Who knows how these people made it this long being so deluded. No amount of proof will make these strange antagonists realize the logic right in front of them. But it is wild to see just how intense things can get when there's no logic to be found. Content has been edited for clarity.
He Didn’t Even Realize What He Said
“I will never forget the man who angrily told me, a wheelchair user with no feet and no prosthetics, to go down the stairs if I didn’t want to wait for the elevator. I had been talking to my friend, and mentioned we were going to be a little late because of the huge line.
As far as I could tell the guy wasn’t blind. It’s not impossible, you can’t always tell, but he turned around and made direct eye contact with me, which indicated he at least realized I was three feet tall at most, so I was either a little person or in a wheelchair, both of which probably shouldn’t be using the stairs at that time. The stairs were like a stampede of people, it was the central city station in my city at peak hour, and it was busier than usual because of fewer trains at the time. Even if I had my prosthetics, I wouldn’t have been able to safely get down without being pushed over.
I wasn’t passive aggressively trying to guilt people. I don’t think I should get to cut in line or whatever. The tone I used was more, ‘Eh, we are running late, but what can you do?’
As for what the guy was thinking? No clue! There’s a huge wheelchair sports program in that area, so people in wheelchairs are very common, and many are ambulatory wheelchair users (meaning they can walk for a little while, but not very well/safely/for very long). It’s VERY common for those people (and myself if I’m wearing my prosthetics and using my chair) to get hassled for ‘faking it’, so maybe that’s what he was thinking? That I was somehow faking? Honestly I have no idea. As I said before, he was looking right at me when he said it
What happened afterwards was that he glared at me for a few seconds, I was too surprised to say anything in return. He seemed to have a moment of realization and awkwardly turned back around to face the door. My friend and I had a good chuckle over it after he was out of earshot.”
Betrayed By Loki
I had a friend who was living in London for a while. She went to see Tom Hiddleston perform in a play. She was CONVINCED that he looked directly at her during the show. Okay cool, probably didn’t, but maybe he did? I’ve certainly convinced myself that a specific person made eye contact with me during concerts, even though I know it’s highly unlikely they even registered my face but hey, a girl can dream right?! But then she went back to see the play again. And same thing. Apparently he looked over a couple of times. And that was it. He’d picked her out from the crowd and they were going to get married.
She figured out where he lived, where his favorite café is, and she tried to find any reason to be near him or interact with him. To this day she still fully believes he was leading her on and ignored her. It was really scary, and I had truly no idea how to help her because to her it was all real. It still is, it’s just that she barely talks about it anymore.”
“A Baby In An Adult Body”
“My roommate in LA didn’t understand the concept that the rest of the apartment was shared. Month after month I cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, and cleaned the bathroom and the living room. After seven months, I asked him to clean up once. He asked me why? I explained that we share the apartment and I literally been cleaning up half a year and just asked him to do it once. He got mad and literally cleaned for like two minutes and said he was done. He is very sheltered. He has never cooked a meal before I taught him how to make scrambled eggs. At his parents’ house, he literally just leaves things like clothes or trash on the floor or on the couch or on the dining table. His mom has cleaned up after him with no complaints for over twenty years. His dad is a successful business owner and provides all the finances.
I remember he was late on rent once so I covered it, and when I told him, he said I should have waited until his dad gave him the money. I told him rent was due on the first of the month and would be considered late afterwards, and if we took too long we’ll get an eviction notice or late charges. He said that shouldn’t apply to him, since he has the money. His dad just forgot to give it to him.
I also found out later he told all my friends that I was late on rent all the time and I was ‘lazy’ about rent. Luckily, my friends know me well and his stories always had flaws and discrepancies, and they know he’s a baby in an adult body. So almost none of my friends talk to him now except a few that are similar to him, but not as bad.”
Software Nightmare
“I used to work at a software company in downtown Boston. One of the best perks of the job at the time was the flexibility in hours. Many folks had regular work from home days. Myself, I knew I could drop my kids off at school, get into the office by 9:30, and my boss had no issue with it whatsoever. Others with kids could similarly arrive late or leave early schedules depending on their childcare. After a few years a new CEO comes in, spends a month observing how the office works, then calls for a company wide meeting. During the meeting she tells everyone she believes having a full office 8-5 is the most productive environment, and at the start of the next month, all work from home was canceled, and she wanted everyone in the office during those set hours. No showing up late or leaving early.
A lively debate ensued, with discussions of there being very little warning, to pleas of flexibility, to concerns of making necessary childcare arrangements, especially given that in many cases (i.e. schools), we couldn’t adjust those times. Plus, commuting into Boston sucks.
After listening to all of these arguments, she finally responds with a long speech of appreciating the sacrifices everyone has to make to better the company, everyone doing their part, blah blah blah. She ends it by saying, ‘I understand where you’re all coming from! Years ago when my kids were little, my husband and I had to hire three nannies to cover all the times we had to work!’
I remember we all looked around at each other, speechless. It was also the moment I realized I would have to start looking for another job. When the millionaire CEO thinks hiring 3 nannies is a relatable example to her middle class employees, it’s pretty clear she’s not going to change her mind. The company still around. The previous CEO had done a great job making the company an industry leader in the software it provided, plus they write software for a field that doesn’t have a lot of competition, and is fairly recession proof. Not the kind of place that’s going to fail overnight.
The company has offices in other cities that paid lip service to her ‘8-5 no work from home’ policy, but they let their employees continue working as they had. The Boston office, however, had a huge amount of turnover in the next six months (I left probably 2 months after that meeting). Senior management was freaking out, as people who had been with the company for 10-20 years quit. I recall they had to outsource to a marketing firm for a while because the entire marketing team quit within two months of each other. It was an absolute mess. I keep in touch with some former coworkers who still work there. All that being said, it’s hard to feel vindictive about it. I enjoyed working there, my boss was great, my coworkers were amazing, and the senior managers I frequently worked with treated me VERY well. At this point I just feel sad for a company I enjoyed working for, and the people I know who still work there.”
Truly American
My old boss at the time was a girl of 26 who got 4 million dollars from her mom a year to play with. Her mom is very wealthy in China. Her daughter is here trying to be a CEO of a company just for fun. I somehow got a job at that ‘company’.
One day, she told us that we were all going on a group outing for team bonding. She took us to an outlet mall four hours away. She told the rest of us seven people that she was going to go shop, and that she’d see us later. That was code for don’t follow me. Every two hours, she’d let us know she was going to go unload her bags to the giant van they rented, and she would group text us, telling us we can meet her there to unload as well. We all get paid under 50k. We have nothing to unload.
By lunch, she had proceeded to fill up the van with so much garbage. She then asks me where all my new stuff is, and I said I’m budgeting right now. She goes, ‘Take out a credit card and go shop! That’s the American way!’
Seriously? Okay, wow. By 9 p.m., her bags were taking up people’s seats, and they had to sit with her stuff. She spent thirty thousand dollars that day. The rest of us spent about 70$. We were tired and bored and cold. To this day, I still believe she thinks she did something nice for us, and she doesn’t understand how polarizing and not at all team bonding that was.”
Messy Divorce Leads To Messier Spiral
“A friend of my husband’s from college went through a messy divorce recently. The marriage was kind of a sham to begin with, the girl only wanted to marry him because her religious parents wouldn’t let them live together unless they were married. But she was clearly in love with someone else, and she even went so far as inviting said other person into their marriage as a third, which is fine and dandy as long as everyone is consenting. However, I don’t think our friend was particularly enthused.
Anyways, they got divorced and now she lives with the third person and is very happy, but the whole situation seems to have broken something in our friend. He now spends literally all day posting on Facebook constantly about ridiculous conspiracy theories, as well as talking about private situations between him and his ex-wife in full public view. He will post the same thing over and over on Facebook, I’ve seen him post the same fake conspiracy article over 30 times in a row in the span of about 10 minutes. Recently when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, he went off and threatened to literally chop the head off of anyone who was going to vote for Biden. He kept making so many threats that he got the cops called on him.
The craziest thing that’s happened with him recently is that he saw a picture on his ex-wife’s page of her garden, in which she used a couple of these wire panel things to prop up some green beans. Apparently those wire panels were actually from some sort of business that they tried to start together, and our friend had a full conversation with himself in the comments of his own post about how it was betrayal and how she was just taunting him by using these things to keep her plants up. I don’t think he’s handling it very well.
This is something I have brought up within our friend group recently about him. The general consensus is that he is not well mentally, and that he is at risk to himself and others, hence why the cops were called on him once. Apparently his mother has been spending a lot more time with him, so hopefully he is getting some attention and someone who has his best interest is near him. He’s posted repeatedly that he won’t seek therapy of any kind however, since he is under the impression that his ex is the one that needs therapy and not him. We’re keeping an eye on him, but it’s just tricky when our only contact is over social media and text.”
“Source Of Astonishment And Second-Hand Depression”
“I worked at a rather swanky restaurant for a year. A month or so after I was hired, another guy was hired named Li. Li was the saddest sack of a human being any of us had ever met in our entire lives, and we had no idea how he had survived this long, let alone how he was ever hired or lasted as long as he did as an employee. The first thing you should know about Li is that he was a hardcore gambling addict. The second thing you need to know is that he was mid-divorce, but refused to sign the papers. The third thing you need to know is that his entire family in addition to his ex-wife were ‘out to get him’. And if nobody told you this, don’t worry. Li will tell you all of this within five minutes of meeting him. I’ve never met someone more obviously delusional in my life. How he was ever hired was beyond me, and he was our favorite topic over drinks after work.
Li walked up to everyone at work and openly talked about how he was going to win the lottery. Day in, day out. He constantly bothered people for money AT HIS JOB. Swear to god, he said he needed it for lotto tickets. One coworker actually gave him a few bucks once just to shut him up. I gave that guy a talking to about that. Li would complain that his family wouldn’t talk to him and were ‘out for his house’. He tried to play victim, but it was clear his family were absolutely sick of his nonsense and were trying to protect him from financial ruin and save the family house, which he lived in and couldn’t afford. As you can imagine, Li was an incredibly frustrating human to even be around and got yelled at by his colleagues constantly. His sad sap story grew old pretty quick to say the least, and he constantly approached people and just started talking about his personal problems.
Li begged people for favors like a spoiled 12-year old girl. Li was in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and spent his first paycheck on lotto tickets. Li came up to me to talk about his ‘plan’ for financial freedom. My coworker and I proceeded to break out a calculator and show him his odds of achieving his scratch card dream. The slim odds had no effect on him. He just took it in stride and kept talking about the lottery. He. Never. Shut. Up.
Li was both a source of shocked astonishment, hilarity, and second-hand depression the entire time he worked there. But after six or so months, the gambling addict got caught stealing money and was finally fired.”
Converting Them From The Inside
My step-brother got into a weird Gnostic religious group and thought he could convert people by talking to them (harassing them) Socrates style, except without any ability to carry out a philosophical conversation. Also, he was assuming the workplace was a fine occasion to do this. When he’d get fired from his temp jobs, he’d assume it was a conspiracy and fight against enlightenment.
He got a job in a restaurant as a waiter. He assumed for whatever unimaginable reason that the proper way to act for waiters is to bow after taking the order. When his supervisor asked him to stop, he lectured the supervisor on proper waitstaff manners He wanted to propose to a 50+ year old woman who has until then shown no signs of being interested in him. Luckily, he believed in the tradition to first ask his father’s permission so he asked his dad, who talked him out of it He had an idea to join the military to convert them from the inside. At one point believed the sun rays can sustain you, but luckily never really bothered to practice it. This is more funny than deluded as a side note, but one of the group activities is to rewrite their religious book by hand, which he diligently did, and it wasn’t a small book either. Turned out he used the wrong color ink which for some reason invalidated the whole thing.
He is totally against capitalism and wants to live a free life as a wandering philosopher rather than live as a working drone like everyone else, but does believe the working drones in his family should support his noble pursuit while also chastising them for selling out. Good grief.”
Explaining Reality
“I was working in a pharmacy.
Customer: ‘Hello. Can I get the yellow ones please?’
Me: ‘Sorry, could I get your name first?’
Customer: ‘It doesn’t matter, I just need the yellow round ones.’
Me: ‘Did you have a prescription?’
Customer: ‘No. I always get them here, the little yellow round ones!’
It went on like this for literally twenty-something minutes. Here’s what I found out in that time:
By little yellow round ones, he meant red/orange circular Xarelto tablets. He had been on a lower dose a couple of years ago, and he had not filled the yellow ones in over 18 months. There was one dispense tech who knew his name and knew his doctor. By sheer coincidence, she’d greeted him every time he came in for the last 2-3 years. He physically had no idea how a pharmacy works. He’d only even been to this one, only ever picked up one medication, and only through one tech who knew the doctor sent his prescription through every few months. It was surreal, explaining reality to somebody who by pure fortune had never experienced it.”
A Black Hole Of Empathy
“My college classmate comes to mind, let’s call him ‘R’. R is very out of touch, a case of the classic sheltered rich kid who’s never experienced the real world. R started his college career by using slurs and swearing at people, apparently thinking that was okay. It was not, and he was reported several times before he finally got the message and stopped.
Okay, at least he stopped, right? Surely the problem is now over? Oh, wait, he says he’ll have no problem buying a house (given that there is a housing crisis this will be interesting to watch), and he wants his first job to pay him $70,000 salary. He hasn’t yet realized that your first job will almost always be at the bottom of the hierarchy, and you’ll very rarely be paid $70,000.
R also thought that it would be very easy to become an English teacher in Japan. In his words, ‘You just fly over and speak English and they’ll hire you.’
He hasn’t considered that he will need other things, such as – what was it – oh yeah, a teaching degree. He also hasn’t considered that others might apply to be English teachers in Japan and he’ll have to compete with them.
Although, possibly the worst part is his weird obsession with Hitler. He keeps going on about Hitler being right, and when we protest, he says we’re just being snowflakes. Apparently, disapproving of someone saying that the genocide of 11 million was right is just being a snowflake. When we further explained the difference between being moral and being a snowflake, R countered by telling us that morals are just made by snowflakes for snowflakes, and that he has a right to freedom of speech, that classic go-to excuse for people who are being called out for bad behavior.
So yeah, I reckon R is the person I’ve met who is most out of touch with reality due to his winging-it attitude towards general life and his twisted sense of morality and lack of empathy.”
Mortified On Their Special Day
“I have a sad one. My female cousin who was getting married was the very shy, nice, but not popular kid. She also didn’t attend family events or really build relationships with anyone. She was marrying a gentleman very similar to her. However, her family was pretty well off and their older son just had a huge expensive wedding with about 200 guests. Even though she asked for a small wedding, her family invited all these family members, and even though they didn’t get any RSVPs back, they still went all out on venue and food and entertainment. Apparently it was the same with the groom. He wanted a small wedding and did not have much of a social group or family. Apparently when the wedding day came, there were only about 10-15 guests in a venue set up to entertain and feed over 150 people with an open bar (even though the bride and groom did not drink). Bride and groom were both extremely embarrassed, and it ruined the whole day for them, given how awkward and quiet it was.
My immediate family wasn’t invited to the event, but I always just felt really bad for her. Neither the bride nor groom were bad people, but they were just reserved and private people that had a very special day ruined by oblivious parents. A few years later, after building successful careers and coming out of their social shells, they had a pretty wonderful small renewal of vows in a gorgeous location with select friends and family.”
There’s No Hope Left
“There’s a guy I knew whose brain is completely fried, and his perception of everything is just distorted, to put it lightly. I know people who have known him for a long time before he became the way he is, and I’ve heard different stories as to what happened. The most common ones being that he did a really nasty and toxic shot of something and never came back from it, or he just did way too much way too fast over a period of time and it seriously messed him up. Either way, it was caused by heavy substance abuse.
It’s hard to describe the way he is. He’s really soft-spoken mostly, but says and does some random and incomprehensible things. He has these weird habits of doing stuff like sitting there and staring at you for literally minutes on end and barely blinking, standing in front of the mirror and mumbling to himself, as well as severe mood swings and outbursts brought on by hallucinations. I think he’s still in jail right now, but before that he was sleeping in a tent out in the woods by his family’s house, because they wouldn’t let him stay with them. He’s a really nice guy most of the time, he just has a lot of trouble with keeping people’s company and getting their help, but the people he associates with aren’t the type who are gonna help him anyway, because he has nothing to offer in return. It’s a pretty pitiful thing to see, and I hope he’s able to find some sort of stability someday.”
Did He Learn His Lesson?
“Ugh, this dude still creeps me out years later, and it was secondhand exposure. We had a yard sale at my house and some dude in his work truck pulled up and started talking to my then like 16 year old family member as we shut down. Totally innocuous. Asked if we had any drones/photo equipment. She answered and said no and was her normal self. She said it politely. Asked if he was into all that. Said not yet but wanted to be and didn’t want to spend hundreds and was searching garage sales. Told him good luck finding it. We were shutting down and she’d been hoping for some cash and sold a few things and then was staying to clean a family member’s car in and out. She was outside by herself after a little while.
Dude came back like two hours later and apparently had been sitting in his truck, thinking about their conversation and was convinced she was incredibly into him. He decided to come back to shoot his shot. Man was late 40s, early 50s? She was sixteen. He pulled up his truck, blocked our driveway where she was cleaning the car with a vacuum, and blocked the sidewalk because he drove up at an angle and came onto our property. He hops out to come up and tried to talk to her. He leaned over and she was in the backseat, and he had the door blocked. He scared the ever-loving daylights out of her and she freaked out and ran out by going out the opposite door. She was so panicked that she couldn’t tell me why she was screaming, and I finally look. Dude is still half in our driveway and looking confused.
He doesn’t leave. I call the cops because she’s completely freaking out and this dude is up on the property and she can’t even tell us why she’s having a panic attack. He stays a long while, actually comes up and rings the doorbell like we’re going to answer, but finally leaves before police get there. Local PD take it seriously and drove around the neighborhood and found his truck a few blocks away, at his parents’ house.
Apparently he’d sat in his truck thinking it over, thought she was flirting and wanted his phone number, and decided to come back. Two very ticked off local law enforcement explained that grown men don’t terrorize teenage girls, and that nobody at that house wanted him back. Also, they explained that when you block people’s driveways and their exit from the vehicle, it’s threatening and he shouldn’t do it. By the end, he was apparently very sorry and his parents were highly embarrassed that he’d done that.
He came back to tell us they told him to not come back and explained his behavior was not okay. Who sends somebody screaming away from them and sits around out front like they’re expecting them to come back? You rang the doorbell? What is wrong with you?
Polite. Is. Not. Flirting. Lots of people are polite. You’re beyond creepy, my dude. Sneak up on people and send them out the other side of the car to get away. Then knock on our door a few times while I’m on the phone with police because you scared somebody so bad she can’t tell me what even actually happened.”
Not All Hope Was Lost
“My dad has always been in terrible shape. Diabetes, intestinal issues, severely underweight, had to get a few organs removed, arrests, and even homelessness. In his eyes, nothing is his fault, and substances and drinks had nothing to do with his problems. It was always someone else’s fault. He usually blames the military, from when he served in desert storm. I don’t really know how much army life is to blame for his medical problems, but the fact that he always maintained a strict diet of Twinkies, hard drinks, and some powdery white stuff probably never helped. Dad had a lot of issues that he dragged me into. The point when it really got noticeably out of control was when his behavior made him lose his house.
We had trouble finding him a place to live after he lost his house to the bank from failure to pay his mortgage. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money, it’s that he was too busy partying to really care. He blames his wife at the time, who tried so hard to help him until she just couldn’t do it anymore. She divorced him after the house was lost. It wasn’t dad’s fault, according to him. It was his ex-wife’s fault.
He had a house being built for him by habitat for humanity. When you have habitat build you a house, it’s not just given to you. You have to put some work hours in. The habitat rep let me put in actual labor on dad’s behalf, because my dad couldn’t do much hard work at this point in his life. Dad was also supposed to put in hours at their store just painting trim, which is nice and easy. One day dad called me saying he lost the house and habitat ripped him off. I called the habitat rep and she said whenever they would pick him up, he would be way too wasted to take back to the store. She warned him multiple times that she couldn’t help him if he didn’t get his act together, and she even had a serious talk with him about his drink consumption, but he just got angry, so she had no other choice. Again, it wasn’t Dad’s fault according to him. It was habitat’s fault.
Then he rented a duplex. He always trashed wherever he’s lived. Always buying dogs he’s unable to take care of, so there’s dog poop everywhere in the house. He always eventually gave the pooches away. I always felt so bad for the animals. He started asking me for money for groceries, which I obliged. Probably wasn’t smart to do, but he’s my dad. It got to the point where I started to struggle. The thing is, he always had bottles of expensive drinks all over the place. I asked him why he didn’t buy groceries before buying the crazy 30-year-old drinks. He responded with anger.
The landlord of this duplex was a retired airman and sympathized with dad being an old soldier looking for a home, so he gave dad a really good deal on the unit. Dad ended up trashing the unit. Landlord found out, and he was actually very patient. I was there when the landlord was trying to talk to dad about it. He offered to schedule a cleaning service come in once every two weeks with a small increase in rent. Dad got angry. Eventually, he got evicted. Landlord started explaining all of this to me when I was cleaning dad’s stuff out, since I was considerably more reasonable. My dad was at his dad’s house at the time, where he would live. I told the landlord not to worry about it and I understood. What else could I say? My dad’s behavior left nothing to defend. He was trashing this man’s place to the point where it was probably unhealthy to live in, and he got angry when the landlord addressed it.
Dad even almost got kicked out of grandpa’s place a few times for being a belligerent lunatic. Grandpa doesn’t like drinks in his house, which is where the battleground usually was. Lots of stories there, but grandpa let me know he couldn’t take much more, so we started looking for somewhere for dad to go. We contacted the nearby veterans home. They were rather understanding. We were honest with them about his behavior, mainly because we didn’t want to clean his stuff out of yet another place if they weren’t sure that they could handle him. They let us know he had to go to rehab.
Dad, of course, hated that idea. He started a rant about how the veterans home is a prison and rehab is for junkies. He had a huge rant about how everyone is out to get him. After he tired himself out, I told him, ‘We are all exhausted of this, including you. We are not playing games anymore. Your two options now are either to finally address your substance abuse or die. Make a choice, because the vets home is waiting for you to contact them.’
And I walked away from him. I was at my wit’s end, and I was no longer messing around. Next thing I know, Grandpa gives me a call. I thought he was calling me to tell me that he found Dad’s body. But turned out Dad was actually going to rehab. He was resentful of us. But going. At this point, nothing was Dad’s fault. It was EVERYONE else’s fault.
He’s been to rehab multiple times before, but this time, he finally admits that he has a substance problem. He blames it on the military and PTSD, which I don’t absolutely discredit, but the reason he joined the army was because after so many arrests, the judge at his hearing said he needed more discipline. So he gave him the option of joining the military or going to prison. So substance abuse was an issue before the military. The most important thing is he at least admits that he has a substance problem. Finally, he was admitting that his behavior might have been slightly abhorrent and that his substance abuse was out of control.
There is a happy ending. He’s doing better at the vets home today. The vets home is awesome. They take the residents fishing on charter boats, go to sporting events, concerts, golf outings, lots of cool stuff. The food is healthy and delicious. There are many recreational areas. The staff are absolute angels. Dad is visibly happier and healthier now. He even started a little volunteer job at the vets home, where he’s a kind of councilor for the patients in the terminal wing of the facility. He’s found Jesus, which has helped him a lot. He’s even looking into trying to be a resident pastor for the home.”