Have you ever experienced a moment when you’ve muttered to yourself, “I must have the worst luck today”? Well, rest assured, you’re not alone; we’ve all been there. In fact, many people went online to share the crappiest situation they were in. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Keep In Mind That It Was In The Middle Of A Thunderstorm”
“My car broke down in a thunderstorm about 4 weeks ago on the highway. I called for a tow truck and was told there was a two-hour wait. So I then called my wife who got the kids out of bed to drive half an hour and picked me up.
I drove home with them, dropped them off, and waited for the tow truck to arrive. When he got there, he attached the tow cable to the wrong point on my broken down 3 ton four-wheel drive. It was one of those big tip tow trucks with a big ramp. As a result, when the car got to the top, it broke free, rolled down the ramp, and narrowly avoided running into traffic, but smashed into my other car which was (I thought safely) parked some distance away.
I was standing, somewhat stupidly, in front of the car. So I had to jump over a guardrail and down a bank into a pile of mud. Keep in mind that it was in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I ended up with a broken down 4WD, smashed in at the back, plus the whole front of our other car pushed in – and had to order another tow truck to take two cars away. Of course, being that weather I had to wait another two hours. Fortunately, all were covered by insurance, but it caused much laughter from the insurance company when I tried to explain what happened.”
“I Filed A Police Report That Night”
“My 11-month-old got very sick, which got me sick. I had a very nasty flu for a few days, so I decided to purchase some medication. However, when I tried to pay, my card was declined. I went to my bank to see what was up, and they informed me that someone had been attempting to access my account. They issued me a temporary card as a precaution.
A few days later, I started feeling better and was heading to work, I noticed that my kitchen door had been forced open. At first, I thought I might have left it open the night before, so I checked the entire apartment. I didn’t notice anything wrong so I then headed to work.
While I was driving, I realized that I had left my wallet behind. Once I got to work, I decided to check my bank account and saw how someone was trying to use my temporary card, but the card wouldn’t let them. It was then I realized something.
That’s when I put two and two together and realized that my apartment had been broken into. When I came home that day, I looked around again my apartment and saw my girlfriend’s purse was gone, which had our breast pump machine. It was stolen. I’m assuming they saw the purse through a window and that’s why they broke in.
Anyway, so now I’m without a debit card, and my ID and Social Security card were also taken, along with the cash I had saved for my daughter’s upcoming birthday. I filed a police report that night.
If that wasn’t it, the next night as I was heading to work, my truck’s alternator and battery failed while I was on the interstate. It took the tow truck driver two hours to reach me, causing me to miss work once again. This has left me not only without money, ID, and a functioning truck but also with the added stress of my job ending soon due to my company’s contract coming to a close.”
The Life-Altering Phone Call
“In June 2006, I was working as a retail manager while looking for work as a screenwriter. My apartment was filled with stacks of scripts, both those I was reading and those I had written. More than a decade’s worth of material poured out from my mind into a Dell laptop computer – poetry, short stories, chapters of novels, research, and treasured ideas I hadn’t fleshed out yet.
I had spent the night away from home with my boyfriend and allowed a friend to spend the night in my apartment using that very laptop to do some of her homework. I came home to dress for my shift at work and locked up behind my friend leaving.
As I was about to leave, I noticed a burning smell and looked all over but could not find the source of the odor. After about fifteen minutes of looking, I shrugged and figured that I was just smelling a neighbor’s burned toast through the building ventilation.
The drive to work took about thirty minutes. As I raised the gate to let my employees in to open the store, our store phone was ringing. I answered, and the caller was a neighbor guy I had been on a date with while the boyfriend and I had been on a break before getting back together.
He said my apartment was on fire and I needed to come home immediately. I started to scold him for making up stories and bothering me at work, but he said, ‘No. This is for real. I’m going to hand my phone to the fireman. I told them to look for your dog.’
And so it was.
I had to call in another manager to cover my shift. By the time she arrived and I was able to make it home, everything I owned in my entire life was gone. I didn’t even get to say a last farewell to my dog Amber.
The fire had started along the wall where my bed was, right next to the closet, so the mattress and clothes went up like kindling, and of course all that paper, the scripts, the books, the notes soon after. The firemen had actually torn out my appliances, furniture, and carpet and thrown them off my balcony into the courtyard below, along with whatever other personal belongings that weren’t already ablaze when they arrived on the scene.
And of course, this was before the cloud had become a known thing, and I had been smart enough to back up my laptop onto Zip disks, but not smart enough to store those disks someplace else. A little under two and a half hours and I had lost my dog and my entire life’s work.
It has taken me almost a decade to return to writing with the passion and drive I had up until the fire. Friends and loved ones and my job and even strangers banded together to send me money and hand-me-downs to replace my clothes and possessions and get me into a new apartment, so my material recovery only took about a year. But when you have consumed yourself physically, emotionally, and financially in creative work that you love, there is little in life more devastating than losing it all in one fell swoop, along with the faithful canine friend who would have comforted me through the loss if she had been alive.”
