there). Again, he is the director of accounting."
31. "My coworker left for two weeks for her wedding and honeymoon. She came back married to another guy than the one she planned to marry."
"We also had onsite daycare that her toddler daughter attended. She used to call all the men she saw 'daddy.' Serious bummer all around."
32. "I had a guy put on his resume that he invented the dollar, owned Microsoft, Google, and Ford, was an astronaut, and founded New Zealand."
"This was when I managed an Aldi store and he was applying as an associate. But he was clear to say on his resume that our business model could be vastly improved with his expertise.
I almost brought him in for an interview just for fun, but I couldn’t really find the time along with the real applicants."
33. "After our work Christmas party, colleague of mine woke up with a horse in their back garden."
"Turns out they were so drunk and couldn’t be arsed to walk home that they just barebacked a horse from a field whilst carrying a pizza and a kebab.
Rode it back the next morning.
Man’s a nutter."
Shout-out to all these Redditors for sharing their (wild) stories.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.