There are all kinds of weirdos out there. They’re EVERYWHERE! And sometimes, unfortunately, we have to interact with them sometimes.
In this AskReddit article, people share their very awkward stranger encounters.
1. That is incredibly awkward
“Was adopted at birth. Learned who my birth family was in early 30s. Had met a sister but nobody else yet. Sister tells me grandpa is being taken off life support (cancer) and wants to talk to me before he dies. Travel to hospital several hours away. Meet mom in hospital lobby for the first time ever. Go to grandpa’s room where all of his, and my, family are.
They are all there to say their goodbyes. Probably only 5% of them knew of my existence. Suddenly all the attention is on me, the stranger. The have me kneel by his side and he apologizes through tears for pressuring my mom, that I just met, to give me away for adoption. People looked pretty shocked including me. The experience was a thousand emotions and awkward was in there somewhere.”
2. That is kind of crazy
“I am a pediatric nurse, but we “float” (substitute) to other floors when we have more nurses than we need. So I was sent to an adult floor to work as an assistant, since theirs had called in sick. An older male patient called out asking for help to get up to the bathroom. He stood, tried to pivot, and the newly operated on knee gave out. All 320 pounds of him came down on top of me and we laid there for almost an hour. I had closed the door for privacy, and neither he nor I could yell loud enough nor reach the call light for help.
My phone was 10 feet from me on the floor after it fell out of my scrubs and rang incessantly. Finally the other assistant came to find me because she wanted to go on break and was tired of having to do all my work. The patient was fine, since he fell on me, I was sore for a week. We were nose to nose the whole time and boy was it awkward. His breath was terrible, but he was a nice man and felt so bad.”
3. Mistaken (dog) identity
“Once I was at a dog groomers to pick up my dog. It’s fairly small (20lbs) and white. Usually when I take him, he’s got long semi curly hair and when I pick him up he has short straight hair, which is quite a change and this is what I expect when I go to pick him up.
I walk up to the counter and request my dog and the clerk tells me he’ll be out in a moment. 30 seconds later an attendant walks out to the lobby from the back door with a dog that immediately gets excited and tries to run away as soon as it rounds the corner to me.
“Hey buddy!” I say as I walk up and attempt to pick up my dog, but it turns around and starts recoiling back and gives me a nip as I try picking him up. An old man behind me asks “Hey is that your dog?” And me thinking it’s a pretty weird question respond “yep!”
At that point he goes “I don’t think so mister, that’s my dog” and as I turn and realize this dog that looks just like mine after a grooming is 100% not my dog my face goes completely red and the whole lobby starts laughing. To make it worse, the old couple whose dog it was stuck around just because they wanted to see what my dog actually looked like and of course when he came out with a different haircut there was only a vague resemblance. Yikes.”
4. Dating game
“I serve in the Air Force and one time I got injured at work and had to go to the hospital, nothing serious, just dinged my finger super hard (f*cked up the ligament, my finger was shaped like an “N”). Anywho, when I get to the hospital I walk in the front door, I’m still in uniform, and some nice older man comes up to me and Thanks me for my service, I told him I appreciated his support and then he abruptly asked me if I was married.
I told him no and right at that moment he turns to this woman walking by heading for the door, he turns to her and says something along the lines of “You see this nice man? You should go on a date with him!” at first I thought maybe he knew the woman, maybe his daughter or something but the shocked look on her face I could easily tell he did NOT know her.
She stopped for a moment and he asked her again and she just went wide-eyed, kind of stuttered for a moment and then B-lined it for the door. I really didn’t know what to say so I just stood there looking like a guy who just got whacked in the head. The old man then turns back to me and says “Let’s see who else is here an available.” At this point I just made some excuse about being late for my appointment and walked away.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been so red before or again in my life.”
5. The plumbing incident
“While my dad was out of the country there was a major leak from the water tank in the loft which caused serious damage to the property and caused lots of other issues, including a hole in the ceiling.
I called out a repair guy only to hear a huge “boom”, followed by a string of expletives before he called for help. I found him half in a cupboard, soaking wet, with his hand on a burst water pipe.
I ended up having to help. This involved me climbing up to the loft (in a short dress and stockings while he was basically laid on the floor underneath the ladder) and trying to turn off the water from there. This didn’t work so we ended up switching places so he could professionally investigate.
Swapping places involved me getting soaking wet, and having to press up against the guy and contort myself into position in order to minimise the risk of further damage and water explosively spraying everywhere.
There was further pressing against each other and awkwardly closer contortions, as water was sprouting out like from a fountain unless we held it, before the leak was resolved.
The situation was like a bad porn parody.
Our dialogue even included things like: “if you come here you’ll get wet” and “I don’t mind getting wet, let’s do it”.
My friends now refer to this as my plumber porn story.”
6. In shock
“I was with my mum buying flowers at a florist for a new year’s eve party. The florist was obviously a very lonely woman and wouldn’t stop going on about how she isn’t doing anything for New Year’s and how it’s so nice we have friends to visit, to the point where it became really saddening. My mother obviously really felt for her.
Every now and again, maybe twice a year, she has a brain fart and accidentally says what she is thinking. That day was one of those rare days. After paying for the flowers, my mum said ‘thanks! Hope you find a friend soon!’. I look at her in shock, the woman looks at her in shock, and my mum just gasps, apologises and literally backs out of the store. God it was so awkward.”
7. That’s odd
“That time I screamed at a woman over poo.
My little village has a small annual dog show. We normally enter our little dog who has won “friendliest dog,” “waggiest tail” and “dog the judge would like to take home” in the past. This year she was unfortunately in season so we didn’t enter to prevent any ‘fuss’ from the other dogs but took her along to watch.
Half way across the park she decided to poo and I suddenly realised I’d forgotten a bag. There were loads of other people with dogs around due to the show so I wandered away a little to to ask someone for a bag. I turned back and to my horror a lady was picking up my little dog’s mess. Not wanting to feel like one of those a-holes that doesn’t clean up, I ran towards her to advise here she didn’t have to do that because I was going to get it.
Instead, in a sort of panic, I waved my arms and barked “NO, THAT’S MY POO!” Please note that I did not say, “that is MY DOG’S poo.”
She physically jumped then turned a deep red. She sort of mumbled an apology, dropped the poo and marched off with her dog.
It was at that point that I looked to my left and saw my dog’s poo sitting a few feet away from the lady’s dog mess that she was attempting to pick up.
I think about this at night sometimes.”
8. No more bike rides at night
“I went for a bike ride in my neighborhood at about 12 at night a month ago. It was pitch black other than streetlights every 5 or 6 houses.
I was kinda just zoning out, enjoying the fresh air, when something moved out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to look, and I immediately assumed it was some kind of monster (I had just finished a horror movie), so I let out an extremely loud, bloodcurdling scream in the middle of the night in a silent suburban neighborhood. The thing, which turned out to be a blond soccer mom, screamed back at me, with pretty good reason.
I zipped past her on my bike, yelling “oh my god I’m so sorry!” over and over again until I got off the street..
I haven’t gone on a nighttime bike ride since then.”
9. Man, my nipples…
“When I was a teenager my friends and I would spend the weekends staying up late playing video games and eating junk food. I was also a cross country runner, and on this particular night I was experiencing some extreme chafing from a long run earlier that day.
While we were at the gas station getting Doritos and energy drinks I announced to who I thought was my friend, “Man, my nipples really hurt.” Upon realizing it was a complete stranger with whom I had just shared this intimate detail I simply stared at him and said “You’re not my friend” and walked away. I didn’t go back to that gas station for a long time.”
10. Way to go
“I was at a wedding reception and went to use the bathroom. I’m standing at the urinal and this guy comes up and stands next to me and let’s off some whopper farts. He goes “oof check out the smell of these! Whew! You gotta let ‘em out here and not by those girls, knowwhatimsayin’?” And I just go “ha! Yep.” And walk out felt very uncomfortable.”
11. I’m not responsible
“I used to do security work at parties. One night there was an alert call for a young woman gone missing. I found her with her dress hitched up looking for her underwear in the bushes. I managed to unlock her phone to call her dad, who from his name I recognised as the district attorney. He comes over to pick up his intoxicated daughter.
While I was carrying her to the car she was making very sexual remarks about me carrying her, all the while her father is hearing me out like I was responsible for his daughter ending up that way, even suggesting I had raped her. His lecture continued after I put his daughter in the backseat, still making the same remarks while pressing up her body against the car window. When the cops arrived at the scene, she was stark naked, putting her ass out the window.
I told the cops my side of the story, as soon as she picked up my name she started moaning it to the point of waking up nearby neighbours. I was brought to the police station for interrogation, surveillance footage proved my innocence. 5 years later I see this district attorney on a weekly basis at my job.”
12. That is weird
“I worked the entrance gate for a theme park. Our season pass holders used a biometric scan of their right index finger to verify their identity. One day a little girl walks up with her family, who only spoke Spanish, scans her pass and places her left finger on the scanner. I say, “Can you use your right finger sweetie?” Then, her mother raises the girls right arm to show me she doesn’t actually have a right hand. Seemed to be due to a birth defect rather than a horrific accident.
However, her left finger keeps getting rejected, so I call a lead over to override the old scan and re-do it. He then proceeds to say the same thing to the girl, followed by her mother raising the arm again. It was definitely more awkward for me than the family, but it gets worse. About three months later it happened again, the same little girl. Absolutely mortifying.”
13. Hold me
“Discovered, while at the top of St. Pauls cathedral, that I am terrified of heights. A Norwegian woman was having the same experience. We were so unnerved we ended up holding one another and bumping down the spiral staircase on our backsides. Parted ways at the bottom without a word or a backward glance.”
14. Adventure
“In Denver Colorado I met some man with a giant suitcase full of stolen clothes and a little falling apart backpack that he asked me to carry. We stop to take a break because that suitcase he lugs around is like 100 pounds of clothes and then he says to check out what’s in ‘my’ bag. I open his backpack and it’s full of over the counter pills and a bag of meth. He asked me if I wanted to try it and I just gave him his bag immediately and went away. Shit was wild. Denver 18′ a homeless adventure.”
15. Wrong butt
“At an art studio in LA, my girlfriend was wearing a denim jacket As we looked at a piece together, out of the corner of my eye I saw the jacket and I reach over to grab her butt. A sudden “Oh!” Comes from beside me and a woman 30 years older than me is standing there blushing. I tell her I thought she was someone else and run away to my girlfriend. A few minutes later the lady comes and finds us to talk about young love and how cute we are while making too much eye contact with me.”
