One must trust their gut! Sometimes that bad feeling better not be ignored. Like ESP or Spidey-sense, sometimes we just know when something is going to go wrong. But when we course-correct, things often work out, usually for the (much) better.
In these amazing stories, people talk about the times they sensed that something was up and they had better change course if they want things to work out. It's incredible how well they do work out too!
He Got It All On Tape
“About 10 years ago, when I was married, my wife’s best friend kept on flirting with me. I told my wife it was happening and she said it was just harmless fun.
One time when the best friend was being super aggressive, I recorded it on my cell phone.
A few months later, she accused me of saying to her the very things that she said to me. So now when I was accused, she didn’t think it was so innocent. Yet one listen by my wife of the recording on my phone completely exonerated me and shut the best friend down completely.
She was trying to ruin my marriage because hers was awful.
Also, this situation and the divorce were years apart and unrelated. My wife re-fell in love at her high school reunion.”
Saving Her Students
“Four students of mine won the 1st prize for a project they did and we all got a free trip to London.
We had spent the day sightseeing and were exhausted so we got ice cream and sat on a bench in a park to relax. A couple of minutes later I notice this couple walk by slowly, staring at us. My spidey-senses go mental. I do not like these people for some reason. She walks by and sits on the bench next to ours and he sits on the bench across from hers. They aren’t talking, just looking at each other.
And that is when I notice her reaching into her pockets.
I jump up, grab my students and run out of the park. My poor students are really confused and wondering what is wrong with me, when all of a sudden, we hear screaming. It turns out the woman stabbed a couple walking through the park, trying to rob them.
It scares the ever-loving heck out of me knowing that had I not gotten my students out of there, we would have been stabbed and robbed.”
Dodging A Big Disaster
“A tropical storm was blowing through my city a few months ago and we were projected to get some wind gusts and significant rain.
Because our parking lot isn’t large enough for all of the staff and our clients, a lot of us have to park on the street, which is lined with large, old trees.
As I rolled up in the morning we were due to get the storm, I parked in my usual spot down the block. Before I shut the car off, though, I noticed that this particular spot was located directly across the street from one of the largest trees on the block. Thinking, ‘you know what, just to be safe…’ I put the car in reverse and backed up about ten feet, safely out of the direct line of fire from any trees.
In the middle of that afternoon, in the midst of the howling wind and driving rain, we heard a huge ‘THUD’ down the street. I went to investigate and that same tree I’d been parked across the street from fell across the road and missed my car by about eight feet.
At that moment, I was glad that I’d decided to play it safe as the car parked on the other side of the street directly across from where I’d initially been got absolutely destroyed. Crushed roof, windows blown out, just pulverized.”
Keep All Your Important Emails!
“I was offered a job in Europe, where I was promised a bonus that was x% of my salary, paid twice a year. When the offer was sent, there was no mention of the bonus and when I questioned why I was told, ‘don’t worry, it’s in this email with my official company signature.’ I put that one into the saved folder, ‘just to be safe.’
On the first payout period, I was told I needed to be with the company for 90 days first before a bonus would be paid. Ok, I was annoyed, but I guess that makes sense. On the second bonus payment, they mentioned that the company hadn’t had a great year and nobody would be getting bonuses. More annoyed, but if the company isn’t doing great, what are you going to do?
The following year rolls around and the company announces that things have really taken off and they will pay out the previous bonus period, in addition to the current bonus period. The only problem is, I literally handed in my resignation that day. I inquire to find out if I’ll be receiving my bonus from the previous bonus period, and they say, ‘are you kidding? You just quit.’
I call a lawyer. I dig up the email from the start of this post, hand that over, and the lawyer says it’s a slam dunk case. She goes after both bonus payments from the first year, and both bonus payments from the current year, even though one of them hasn’t happened yet. Company HQ calls me and tries to get me to drop it, and I refer them to my lawyer.
Glad I saved that email. Cover your behind, and do not let others push you around.
I learned a couple of things during this process, mostly during the call that I got from HQ. In the United States, bonuses are always discretionary no matter what’s written anywhere, and I probably would have lost the case here. Also, in the offer, because they were quite aggressive about hiring me, they were promising a bonus, but it was a red flag to me that they didn’t include it in the offer. Turns out for good reason.
Because I had that email where I specifically asked why it wasn’t in the offer, but they said ‘don’t worry, it’s in this email with my official company signature,’ they were dead in the water.
A week later, at my new job, the lawyer informs me that they’ve paid all 4 bonus payments, and she also went after her own fees, so it cost me nothing.”
He Saved His Messages And Saved His Relationship With His Son
“I got divorced 11 years ago from a horrible woman when my son was only 7-years-old. Once I got my life together and settled in, I tried to get him to visit me as often as I could (due to work I had to live in a different state.)
Every single time I tried to make plans to fly him to see me or come see him, his mom would give me some horrible excuse about some medical thing he had, some event with school, or some emergency as to why he couldn’t spend time with me. Or even sometimes she would just tell me to bugger off and straight up say no. She knew I didn’t live in town and I wasn’t just going to show up and see him, so that gave her some power.
After the 9th or 10th time of that happening I said to myself, ‘you know what, just to be safe I should keep a record of all of this.’ So I made sure I saved every text message as well as every email conversation between her and me.
Over the years my son started to resent me, thinking that I did not want to spend time with him. He became more distant and I was not able to communicate to him what was actually happening. At the age of 15 or 16, he stopped talking to me because he said that his depression was due to me not wanting to see him. I couldn’t explain anything to him at all, so I emailed him and apologized and let him have his space.
Last year I was able to get through to him and convince him to let me come see him and spend the summer with me. I had legal visitation to do so and told him that he needed to tell his mother he wanted to spend the summer with me. She tried to come up with an excuse, but he was resilient in asking and told her it was his choice to spend his summer break with me. She wanted to seem like a good person so she said yes finally. I drove 1100 miles to go pick him up and take the drive back with me to my state. I cleared it with child services, his mother, his grandparents, and everybody was okay with it. I was going to fly him back in 2 months when his break was over, a week before he started school again.
On the drive back he expressed to me how upset he was with me about not being around in his life and not wanting to see him. We had a difficult conversation and I just let him tell me everything he was feeling. It was hard to hear, but I wanted to know where his headspace and his heart was.
So when we stopped the first night at a hotel, I pulled out my laptop and told him I wanted to show him something.
I knew it would hurt, but he had to know how much I cared about him and how hard his mother made it for me to see him. So I showed him every message and every email his mother had ever said to me about the lies she told that kept me from seeing him. I also showed him the legal documents from when I hired a lawyer to try to get custody of him and how difficult she made things. I showed him the communications between her and I and how downright mean she used to get to me when we communicated. I showed him the tweets from his now stepdad that was basically calling him a loser and saying how much he didn’t like him. I showed him a part of his family that he had no idea existed.
Immediately his attitude towards me changed. We spent the entire summer together and had the most amazing time rebuilding a relationship. He came to where I lived and saw the clean and responsible life that I lead, and the hard work that I do to make a living. He started to realize that the life in the small town where he is at is very lacking and that his family there is toxic. The entire summer he spent with me he had zero bouts with depression, and actually stopped taking his medication for it. He started to understand that his perceived depression was an environmental thing.
As a thank you for coming to see me, I canceled his flight home and gave him my old pickup truck as an early 18th birthday present and his first vehicle, and drove it back to his home state with him when the summer was over.
He graduates from high school this year and is going to be moving here where I live to attend college.
Thank God I saved all those messages.”
They Caught Her Tumor Early
“At the end of July, I took my daughter to the doctor for some nausea/stomach issues. The doctor ordered a bunch of blood tests and on reviewing her previous history, noticed that she had also been losing weight and had complaints of neck pain, so she also ordered a CT scan.
Found out later that day that she had a slow-growing brain tumor that had been growing for years. It had reached a point where it was blocking the flow of fluid from the brain ventricles into the spine and creating a lot of cranial pressure. The doctors jumped into action and got that all taken care of.
These tumors usually aren’t caught early because all of the symptoms tend to be symptoms of other much more common illnesses. If your neck hurts in the morning, you might want to get a new pillow. At her previous visit, she complained of headaches. We discussed with the doctor quite a bit and he said he was inclined to believe they were diet related. We adjusted her diet, and the headaches went away and didn’t come back.
It was good of the (different) doctor to order a CT at her next visit, but she wouldn’t have been wrong if she hadn’t.
The stars really aligned for her care. The tumor was found before it could cause any permanent damage. It happened when our family was poor enough that she was covered by Medical Assistance because we sure couldn’t swing a $500k+ bill. Even with decent insurance, 3 weeks in ICU along with 2 brain surgeries will break a family. The tumor was discovered right before my busy season started, so I was able to stay in the hospital with her for the whole 3 weeks. She received amazing care, and life is almost completely back to normal. There’s still some psychological stuff, but our time in the hospital together made us much closer, so I’m more able to help her with those things.
A few weeks ago the stomach issues came back – right after her follow-up MRI which showed that everything is clear. It turns out the stomach issue is mostly reflux. She started taking Zantac and it has gone away.
The doctor would have been doing her job well to have just treated the reflux and sent us on our way back in July, but it could have led to significant permanent damage.”
The Best $10 He Ever Spent
“I was going out drinking in San Francisco with some friends. We loved going to this kinda dive bar in the tenderloin (rough neighborhood). Anyway, I had just bought a new car and was worried about parking it in the Tenderloin, all my friends assured me it’d probably be fine.
As we parked on the street about two blocks from the bar, a homeless guy came up to me and said, ‘Man, you don’t wanna park that new car here! Somebody gonna smash them windows and steal your stereo! Your sunglasses!’
On a whim, I just said ‘Yeah, but we’re kinda late. Wanna keep an eye on it for me?’
He pauses for a sec and goes ‘Like a security guard? Yeah, man. I’ll watch your car. You got $10?’
My friends, confused, started mumbling about just walking on, but I thought it couldn’t hurt much, so I gave the guy $10.
‘Here’s your $10, keep an eye on it, man. If it’s still in good shape when I get back I’ll give you another $10.’
‘$20? All I gotta do is sit here?’
‘And make sure nobody smashes my window. There isn’t anything inside anyway, it’s new.’
‘I got you, man. I got you!’ He took a huge swig off this bottle of Wild Turkey.
Anyway, the night progresses, we drink and have a good time, and now we’re all proper trashed except for my friend Mary who was our DD. I gave her my keys and we start walking down the block. One by one we notice almost every parking spot has shattered glass next to it. Somebody went through the area and smashed each window to get into the cars. I get this sinking feeling in my stomach. I’m already mentally prepared to have to shell out a few hundred bucks to replace the window of a car that wasn’t even mine a week ago.
But lo and behold, we get to the spot and my car is fine – and the homeless guy is bundled up in a sleeping bag and he sees me and goes ‘HEEEEYYYYY! You back! You won’t believe what I did for you! Check THIS out!’ and he shows me this huge bruise on his face and pulls off his gloves and shows me his knuckles which are all scraped up.
‘What happened?’ I said.
‘Some tweaker cracker dude! He come around here smashing windows and grabbing stuff, he gets to your car and I’m like ‘Yo, pass that one. That one’s MY RESPONSIBILITY and he turned around, pulled back on this big ol’ brick he’s got in his hand, and I JUMPED THAT dude from behind and he hit me in the head with his brick but I knocked him good, man, I changed that dude’s MIND, man. He was all strung out and he run off down the block!’
My friends and I are staring at this guy incredulously. My car is fine, spotless. I reach into my pocket for $10 but I realize I don’t have cash. ‘Dude, thanks so much! Give me a second I gotta get your cash.’ I say as I walk into the store on the corner to use the ATM. As I’m checking out I realize they’ve got 750s of Wild Turkey in there for like $10. I buy one for him. I give him the $10 and the bottle. ‘Thanks for keeping an eye on the car for me.’
You would have thought this dude just won the lottery.
‘OOOHHHH YES!’ he kept screaming. Then he kicked the pile of blankets and stuff on the side and I realized he had a girl there sleeping and he goes ‘WAKE YOUR BUTT UP LOOK WHAT I GOT!’ and she rubs her eyes and looks confused at us, then at him, then at the bottle, then at us.
Wordlessly she reaches for the bottle. He hands it to her. He’s still screaming and hollering like it’s the best day of his life.
Looking back I probably should have taken him to hospital, but hindsight is 20/20.”
Being Thorough Saves The Day
“I was undergoing pilot training and was pretty new to the whole thing feeling the pressure to perform, etc. I walked out to preflight a plane for a solo flight (you do this completely alone… instructor was back at flying school doing something else).
After doing my walk around it’s time to check the oil. Cessna 172’s have a dipstick that is attached to a cap that attaches into the engine. You remove the cap and remove dipstick along with it and check the oil. Except, after I unscrew the cap there doesn’t seem to be a dipstick attached to it.
I have this thought: ‘Well, the engine is still warm from the dudes who just flew before me so … they flew it like this…. maybe they had a separate dipstick? They must have checked the oil some other way…’ Then I have the, ‘well, to be safe, I should actually pack this up and go ask someone at the flight school exactly how to check the oil in this case.’
Note: This takes quite a chunk of time out of my supposed flight and will cut my ‘lesson’ for the day short by quite a margin, but I do it anyway.
Long story short: The dipstick had broken off during the previous flight, that had landed just minutes before, and had slid straight into the engine, where the crank-case had been chomping away metal from the tip, that metal now circulating in the engine. The aircraft was grounded, it was extremely dangerous to fly, and at massive cost had to be stripped down, the entire engine disassembled, and they actually had to find every bit of metal missing from the dipstick and ‘re-assemble’ the dipstick before the plane could be re-assembled and made flight worthy again.
If in a moment of stupidity I’d taken off in that plane, I’d probably be dead.”
Passing The Moose Test
“I took one of those extra driving classes you always hear about to get the discount on your car insurance. I was in college and my premium was killing me.
The one I signed up for was an 8-hour course that I knocked out in one day and the focus was on maintaining control of your vehicle in bad weather. I took it over spring break which is still a pretty snowy/icy time of year around here. The big test at the end to determine if you got the certificate was to pass the ‘moose test’ though some places call it the elk test or the deer test. Either way, to pass the course you had to successfully swerve around some cones on an icy road and regain control of the car on the other side of the cones.
So my first day back at school from spring break, I’m driving myself and my roommate from the store back to our dorm in some bad weather conditions. I try to turn left into our parking lot and my car just slides straight past it, and down a hill. Now I’m heading straight for a telephone pole. My roommate is panicking but I looked at it and I realized this is just the moose test. I managed to swerve around the pole, narrowly missing a wall of parked cars next to it, and regained control on the other side, finally bringing my car to a stop in an empty section of the parking lot. Then we walked back to the dorm and drank our faces off.
So the moral of the story is, those extra driving classes you might take for the insurance discount may just save your life.”
So Maybe Warranties Aren’t Always A Rip Off!
“I bought a used Subaru Baja that was 5 years old at the time and had 75k miles for $12k. The salesman offered an extended warranty that covered the engine for $2500, would last 3 years/36k miles. That was kind of a lot, and I usually don’t buy those. I don’t know what got into me that day, but I said sure.
One month and 750 miles later after an oil change at a mechanic shop, oil started shooting into the….pistons? I’m not good with cars, oil went where it wasn’t supposed to go. Completely ruined the engine and turbo.
The dealer had to keep it for 3 weeks, the warranty company flew someone out to inspect the car, and eventually approved a replacement engine, turbo, and any other affected parts. Total repairs cost almost $11k, and the warranty then applied to all the new parts too.
The car drove like it was brand new! Later discovered the car had 5 previous owners before me, but I couldn’t find any accident or serious repair history. This is probably the only time buying an extended warranty on something actually worked out in my favor.”
Avoiding A Really Bad Situation In The Woods
“I was out solo hiking/camping. It was the end of a long day and I really didn’t feel like taking the time to tie up a bear bag which is a bag with all your food, tied up in a tree far away from your camp. I said ‘you know what, just to be safe, I’ll go set one up.’
Come the middle of the night, I’m woken up to the sound of a black bear walking 30ft away from my hammock and heading straight to where I tied up my food.”
Saved By The Sopranos
“A couple of years ago I restarted The Sopranos from season one.
I think it’s in the third season where the water heater leaks and floods Tony’s basement, so there are these scenes where he’s wading around in a flooded basement. I was imagining what a nightmare that would be. It reminded me that when I bought my house, the inspector told me I would need to replace the water heater within five years. I then realized that was like, 12 years prior, so I suddenly got nervous. I went and looked at the water heater, and it seemed fine but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I also did not have the money to pay to have a new water heater installed.
So, I decided to go ahead and buy a new water heater and then save up money to pay someone to install it.
The water heater arrived and I stored it in the laundry room. Just a few weeks after it arrived, I happened to look at the old water heater, and I noticed the catch pan under it had an inch of water in it. It was leaking! Oh no! Emergency! Except wait a minute, I already have a plan for this!
So, instead of saving up money to hire a plumber, I went to Youtube and learned how to install my own water heater.
The old tank I replaced had some kind of stuck valve on it. Several people told me it was potentially an explosion waiting to happen.
It all worked out perfectly. All because The Sopranos made me anxious about the condition of my water heater, causing me to randomly purchase a water heater I had no immediate plan to install.”
Saved By A Saved Receipt
“Saving a receipt for a campus parking ticket I paid for during my freshman year of college.
They do this thing where they double the ticket amount after a month of not paying. I paid it the week I got it, stuffed the receipt in my bag and forgot about it.
Apparently, whoever was in charge of clearing me didn’t, and I was told I had an unpaid, doubled parking ticket on my account after like 3 months when I tried to settle up tuition for the semester.
Disputed that, and wore a smug look on my face as I directly reached in my bag and pulled the receipt out to show them.
I mean otherwise, I would’ve had to essentially pay that ticket three times. Something tells me it’s not the first time that’s happened to students there.”
Sometimes, Insurance Pays Off Big Time
“I booked a vacation for my wife’s birthday in Cabo San Lucas months in advance. For some reason, as I was booking it I decided to get the trip insurance I had never done that before but time this I thought I better do it.
Our trip was to be in October I booked it in June. The beginning of September a Hurricane struck Cabo and did a lot of damage. I contacted the resort and they said they were not very badly affected. I left the reservation booked. The day before we were to fly to Cabo I checked the flights and everything was good to go. We got to the airport and as we were checking the woman checking in said, ‘Oh there’s a problem with your connecting flight.’
Yeah, the problem was the connecting flight had been canceled over a month ago. Yeah, Expedia neglected to tell us that little bit of info. I was able to recoup all of the money we spent because of the insurance.”