Tell us about a time when you thought you were in trouble, but you weren't

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was in 9th grade, I took a test to find out if I qualified for Advanced Placement English, and the next day, I got a note stating that I needed to report to the principal’s office ASAP. I wondered what I might have done wrong that I didn’t know about (this had happened before) and when the principal saw me, she smiled at me and said, “NWH, you’re not in trouble.”

And when other kids started walking into the same room, I knew immediately that she was right, and that the results were in and we had all passed the test. :slight_smile: We just didn’t expect the results that soon!

2

20 Years ago I was driving north on the pacific coast highway in a Nissan Patfinder at 95 mph at about 630 am. I saw flashing lights in my rear view mirror, and pulled over. I had been told that my leadfoot would catch up with me one day, and I thought they were going to confiscate my license or even arrest me for reckless driving.

The state police car passed me, silent but lights going. Then a second cop car. Then a third.

I waited and nothing happened, so I started driving again. Then about two miles later I saw all 3 cars surrounding a black truck while the troopers had their drawn guns pointed at a man spread eagled on the ground.

As I passed, all I could think was “Thank God for crime!”

3

LONG story made short: Many years ago, the pharmacy at the hospital where I worked called one evening while I was working, and informed me that a patient had received a massive overdose of morphine and nearly died. The patient was given Narcan, an antidote, and made a full recovery. I was afraid I was somehow responsible, and when I went up to the floor to see the IV bag, it had been made by our best technician and checked by our best pharmacist (and probably administered by the best nurse), and it wasn’t even in the correct sized bag.

:eek: :smack:

I took the bag back to the department and filled out the appropriate paperwork, and placed it in the director’s mailbox. I could tell when those people had gotten talked to, because they looked like their parents had died for several days. Neither said anything to me about it (there were a couple of people there who might have :rolleyes:) because we all knew it could happen to anyone. I don’t think either of their jobs were in any jeopardy; it was probably shown to them and they were told to be more careful next time.

p.s. This paperwork didn’t have the reporter’s name on it, but we all recognized each other’s handwriting.

4

About 20 years ago, in the dead of winter, I was visiting a guy I knew who had a lounge setup in his garage. Tables, small refrigerator, wood burning stove. People would come over, shoot the shit, play some cards, smoke some weed, etc. In his garage so he wouldn’t have all these people tramping through his house messing it up, smoking cigarettes inside, spilling beer, etc.

Sitting there one evening when this guy comes in, sits down and pulls out a quarter pound of weed. As he’s holding it, there is a knock on the door. Owner yells “Come in!”

In strolls a cop. :eek:

Asking for a guy who wasn’t there who lived in the house and was apparently wanted on a warrant for failure to appear on a minor charge. Well, he finds out the guy isn’t there and leaves. But he only goes back to his car and calls in the cavalry. About a half dozen cars showed up within 5 minutes, and they come walking right in (hey, probable cause). We’re all sorted out and patted down, read the riot act, threatened with being charged, etc.

Ultimately, since I didn’t have anything on me, I was released - told to leave.

About 15 years ago I walked in to work on a Monday morning to see my Director waiting for me. He then led me up to the Accounting Manager’s office. Silence all around, I figured I was being let go. Then they demanded to know why I had been call every night the previous week. Oh. Is that it? :rolleyes: Well, two nights the printer upstairs wasn’t working and the operator wouldn’t listen to your people, so I had to call the operator myself to have it taken care of. Two other nights it was a similar easy issue they didn’t really need to call me for, but I got fixed for them. The last one was a difficult TCP/IP issue with the client site and I had to come into the office, call them and deal with their top IT guy to resolve it (hushed wide eyes all around because NO ONE there had ever previously spoken to this near mythical figure and… The dude had given me his direct line under the promise that I didn’t give it to anyone else.)

Still a bunch of residual anger. WHY had their people called me each of those four night? Why was I padding my (contractor) bill with frivolous calls? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!!!

“You’ll have to ask your people why they call me. But I can tell you that the computer operators listen when I call, they don’t listen when your people call. That’s why your people call me when the printer doesn’t work, because I get it fixed. If you want that to change, you need to talk to whoever manages the operators.”
Working as a Security Supervisor, I got called in by my boss and an HR rep, and given a written warning for ‘embarrassing’ an older officer who was blatantly not doing his job and refusing to listen to me. He was manning the metal detector, but staring at the ceiling ignoring it going off and allowing people through. When I called his name, several times, he ignored me. I finally waved my arms in the air (from 10 feet away) and yelled his name. This was my crime. :rolleyes:

HR person said I should have walked over, taken the wand away from him and started doing his job. Nope, that would have involved not doing my job (it was a two man operation) and I’m not forcefully taking something from him. And anyway, how would that be less humiliating for him? Well you should have stopped the line, gone over and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention! Nope, unwanted physical contact, if he was going to complain about this, he would only complain about that. Besides, rule book specifically states we’re not allowed to stop the line except under certain circumstances.

They gave me the warning. I called the main office HR and filed a complaint. They were quite astonished both with the warning and what I was told to do instead. They rescinded my warning while I was on the phone with them. Pissed my boss off no end. I don’t know, but I suspect he and the HR person got some kind of warning out of it. At least, I hope they did. They were fucking stupid.

5

In my senior year of high school it was not clear whether I was going to college. I’d applied for scholarships, but the college I preferred would only give me a small scholarship. Even with grants, it would not be enough.

So I was at school, normal day, I think it was English class. And my teacher gets called out of the room. Everyone is kind of startled - what the hell? She comes back in a few moments later and asks me to come out to the hall with her.

At this point I felt my stomach drop and I’m honestly surprised I did not crap myself. You have to remember that while I was a good kid, I was also an extremely anxious kid, prone to freaking out about absolutely anything. For all I knew something horrible had happened.

I got up and followed my teacher out into the hall. One of the counselors was there. Together they told me that I’d won a full scholarship to the local university. Not my first choice, but fully paid??? Yes, please!

Still I think it was a while before my stomach settled down. :wink:

6

8th grade football. I was playing nose guard, and I jumped on a hard count. Whistles, flags, and I thought I was going to get the penalty. Turns out the tight end also moved, and the penalty was on the other team.

7

I was a freshman in college smoking weed in my dorm room and someone smelled it and reported it, because two campus security kids showed up at the door. I think I somehow left my body and a slick, confident version of me handled it and I ended up not getting in trouble and messing up my life forever.

8

I worked for many years as the programmer for a payment system (at the time I was a consultant, not an employee). Back in the 90’s this system was updated to enable Electronic Fund Transfer. As a final test we took the production system through a dry run (with test input and no output - no payments were to be generated). We keyed in payments with false names and bank account numbers, but we did key in one payment for one million dollars to our boss, albeit with a phony bank and account (the boss was aware of this - he was amused). All went well. The next day while reviewing the results I noticed that the file containing the EFT’s had indeed been transmitted to the bank. I had been responsible for seeing to it that this did not happen. I went to the boss and explained what had happened, fully expecting to be let go on the spot. The boss, a normally volatile man, took it in stride and we set about notifying all concerned. While there was never any doubt that the money would be recovered, it was a very visible mistake and the company did lose money on interest as a substantial amount of money had been taken out of our account for a few days.

It was not mentioned again. It is often said in IT departments after a mistake has been made that “We are not here to point fingers and blame people, we are here to fix the problem and make sure it does not happen again”. It is often said, but it is rarely true. It was true this time.

9

When I was in Grade 2 our phone rang and I answered it. It was my teacher and he asked to speak to one of my parents. I nearly shat myself. I was an extreme goody-goody as a child and never got in trouble at school. I remember sitting outside my parent’s bedroom door trying to listen to the conversation while wracking my brain trying to think of anything that I had done wrong.

Turned out the teacher had called to ask permission for me and some other kids in the class to stay at lunch some days for “enrichment”. (Extra work they give to smart kids.)

10

I had been in country in South Korea for about a week. My wife and I had left a club in Itaewon and decided to walk home since it was such a nice night. We took what we thought was a short cut but quickly went into a dead end and had to navigate around it. Suddenly two Korean soldiers came at us from a darkened building with M-16s pointed at us.
We had wondered too near a water treatment facility and missed the signs, which turned out to be in Korean only so missing them might have been not knowing what they said.
I stammered out in very bad Korean that I was an American soldier and they pointed back down the street and smiled at us so we left.
Now we were completely rattled and stopped at the first taxi stand to get a ride to our apartment. The driver refused to take us, which resulted in raised voices. We gave up and started to leave and the driver grabbed my wife’s arm. Apparently he wanted a tip for us getting in his back seat even though he would not take us anywhere. Turned out we were only 3 blocks from our destination and it wasn’t worth his effort losing his place in line.
I objected to his being physical, OK, I took his arm off my wife and threw him into the street.
A Korean police officer instantly showed up and arrested me, and took my wife and I to the nearest police station.
While sitting and waiting our turn and not having any idea what was going on, a woman threw a brick into the car that had taken us to the station. Suddenly there was a mini-riot going on with bricks thrown, cops everywhere, cab drivers screaming, people wrestled to the ground, someone started a fire and more cops started showing up.
I took my wife, no one had gotten our IDs yet, and we slipped out the back, grabbed another taxi after quickly walking a few blocks in a random direction, and went home.

11

In the fall of 1988 I was an undergrad research assistant with an office a few doors away from Robert Morris. Because of my position, unlike most undergrads I had accounts on machines normally only used by professors and grad students.

On November 2nd I tried to log in to do some work and discovered that my accounts were locked. At first I was convinced that the professor I was working for must be unhappy with the work I was doing; then when I heard about The Morris Worm I figured I must be on the short list of suspects since nobody else I knew had their accounts locked.

Of course nobody else I knew had their accounts locked because they were all undergrads. Everyone with access to the machines I was doing research on had theirs locked until they figured out what was going on. For awhile there I was pretty scared.

12

1st grade, teacher sent a note home with me, telling me not to open it and give it to my mom. That morning a friend and I had been caught taking a shortcut through a part of the building we weren’t supposed to be in (though not by my teacher) so I thought it was about that and threw the note away when I got home. Later my mom asked me if I had a note for her, and I started crying and confessed everything then we had to go dig the note out of the garbage. Turned out it was something about how there wasn’t going to any way for me to take the bus to school where we lived (it wasn’t a public school and we weren’t that close).

13

I think I was 19 or 20, living at home. My mom had won four tickets to a comedy club through a radio contest and gave them to me. I called around but only one of my friends (henceforth Friend) could go. He got another dude (henceforth Dude) I had never met, but that’s all we could manage. So we get to the club, Friend introduces me to Dude. Friend also supplies me with a fake ID. Score! We have a couple pitchers while watching the show. Afterward, Friend suggests we go to Lame Bar. Dude says “Great idea! I’ll ride with Lowdown and show him the way. We’ll meet you there.” We get in the car and Dude says, “We’re not going to any place called Lame Bar. Come with me.” Dude then takes me on a whirlwind tour of half a dozen bars in downtown City. I have never been out so late in my life. We close the last bar down. I drive him mostly home, and then he realizes he’s misplaced his coat with his phone, and has me drive him back to all the various bars until we find it. I get him home. I get home at probably five or six in the morning. Both of my parents are RIGHT THERE when I walk in the door. I mumble something and stumble up to bed. At seven in the morning, my mom wakes me up and reads me the riot act. She goes on and on about how my father is pissed and how he’s got all this work for me to do today. Tells me he is furious. She sends me out to do some work in the front yard to get started. So I’m doing that, tired and horribly hung over, when I see my dad coming up from behind the house. Great, here it comes. I watch with increasing dread as my reckoning approaches. What am I going to say? What is he going to say? This is going to be terrible. He rounds the corner of the garage and stops to look at me, giggles and says “Your mom is so mad at yoooouuuuu.” smiles, and walks into the house.

…

I’m dating this girl. We’re in high school. We’ve been dating for a long time, and I spend a lot of time over at her house. In all that time, I have only been allowed upstairs once. Presumably this is because the bedrooms are upstairs and bedrooms are where the sex happens. Please understand that we are screwing like rabbits regardless of location.

One day in the summer she calls me up and says she’s home alone. A booty call, if you will. I drive over and we head upstairs to her room. This is where the sex happened.

Shortly afterward, we’re laying there, and hear the front door open and high heels walk across the tile in the foyer. Then we hear the mom ask, “Giiiirl?” My fight or flight brilliance takes over, and I bolt down the hallway into the bathroom. Brilliant! I have escaped and outwitted you, Girl Mom! “Girl! I know he’s up there! You send him down here right now!” I contemplate going out the window, over the roof, and getting to my car for a speedy getaway. Flaws in this plan quickly become apparent as I stand in the bathroom, completely naked, with my clothes and car keys in a pile on the floor in the bedroom I’ve just fled. Shit. “GIRL! SEND HIM DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” Double shit. Hey, there’s a urinal in this bathroom. Who has a urinal in their house? That’s odd. Okay, that’s not important right now. Focus.

I peek out the door. Girl is standing at the top of the stairs, fully dressed. She did that so fast! “But mom. Mom.” she says. “He’s hiding in the bathroom. We were kissing and he doesn’t have his shirt on. He’s emarrassed to come out.” “WELL YOU GIVE HIM HIS SHIRT AND SEND HIM DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” Amazingly, Girl Mom has still not left the foyer. Girl bundles up all my stuff in my shirt and brings it down the hall. To save time, I forego underpants and socks, stuffing them into pockets. Pants, shoes, shirt. I come out. I go downstairs. Girl Mom looks at me disapproving, and says get out.

I go home. Girl spins it like we were just kissing, and it was the first time we’ve ever done anything like that. They have me come over later that day and we’re both terrified. Girl Dad sits us down and gives us the sex is bad talk. (The whole time I’m thinking about how many times we’d had sex in the house while they were home.) They make her carry a stuffed animal around (to simulate having a child) for a week or two. That’s it.

To this day, Girl is one of my life’s greatest heroes.