I work at a bank call center. One time I had someone call to check the balance on an account they recently opened with us. The bank I work for is regional, and this caller was on the other side of the country. The account number they gave pointed to an expensive private school in our area. When I asked for more information, the caller said they gave someone 500$ to open the account for them, and that person gave them some checks from us with that account number. I got my lead on the line, did some more Q&A, and we determined this person had been scammed, and given fake checks. The lead said they would close the account. The next week I get a direct message from the fraud investigation team director asking me why this account wasn’t closed. I was able to provide a screenshot of the message from my lead saying they were going to close the account. They thanked me and that was it. I went to check on it, and over 60,000$ in fraudulent checks had cleared the account in that week. I’ve only been working there a few months, and I’m 60,000% sure they would have dropped me like a hot potato on the spot.
I’m from Israel.
I was abroad on October 7th.
Was playing with firework artillery shells once in the 90’s on a farm. One of the launch tubes fell over and my friends watched in horror as I had won this little “spin the bottle”. A large shell careened by my face within a few centimeters.
I still can taste the copper and feel the impact that smashed my face and caused me to die in that other timeline. Terrifying.
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Was walking home one night and a bit less then a block behind me, I heard multiple loud rifle shots, turned around a saw a group with at least one person collapsing, others either trying to help him, maybe also falling down and others running.
Did not get the best glance at the victims, as the car with the guy half hanging out of it with a draco was now speeding down the road toward me, firing a few more shots vaguely toward the group.
I ran around a building and down a hill as fast as I could.
Whilst having a panic attack, a techbro walking a tiny dog takes out one ear bud and asks ‘Was that a car backfiring?’
I am quite winded, catch my breath a bit and say ‘No, gun shots, drive by, get INSIDE.’
He then gives me a look of disgust, yanks his dog away from me as if I am a threat to it, puts his earbud back in and walks up the hill, toward the scene.
‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action’
my wife and I were driving to some appointment and we thought we heard gunshots but we’re driving.
So I wait in the car and listening to tunes and the guy parked next to me asked if someone was shooting at me and pointing to my door. My window was down all day so I was like what?
He pointed again and I got out to look and on the top of the window frame of the door is a odd angled hole. It was something powerful but not at the right angle to go more than the first layer of steel.
Totally bizarre. IDK if it was a bullet for certain but IDK what else would make a hole like that in a car
When I was a teenager, I was hanging out with my brother who is 8 years older while he was fucking around with his .45 (probably ostensibly cleaning it) and it was pointed towards me when for some reason the slide suddenly released and the live round that was inexplicably involved jammed in the mechanism.
So I mean, I guess I didn’t dodge a bullet, but I think I got pretty lucky.
Me and my buddy were hiking up a trail one day kinda high and as we get up the mountain we hear multiple gunshots right near us enough to be legit scared that some crazy asshole is going ‘most dangerous game’ on our sorry stoner asses and FUCKING BOOK IT down the mountain. My fat ass learned how fast a body pumped full of adrenelane can really move that day.
As it turns out there was a gun range nearby. So ultimately a nothingburger but a fun story to remember.
The bullets I’ve been dodging are small things. Mormon missionaries coming over trying to get young blood to join them. I’ve gotten better at saying no and politely lying about not having time for them. Saves me a lot of headache.
I’m a brass musician and an atheist so the only time I go to church is when I’m getting paid. The last time some Mormons approached me about going to church I asked them, “What’s the pay?”
They were genuinely confused.
They don’t come around anymore, but I used to say that I was disfellowshipped/excommunicated, whichever was fitting for whatever religion they were selling. If they ask why, which they basically never do, just say “I’d really rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind…”
They don’t actually want to waste time talking to people who were kicked out of the church for “bad behavior”, and in many cases aren’t even allowed to, so they blacklist your address.
No soliciting signs typically do the job, too, though.
Don’t lie, tell them you already belong to the Satanic Temple in either heart/mind, or both 😌
This drives some of them with even more fervor to save your soul.
Boil some chicken bones and tie them together with hair and hand it to them next time they come over.
Completely harmless, but deeply disturbing for anyone who thinks witchcraft is real.
The key is implicit permission. They believe that objects imbued with demonic power grant permission for the demon to enter your life if you accept the object.
Whether this will work depends on how intensely they’re into “spiritual warfare”, so maybe actually don’t do this.
Seemingly innocuous activity. I was changing the band on my watch.
Watches have a little spring-loaded pin that goes through the band and in to the bezel. I had the spring compressed with some needle tweezers and I was removing the band when the tweezers slipped. One side of the pin was still seated in the bezel, but the other side was free, and pointed right at my face as I was leaning over this watch to work on it. The pin shot straight into my eyeball.
Or at least it would have if my vision was better. It hit my glasses instead, with enough force to leave a dimple in the polycarb lense. Lesson learned, wear safety glasses when working on anything that could possibly get launched, sprayed or blown into your eyes.
Went to a job interview for a position I didn’t want. It was the most honest interview I’ve ever given and surprisingly didn’t get the place. Ended up starting my own business instead and while it’s too early to tell wether it’s going to be succesfull or not, I’m still glad I tried. Had I got that job I wouldn’t have.
Well there was a SCUD; a misfiring mortar system; an IED; a negligent discharge with a machinegun; a fire in the ammo stack for the mortars; the several times I almost got thrown from a humvee while off-roading; an artillery rocket that actually hit our position; a midnight ambush (but it was really badly done, like comically bad); several patrols where the one in front of us or behind us got hit by large IEDs; and uhh that one time we drove through a minefield in a sandstorm.
Which time do you want to hear about?
Now do the Comically bad midnight ambush!
Okay, in the summer of 2003 it wasn’t uncommon for the locals to show their appreciation. We had mostly taken over the role of policing and maintaining order until local, non Baathist police could be trained. We had an older gentlemen in the neighborhood near us who took it upon himself to feed us at night. This lasted several nights and the food was way better than our MREs. Things had also calmed way down, so we felt safe to take our body armor and eat with him in front of the small cement hut we slept in. Any soldiers reading this aren’t going to make sense of this happening without realizing that we weren’t in the secured perimeter of our patrol base. Leadership didn’t mind because we were having positive interactions with the locals and that was the priority at the time. Even after this, things didn’t heat up again for several months. It really was this peaceful summer where we all thought it was going to work out easily. Iraq would quickly get a new government and we’d be home by August. Well, we all know how that went.
So one night, unbeknown to us the last night we’d have this guy at our little camp, we’re sitting around and enjoying falafel and some kind of sour cream with the ever present flat bread. It wasn’t Greek pita but it was also too thick to be Indian naan. And this stuff was awesome. Later on we got the local bakers enough money to buy cheese and other halal toppings and create mini pizzas for us. At any rate, about 15 minutes in, after we were done eating, the world’s most polite ambushers rip off an entire magazine from an AK in our general direction. They also shouted something in Arabic but we weren’t exactly stopping to ask questions. We immediately ran into our hut where we had left our body armor, (I know, bad infantryman, bad, but remember we were trying to look friendly) and threw it on as quick as we could. We cut the cords on the poncho over the Humvee and the machinegun and got it into action and the dismounts charged right up to the elephant grass under the cover of the gun. Our buddy was fine thankfully and had sensibly gone home at a high rate of speed.
As we discussed how to handle the elephant grass we heard more Arabic on the far side and the dismounts moved in slowly. The Iraqis most have known somehow because they came bolting out the other side and were visible for about a second before disappearing into the alleys. We decided chasing Iraqis in the dark without back up was a great way to end up on an Angel flight. So we settled for checking the elephant grass for any explosive devices or traps they may have left behind. After all the local kids played there.
We never did figure the why or wherefore of that ambush. They could easily have killed the five of us if they had fired controlled bursts or in semi-auto. Were they the first blush of Al Qaeda? Did they just not like our friend giving us food? (the food situation at the time was still recovering, but not to where we needed to give them humanitarian aid anymore) Had we unknowingly wronged their honor and this was them reclaiming it? Never found out. But I do think that to this day where we might have trouble as Americans in Mosul or Kirkuk, in that town we’d just had have to tell them what unit we were with and we’d get fed again.
That was wild. Thanks for sharing that little story and Thank you for your service. Glad you’re still with us to be able to share this.
No problem, and thank you.
Definitely sandstorm minefield
So it’s late March 2003 and we get the order we were waiting for, to cross the Iraqi border. We set off in lines of humvees and cargo trucks that go from the horizon in front to the horizon in back. We felt pretty safe at this point, pretty powerful. After all this was as big a can of whoop ass as any we’d ever seen. As night fell, the wind kicked up. Visibility varied but generally we were able to see a couple hundred meters with no problem.
Then a worrying radio call comes down, reminding us that the minefield between Iraq and Kuwait was notorious for shifting in high winds and the loose sand. It’s worth noting that the convoy was crawling, doing no more than 20 or 25 mph. The worst thing that could happen at this point was a “loss of contact”. Where the front of the convoy leaves the back behind. The digital map technology was in only a fraction of our trucks and breaking into different groups could be a major waste of time or even disastrous if there was no digital map with the group.
As visibility dropped we had to drive closer together. And as we passed the first stakes marking the breaching lane, it went straight down to zero. So we tried to find the rear infrared marker light of the humvee in front of us. Because we’re also doing this in black out, depending on night vision goggles to see. And we found the humvee in front of us all right. We tapped them right on the bumper. Just to explain how low visibility is, we’re riding in a pickup style humvee. Only 2 of the 6 of us are inside. I’m actually standing up behind a machinegun. And not one of us saw the humvee in front before we tapped it. Nobody and no thing was hurt but we got told to back off and trust the stakes on either side for ten minutes or so.
So we did. And then the stakes betrayed us. It was a few minutes later when visibility flashed higher and we saw we weren’t in line anymore. We were next to the convoy, on the other side of the stakes. We were all sure we were about to hit a mine. But we can’t stay there, so we all cringe as we slowly turn back towards the convoy. We made it back, in the correct spot even. Visibility dropped again and we decided the humvee in front of us was our humvee too, nobody complained about the small taps that occurred several more times that night.
We didn’t know it yet but the American invasion brought with it a record breaking amount of rain to southern Iraq. Over the next couple days we would be driving routes that were an inch above shallow lakes and we were constantly wet and gritty. But visibility never again dropped that low for us.
Friend and I were sitting on a top of a small mtn, hear gunshot in the distance, rural area didn’t think about it too much All of a sudden we both hear a wizz and a ricochet between our heads… Look at each and run… That was scary… …Edited for clarity… Sorry…
It’s weird, this way it would be subsonic ammunition. Maybe another shot? Still crazy as fuck though! Where in the world things like this happen?
They said it was far away so it may have gone subsonic on the way. Especially small common bullets like .22 will lose speed relatively quickly as they fly.
Maybe some idiot shot straight up into the air?
It was quite a ways away… This was in NH. I doubt it was intentional, but who knows.
I was seriously considering accepting a remote job where they apparently make their employees install spyware so the employer can see employees through the webcam to make sure they’re at their desk working.
In a semi-literal instance, I was nearly shot in my eye with an airsoft gun because they fucking blind fired around a corner and I wasn’t wearing eye protection. Got hit right at the edge of my eye socket. You bet your ass I wrote eye protection after that. Doesn’t mean we weren’t all still angry at the guy because we told him not to do that before we even started. And this was the reason why. Even with eye protection you still don’t want to get shot in the face. It hurts like hell. We didn’t have full face masks.
Did he end up receiving adequate “correction” 🫸🤛
I don’t think we let him play after that. That happened about 2 decades ago and what happened afterwards isn’t what really stuck with me.
