If you’re in a bad situation, you feel it all the way down in your gut. Somehow, you just know you need to get out of it as fast as you can.
These AskReddit users shared stories of the moment they knew they had to bolt from a potentially awful experience.
1. Close call
“I worked in a factory that made large plastic items via filling molds with powder and sending into a giant industrial oven that heated to 550 degrees. At the end of the week I was cleaning said oven and my boss, not knowing i was inside, turned it on. At the sound of hydraulic doors closing i dove out of the oven just as they closed and avoided free cremation. I both got the hell out of that oven and that company pretty quick.”
2. Drunk dad
“It was years ago, when I was in 4th grade. My parents used to get into fights all the time, especially when my dad was drinking. They’d start yelling and that would turn into actual fist fights. At this time we were living in a small trailer, and the room I shared with all 3 of my siblings was at one end of the trailer, near the back door.
So my dad comes home drunk, mom is pissed and starts yelling and it escalates from there. Being in a small trailer everything sounds so close and terrifying, and as the oldest of 4 I felt the need to protect my siblings but I didn’t know what to do. After a while my mom starts screaming my name at the top of her lungs and I can still hear my dad screaming too, and I knew that I needed to get myself and my siblings out of there ASAP.
I ushered them out of the room, down the hallway, and out the backdoor and told them to head to our aunt’s place, who lived a few trailers down. My mom was still screaming for me and all I knew to do was yell “I got them out Mom we’re leaving!” before also going out the back to my aunt’s. I don’t recall ever being that scared. Cops came, they both went to jail and were both out in a couple days and acted like nothing ever happened.
A few years ago I brought the incident up to my mom. I told her that I thought she was screaming at me to get my siblings out of the house and that’s why I had. She told me she was screaming my name cause she was scared and wanted help and didn’t know who else to call for. I felt so bad cause I didn’t help her, but there’s not really much I could’ve done.”
3. UHHH
“On the NYC subway I watched a grown man pull his pants down and use the support rod in the middle of the train as leverage to take a wicked steamy dump while making aggressive eye contact with me and a few other passengers.”
4. Sounds legit
“I was at a ‘marketing recruitment’ presentation in college and this guy started talking about how we would be able to go to Disneyland and buy Ferraris if we just signed up to his exclusive elite program. We just had to make a small down payment right there in the auditorium, and we shouldn’t talk about it with friends or family because haters online had damaged the company’s reputation.”
5. Rabies?
“In the fall I was walking down a trail in the woods during the middle of the day. A raccoon was sitting in the middle of the trail, facing us. Sitting on it’s butt, head kind of lowered, bugs buzzing all around it. It didn’t move at all. It just stared at us. We decided to turn around.
I don’t know what rabies looks like, but that’s not how I want to find out.”
6. Bad neighborhood
“I’d lived in the same crap neighborhood for a couple years, and was living further into the worst of it at a weekly rent place. In prior years my car had been broken into, the house’s garage had been broken into (I had some stuff stolen), I’d heard gunshots, but I’d never seen anything all that bad. At the weekly rental, we heard a dude shot dead in the lot next door.
The police came knocking to interview neighbors, and everyone else had lived there longer and refused to open the door in case of potential gang retaliation (it was a gang dispute according to later newspaper reports, but in that area it was usually safe to say anything involving guns was gang-related).
That was the damn end of that. I found a place far enough outside the city that rent was still cheap, dealt with the long commute, and enjoyed the country.”
7. Might want to leave
“My friends crazy drunk cousin grabbed a circular saw in attempt to kill me because he thought I said something bad about his aunt. I left. Lol, I told his aunt that I had some really good weed, and somehow though I said something mean to her, she was also drunk and was convinced that I indeed did insult her after he got all mad.”
8. Not up for a beatdown
“I was visiting London and just got out of sports bar by myself at 3 AM, drunk as hell. I decide to walk from the bar (near Leicester Square) to my hotel (near King’s Cross), despite not knowing exactly where I am or how to get to the hotel.
I start walking in a direction and within a minute I’m walking down a rather wide shopping street when I see two bald guys coming the other way, both pretty much built brick s**thouses, and looking like they want to start crap. They hadn’t spotted me yet but one guy suddenly walks to the side of the street and just flat out punches the steel grate in front of a shop entrance as hard as he can.
I pretty much did a straight 180, double timed it back to the bar, and asked the nice bouncers to get me a cab. Cab drops me off in front of the hotel and I go to bed without getting the crap kicked out of me first.”
9. Stone cold crazy
“Crazy guy on the C Train taking a stone out of his mouth and saying he “killed a guy with it,” but it was self defense so it’s okay right?
Yeah, that was peak “I gotta get the hell out of here” for me. Plus he smelled like puke, that didn’t help either”
10. Crackhead
“I go to school in Poughkeepsie. One time my friends and I were walking along some train tracks by the river on a foggy night (not smart). We could barely see 5 feet ahead but we weren’t afraid because it was a popular hangout spot.
All of a sudden we hear loud barking and a crackhead lunges out of the fog at us, barking like a dog. The fog around him cleared up and we could see more druggies lying under some leaves by the side of the tracks, watching us and laughing. Never ran so fast or came so close to shitting myself in my life.”
11. Nope
“Was in New Orleans interviewing for a job that required driving a company vehicle 10 hours a day that had valuable specialty equipment.
Interview is going great and we get to the part about pay. Guy goes we can offer you 10 an hour. A big smile came over my face and I leaned over to shake his hand. He thought I was agreeing, I was telling him bye.
Popeyes pays around 15 an hour here.
12. Easy choice
“When my manager told me, “Sometimes you need to make a choice between your health and your job.”
13. Middle of the night
“I pulled into a gas station to fill up my car at 4 am on the way to work. The station was well lit and actually pretty busy, so I didn’t feel unsafe. I pulled up next to a pump, go out, and just when I put the nozzle in I heard someone trying to get my attention.
I turned and it was a guy who had been leaning against the wall of the station when I pulled in. There was a van nearby him. He asked if I could call his girlfriend to come pick him up. I called one number, voice mail box full. He gave me a second number. Mailbox also full. Then he asked if I had jumper cable and if I could give me a jump. I agreed, thinking the van he was nearby was his vehicle. Then, after I agree, he tells me the story of how he got there. According to him, his car had broken down at another gas station up the street. He said it was closed so he couldn’t get any help, so he borrowed a bike from someone and rode it down to this gas station.
Then he went into the gas station to leave the bike there. As soon as he started walking away, my brain started racing and pointing out all the things that didn’t add up about this story. First, all I could imagine in those voice mail boxes were a bunch of people going “your boyfriend is stuck at the gas station.” Then, I thought about how in the hell would he legitimately borrow a bike from someone at a closed gas station in the middle of the night in the middle of winter.
At that point, I decided it was time to get the fuck out of there. Thankfully, I hadn’t pumped any gas yet, so I quickly put it back on the pump, got into my car, and tore out of there.
I actually felt a little bad because what if he actually needed help, but then I reminded myself about him “borrowing a bike” in that situation, how he was trying to get me to a dark, secluded secondary location.
This dude was absolutely trying to rob/murder me.”
14. Weirdo
“Happened a few hours ago. Was in the park with my younger brother just playing football, having. nice time. Suddenly I see a man looking over in our direction, however I can’t be too sure because I don’t have my glasses and I don’t want to scare myself for no reason.
He’s carrying a orange bag so it’s easy to see him. I ignore him and brother and I start walking around randomly (not following the path, backtracking, just not walking ‘logically’ if that makes sense) kicking the ball to each other. The last time I went to this park on the 1st, a man of the same build/ethnicity followed me so I felt myself getting paranoid.
This man kept his distance but for instance we went into the basketball area and he would come to the entrance and lean against the gate just watching us. He could go behind the trees (it was clear he knew his way around this park) and follow us which I wouldn’t notice if it wasn’t for his bag. I wanted to confront him but I was with my younger brother and didn’t want to cause trouble.
I wasn’t really scared but more angry and frustrated. The man suddenly starts getting braver and walking faster towards us, and so we decide to quickly run home even though we were only out for 15 mins.”
15. Time to sober up
“This was like 5 years ago, I was 24 years old; got way too drunk at my local bar and ended up going back to this guys apartment. It was decorated by somebody’s grandmother for sure…there were candelabra’s everywhere. He lit ALL of them; then sat me on the couch and proceeded to go through all of these old family photo albums specifically looking at pictures of his siblings and cousins as children.
No joke he was getting so hard that I could see the album start moving up and down. Then he asked me if I had any pictures of when I was a child or my siblings when they were children….Never sobered up so fast and booked it right the F out of there.
Edit because I got messages about drunk driving: this was in NYC. I walked 16 blocks through East Harlem and never felt so safe in my life.”
