Common sense is a wonderful quality, but the older I get, the more I realize some people just don’t have it. These 20 people share stories of coworkers, family members, friends and acquaintances who royally effed up their lives. Serious lack of common sense in these.
1. Good times
I knew this dumbwit dude, who was keeping an old girlfriend on the line, stringing her along. Buddy went to a porn convention, and met an actress. He fell in “love” and got her pregnant. So he dumps his girlfriend by text, starts a long distance relationship with this porn star, and spends over 30k on the relationship. But it turns out this chick was pregnant with a baby, that wasn’t his. Good thing he got engaged to her. Good times.
2. Take a bet
A relative of mine was worth about $5 mil at one point. He developed a gambling habit. A couple of years later, he ended a 30-year friendship by passing a bad check for $60 because he had to make one last bet.
3. Brush up
He fell madly in love with a girl and would do anything she asked. She told him he should go rob a store so she could have some cash, so he went into a dry cleaner’s with a hairbrush under a towel (so it looked like he had a gun). He was caught and served 7 years in the state prison.
It was his first time ever getting in trouble with the law (I wanted to say it was his first brush with the law, but that’s not even funny in this case). Once he was released from prison, he was unable to get a job, and eventually became an alcoholic.
4. A federal offense
Apparently it’s a very serious offence to steal a mail truck.
5. Study time
There was a girl in my PhD program whose dad died a few months before she was about to take her comprehensive exams (basically the halfway point in a PhD). Obviously that’s a tough thing to go through, but her dad was also well into his eighties and had been in hospice for several months so it’s not like it struck out of the blue.
However, despite knowing that it was coming from a long way off she still had a complete meltdown after his death.
She made absolutely no effort to study for her exams and instead would go out partying every single night (prepping for comps basically means studying non-stop from morning to night every single day for about three months straight).
During all this time though she kept posting status updates about how she needed to finish her PhD for the sake of her dad, who had been so excited that she’d be the family’s first doctor. She failed the exams but school policy allowed her to have a second shot at them in the next semester.
However, she learned nothing from her previous experience and continued to go out partying every night without studying. And then, for reasons no one ever understood, she started turning on all of her friends in the program. She never gave any of us reasons why, she suddenly just refused to talk to any of us.
She also divorced her husband and basically fell in with a group of guys who she kept running into during her evenings out and refused to interact with anyone other than these guys.
Not too surprisingly, she failed her comps again and was kicked out of the program.
Last I heard she was working as a secretary herself and dating some guy from this new circle of friends of hers and that nothing has really changed.
6. Family affair
Oh god, my mom’s cousin and his whole family are selling this multi-level marketing herbal crap and have been for 3 years now, trying to get rich. He had a great stable job, lived in a nice suburb. Now his oldest kid dropped out of undergrad to work selling herbal crap, his wife is on it too, and his youngest son graduated from HS and started selling right away…
They had to move cause they couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore. It’s so sad idk how they’re still in that world. They used to be so much fun at get togethers and family events, now they always try to talk everyone into buying from them and are super obsessed about getting rich, like it’ll happen anytime now!
7. Didn’t even need it
A guy at work lost his boyfriend. They were together for like 12 years. We raised tens of thousands within the company towards the cancer charity that supported him for months and the family while raising awareness. But that’s not the messed up part.
Last week he got caught stealing cash from work. Everyone is distraught. He’s lost his job and all his friends.
The worst part: he got life insurance money, and still collects his dead partner’s pension. We’re based in the UK so there were no medical bills, and they didn’t have a mortgage.
He didn’t even need the money.
8. Cocaine’s a hell of a drug
Knew a dude in university. He was top of every class, really nice dude and on track to be an insanely successful doctor. He had a girlfriend who was an honest to god model. His girlfriend got into cocaine (because apparently it’s fairly common for models). She offered him some one day and the last I heard he was working in a fish market and in and out of rehab and AA. Still with the same girl though so… that’s nice?
9. W.O.W.
World of Warcraft. It’s pretty obvious now that he has major addictive personality, since he basically shrugged off everything to smoke weed and play video games, then just blamed everyone else for trying to stop him. Last time I heard from him he was living on a boat in the harbor but it got wrecked on the jetty.
10. Disney
This coworker with no adult life experience became obsessed with everything Disney. She maxed out all credit cards on merchandise and trips to the parks. When she exhausted all of her credit, she used her mother and her brother’s.
Now she’s stuck at 33, living in a relative’s basement (for free) and spending virtually every dollar on multiple Disney trips and cruises per year. Her credit rating is shot and she’s hundreds of thousands in debt.
I truly wish I was kidding. She’s lost everything and recently announced at work that she no longer wants children. Obviously this is because kids would interfere with her ability to do more and more Disney stuff.
It’s like someone who joins a cult and becomes a different person.
11. Astro-not
I dated a super-smart girl in high school. She wanted to be an astronaut. She won the national science fair for a project to terraform Mars. She was accepted to the Air Force academy to train to be a pilot / scientist so she could be fast-tracked to the astronaut cadet program. The girl was brilliant.
Six months before graduation in senior year she went to a party.
She took some bad ecstasy and went into a coma for a few weeks. When she came out, she was a totally different person.
She just lost all her drive and basically stopped going to class or doing any work. She failed her last semester and dropped out. She cut everyone off and went into seclusion. That’s the last I heard of her.
12. This is an actual problem
In high school we went streaking, and one of my friends happened to be 18. We got caught by the police, and now he is on the sex offenders list. That was 6 years ago.
13. Couch hopper
He met a girl at a party on Friday. He put in his resignation at work and sent an email to his advisor he was giving up his grad program on Saturday. He moved across the continent with the girl he met on Monday morning.
Last time I heard about him, his friends were collecting money to fly his homeless ass home two years later and he’s been jobless and crashing on people’s couches ever since.
14. Hockey Dreamin’
Friend of mine spent his entire childhood playing in the minor hockey leagues. He got so good he was nearly at the top of the league by the time he was in high school. Then his mom died of cancer and he started drinking. All his teammates went on to play in the NHL, and he’s working as a roofer.
It’s sad watching hockey with him, and he’s like, “I used to play with that guy in Triple-A.” His mom’s dream was to see him go all the way to the top.
15. In just three months…
Most gorgeous, intelligent girl I’ve ever know. She was pre-med in college and breezing through.
Then she got an offer to make $1000 in a weekend as a model at a car show. Then she got offered much more than that to model lingerie for a bunch of sales reps the night after the car show. She made $2500 that night. I think that changed her perspective on life.
She dropped out of school “for one semester” with the plan of making enough money in four months to pay the rest of her way through college. She made a ton of money as a stripper.
Then she discovered cocaine and spent all that stripper money as fast as she could make it. Claims she was “tricked” into making a porn movie but was so high she’s not sure if it was commercial porn or just some guys making a home movie.
Then she got pregnant, not sure who the father is. While pregnant and high, she got arrested driving the getaway car for a couple of guys who tried to rob the strip club she worked at.
In THREE MONTHS she went from top of the world to being a felon, waiting to have a prison baby. So sad.
16. Less than a minute?
Had a friend who bought an expensive Mercedes. It was kind of a life dream he had for many years. It took all his savings and also his life insurance to get there, plus a decent credit.
When pulling off the dealer’s place, he totally wrecked it on the first turn. Paperwork with insurance was still in progress, so they denied paying. He now drives a used old car and is paying off a credit for a car he drove less than a minute.
17. Golden boy, indeed
Not a friend, my only brother. Golden boy, handed everything on a silver platter. Basically a Prince in our family, golf scholarship, lots of friends, chicks throwing themselves at him. All this despite the fact that he’s a supreme jerk, and a nasty person.
He started drinking heavily at 15. Seriously cheap disgusting stuff too – which is nonsense, we come from money. (Buy some good stuff and stop chain smoking menthols but whatever.) He hid it like a champ until 2015.
He suffered full liver failure a week after his 29th birthday. So he begs my parents for a 2nd chance at life, he needs help, he wants to live. My parents managed to get him a full liver transplant two months in which would have been impossible without money because addicts aren’t really high on the list for transplants.
Once it was done, he had mandatory rehab, 12 steps etc. The Mayo Clinic started calling because he was skipping his mandatory “how are you enjoying the organ you don’t deserve?” appointments.
When my mom forces him to go, he tests positive for coke, booze & weed. He is now dead to me & most of my family. He has four years or less to live & my mom is basically a slave because he cries that he needs her & she’s too weak to toss him in a home.
That liver could have gone to 8 people who maybe cared about their life. In my mind, he is a murderer who straight up stole someone else’s second chance at life.
18. Temper
He had a bad temper. He quit a really good commission sales job because they weren’t going to give out more vacation time. He then took a $7.50 an hour job at a pizza place. He ended up losing his house.
19. Life Sentence
A guy I knew in college was dragging his feet about breaking up with a girl. He went over to her house to finally end their toxic relationship, but ended up sleeping with her again instead.
And, naturally, she got pregnant.
20. Good plan
My buddy’s wife (both were my friends) got herself a “work husband”, she being in her early 20s and him being 43 and an ugly creep. She has her husbands baby and files for divorce a month later, citing abuse. (There was no abuse.)
Moves in with work husband and tries unsuccessfully to take all her hubbys money and keep him from his kid. His lawyer is way more competent and she ends up with credit card bills and 50/50. She’s dead broke and her 43 year old boyfriend works retail at a big box store.
