We often tend to make decisions for our own personal benefit. What we often do not realize is how crucial of an effect a decision of ours can have on someone else. Sometimes it can be too late before we realize our mistake.
These people have been through such experiences that have since plagued them with remorse. As shared on Reddit, these are their stories.
(Content has been edited for clarity).
Dead Tired
It turned out that a guy on a motorcycle whipped out of the gas station next to Sonic and I hit him on my way through. I never saw the guy’s lights. I blacked out because the air-bag went off and knocked me out for a second. When I came back, I was rolling forward through the oncoming lane and I saw sparks flying when I looked out my driver’s side window as the motorcycle skidded down the road. I put my car in park, got out still dazed and fell over. A bunch of people at Sonic ran over to me and the guy on the motorcycle. The thing is, he had his kid on the back who was about 15 or 16 years old.
The cops got there and they called life flight.
They both survived, but the kid was some big football star at the high school and probably would have had some scholarship lined but, because of the accident, he had to get some major surgeries and steel rods put in his legs. Nothing ended up happening legally as it was ruled an accident and there was no followup, except for what I did to make sure they survived and about the kid.
I’ll never forget the look that kid’s grandpa was giving me at the scene of the accident when both his son and grandson were being picked up by life flight and weren’t sure if they were going to make it.”
The St. Valentine’s Day Malfunction
Elnur/Shutterstock
“Right after college, I worked in a copy/shipping/print shop, like a FedEx store with more services, basically. The day before Valentine’s Day, this college-age guy came in and said he wants to get something laminated. It was a Transformers Valentine’s Day card he made for his girlfriend when they were in grade-school together. He recently found it and wanted to give it to her a second time, years later.
Pretty dang sweet, right?
I was in the middle of a large print job, so I told the guy it would be around 30 minutes before I could get to it. He paid, gave the card to me, and left. I finished my current job and went to laminate the card. I put the card in the plastic sleeve and between some heavy cardstock, fed it into the machine’s rollers… and the machine ate it.
It got caught between the rollers. The machine started twisting and ripping it all up, melting the plastic together, and crushing the card. I tried to reverse the machine and get it out, but it was jammed in there really good. I wound up having to actually take the machine apart to get it out.
The card was utterly trashed – singed, crumpled, ripped, and sealed in lumpy melted plastic. When I told the guy and showed him what was left of the card, I felt like I was kicking a puppy. He just had the saddest, most helpless expression on his face. I feel bad just thinking about it. That poor guy.”
‘Just Press CTRL-G’
“I was the only IT employee in a company of 35 people. We had an employee whose entire job was to manage a spreadsheet. She had to sort files for each line item, print the desired number of copies from column B, sort the prints by size, and make packets to send to the relevant department.
To help her out, I wrote a massive Excel macro that did her eight hours of work in 30 seconds. I replaced all of her responsibilities with the push of the keys ‘Ctrl-G.’ I was saving her 7 hours 45 minutes per day. She was thrilled that her entire day was reduced to ctrl-g, then wait for the prints to complete. Her excitement didn’t last long.
Instead of finding something for her to do, the boss fired her, and I got employee of the month honors and a $750 award for saving the company money by eliminating her position.
I immediately connected the dots as soon as I heard. I tried to find her or find her contact information to apologize, but never did. I was angry at the boss at the time.
I eventually left the company when it became apparent that they were happy to pay the lone IT employee a measly $32,000 per year.”
A Joke Gone Too Far
“When I was 15, I had ACL reconstruction on my right knee and used crutches temporarily while it healed. During this time, I went to a movie with some friends and found myself in the ticket line behind an attractive girl my age who also had crutches due to an ankle injury. We eyed each other’s crutches.
‘Hey, nice crutches,’ I said. She said she liked my crutches too. My friends and I just thought this was the funniest thing ever – to compliment someone on their crutches while on crutches yourself. The rest of the day, as we walked around the mall and saw people with crutches, I would hobble past them and say ‘Nice crutches,’ and 100% of the time, it got a good laugh.
That evening, my friends and I were driving through the mall parking lot. It was dark, but up ahead on the sidewalk, I saw a boy, maybe 10 years old, hunched over on his crutches with his parents at his side. Instinctively, I rolled down my window, leaned half of my body out, and yelled as we passed them, ‘NICE CRUTCHES, KID!!!’
The second after I said this, I realized I made a mistake I still feel guilty about to this day.