People Share the Most Unfair Thing They’ve Ever Experienced
You’re in a crowded supermarket parking lot. You have your turn signal on, patiently waiting for one person to back out of their spot so you can finally park and get on with your shopping. Then, right as the car leaves, another driver swoops in out of nowhere and slides into your spot.
Sometimes, there’s really nothing you can do to change an unfavorable outcome or sway a circumstance back into your favor. In many cases, you’re left powerless and stuck saying a simple phrase to sum it all up: “This is so unfair.”
There are countless moments in our lives when we feel we’ve been dealt the wrong cards, but if you’re looking to find some comfort, this community of unfortunate individuals has you covered. Here are some of the most unfair things they’ve ever experienced.
Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
About 15 years ago, a local businessman pledged to pay the college tuitions of my entire third-grade class through a campaign he called “Scott’s Tots.” Years later, when we were finishing our last year and getting ready for college, we took him on a tour of the school. We even made him a song. You know what he gave us? LAPTOP BATTERIES!
A Teacher’s Pet, as Declared by the Teacher
My physics teacher used to give me tips during tests, just so he could troll the class and say, “Hey look! This guy got a good grade so the rest of you must all just idiots!”
Doing the Right Thing Still Comes at a Cost Sometimes
A friend of mine was driving and quickly realized just how tipsy he was. He pulled over to sleep it off but had to keep the car running because it was winter in Illinois, and he needed to keep the heat on. He got a DUI because his keys were in the ignition even though he had technically done the right thing by pulling over. He then had to pay thousands of dollars in lawyer fees. Seems backward to me.
Unbalanced Brain Chemistry
I had a horrible chemistry teacher in high school. She would often fail students, accusing them of not turning in their assignments when in fact she had lost them herself. One day, a kid in my class got tired of our teacher’s antics and decided to record himself handing in his assignment. Lo and behold, she ended up losing his paper.
The kid showed her the video as proof, but instead of admitting that she messed up and promising not to do it in the future, she simply gave him a B- to shut him up.
Relationships Were Destroyed Over These Games
When a new game console came out first came out, I begged my parents for one. My dad told me I had to buy it with my own money. I worked every day for six months doing anything a 10-year-old could do to make money. Somehow, I was able to make enough money to get it.
Fast forward to the next console era. My brother, who was roughly the same age as me when I got my console, begged my dad for one. The next day, he came home with a brand-new console, a few extra games and TV for his room. That was the day I started to resent my parents and my brother.
The Human Body WIll Forever Be a Mystery
My dad always took care of himself. As a kid, I remember him hitting the gym almost every day. He had a healthy diet, and never drank or smoked. He worked hard to keep things like his cholesterol in check and would get a physical every year.
Years later, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It was absolutely devastating and unfair. Here’s this guy who, by all accounts, did everything right healthwise and still ended up with this horrible disease.
Drama in Drama Club
There was this one girl (let’s call her Mina) in my high school drama club who was incredibly talented but not conventionally pretty. As a result, she was given the smaller roles while some snub (Jenny) who hated theatre but wanted the attention was cast as the female lead. She wasn’t even that good at acting and singing; in fact, her parents had to hire someone to show her exactly how she should move and how she should say her lines.
In senior year, Mina comes back from visiting some relatives in Cali. She looked different — she had lost weight and had her metal braces replaced with clear ones. Her hair was still thin but she dyed it a reddish brown and started styling it differently. Needless to say, Jenny was no longer the lead woman from that moment on. It just sucks that the school took away so many opportunities from Mina before her transformation.
Good Thing Dad’s Around
A high-level exec hired his lazy son and made one of my coworkers his supervisor.
This kid, who’s in his early 20s, sleeps at his desk, lies constantly, plays computer games all day and hides in different places throughout the plant to avoid doing work. One day, my coworker had enough and told him that if he didn’t complete his tasks by the end of the day, he was going to write him up.
The high-level exec got wind of this, and instead of thanking my coworker for keeping his son in check, he wrote him up for “poor management.” His son got off with no consequences.
Undersold Heroism
A bus driver was got fired from my grandma’s company. His offense? He had his phone out. The bus wasn’t moving but there’s video footage of him making a phone call while in the driver’s seat.
He was on his phone because he had just witnessed a bad accident and was calling the police. He told the managers this and they said they didn’t care. He should have stood up more for himself. That’s the stupidest reason to fire someone.
Classic Sibling Unfairness
When I was younger, I was a quiet and rather anxious kid. My younger siblings told me that our mom gave us permission to watch a movie while I babysat them. I had no reason not to believe them, so I put on a cartoon.
When my mom came home, she absolutely flipped out at me. My younger siblings had lied to me, and it looked like I had willfully gone against my mom, who had strict rules on how she wanted to parent them. My mind imploded at the injustice and I ended up having an anxiety attack. I became so hysterical because I could not prove my innocence.
My mom believed them over me, and I got grounded. Years later, my younger siblings confessed to what they had done. I laughed along but wasn’t all that amused. I realize now that it wasn’t a huge deal, but it was the most unjust thing to me at 14.
An Essay Worth Tens of Thousands
My friend asked me for my opinion on healthcare without telling me that it was for his scholarship essay. He recorded what I said, wrote it for his essay and got $40,000 in scholarship money.
Took the Cake and Ran With It
Last week, we had a charity bake sale at work. They had a competition for the best-baked goods, with anonymous judges and everything. It’s common knowledge that my sister makes incredible brownies, and everyone in the office begged me to ask her to make them. I submitted two trays to the competition and, if they’d won, I would have given her the prize. The organizers knew this on the day of.
What ended up winning was a packet cake from the supermarket. All the person did was add an egg and water. That is not baking, that is cheating.
The Attitude of a Champion
There are much worse things I’ve seen as an onlooker throughout this life, but I’ve experienced some incredibly unfair stuff this year:
In February, I gave birth to a perfectly normal son, our first child, through an emergency cesarean. Despite coming out healthy and well-developed, he later died in the hospital from pneumonia before we could bring him home. A few days after leaving the hospital, I developed a serious infection where my cesarean line was. They had to cut me back open with a scalpel to let the area drain. A nurse cared for me at home every other day and it took four months for me to heal. In June, I was told I wasn’t welcome back to my job at the local school because another teacher in the district wanted my position and had seniority over me, so I was let go.
But even with all the unfairness I’ve experienced this year, I still think life is beautiful. There is so much good in this world and we just have to look for it. I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate everything.
The Court Needed No “Order,” But the Judge Did
I was waiting for my turn in traffic court. I witnessed the judge give a young black man a ticket for driving a car with a temporary license plate placed in the corner of its rear window instead of in the center. The guy was really polite and explained he didn’t know that was a law and that the dealership had put the temporary license plate there. The judge said it didn’t matter.
Fast forward to another case where this middle-aged white man was contesting a ticket for going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. He said it was at the bottom of a hill and he had slowly sped up down the hill. The judge told him not to worry about it. He didn’t give him a ticket.
Zero Tolerance Policy? Zero Sense.
When I was in sixth grade, a kid came up to me insulting my family using all sorts of colorful words. I ignored him. This upset him even more.
He repeated his offensive slurs while banging my head against a concrete wall. I took it, gritting my teeth through the pain. At some point, I had enough and spun him around to press him against the wall, telling him to knock it off. He burst out crying, and of course, the teacher only saw up to that point. I got suspended while he got coddled.
Basic Physics: When You Fall, You Fall Hard
This one girl I knew took multiple advanced placement classes. She did pretty well, but AP physics was extremely hard for her, and studying for it took so much time out of her day. She went to her counselor after the first three weeks to get it switched with another class because it just was too much. The counselor didn’t allow her even though her teacher already said it was okay. Her grades ended up suffering from all the stress she was going through, and she started to go into a deep depression. It took her attempting to take her own life for the counselors to finally change it.
Growling and Snarling … Not From the Dog
Every Christmas, I bring donated animal food to the local shelter. On one occasion, I was waiting at the front desk when a man stormed in. He had the most beautiful dog on a leash and was screaming at the receptionist.
“My son adopted this dog, and he didn’t consult us first. We don’t want it. I’m here to give it back, just take it!” The son was nowhere to be seen. The dog had no idea what was going on and had only been adopted a week before, after waiting in the shelter for over four months. I stood there speechless …
Thanks for Your Service
It was my last day in the army. It’s a tradition for an outgoing service member to get an award encompassing their entire military service. I served for nine years, went on two deployments, spent months away from my family and was discharged for medical reasons.
When I asked about my award, I was told that I was too fat to be deemed eligible. I had gained weight from a mix of medications I had to take and was unable to exercise due to my health condition. They didn’t even throw a farewell lunch. Only one person said goodbye to me. I’m still bitter about it all.
No Justice
About eight years ago, I was coming down a street that I had to make a right turn on. The street had a stop sign, and to its left, there were several cars parked. You couldn’t see the oncoming traffic unless you creeped out.
After stopping at the sign, I started creeping out when a police car barreled down the street and almost hit me. He wrote me a three-point ticket and said that I didn’t yield to traffic. I wasn’t even fully into the street.
The worst part is that I actually made a whole presentation for the judge, but he didn’t care at all. It was so unfair.
Blueprint For an Unfair Teacher Experience
When I was in high school, my world history teacher told us to draw a blueprint of a castle and label certain parts. She assured us that she wouldn’t grade us on the quality of our drawing and that she was only concerned with the labeling. I have a disability (Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) that already makes it hard for me to write, much less draw, so I decided to draw free-hand. I even got some blue construction paper and drew my castle blueprint in white crayon, as to resemble an actual blueprint.
The rest of my classmates just put a paper against their computer screens and traced a castle drawing from Google. When our teacher gave us back our grades, everyone got an A+ while I got a B. I asked her why I received a much lower grade than everyone else and she said that my drawing skills were terrible. I reminded her of my disability and she responded, “Well, if you knew you had a disability, maybe you should’ve tried a little harder.”
Spousal Swap
When I was a kid, our neighbor divorced his wife and she remarried. After a couple of years, her new man adopted all three of her kids.
A few years later, the ex-husband decided to clean up his act. The mother reacquainted herself with him and eventually divorced the other guy to get back with her ex. The other guy was stuck paying child support for all three kids while they lived with their biological mother and father.
See You in Court
I know somebody who is one of the best surgeons in her country and also the co-founder of a multidisciplinary hospital. One of her business partners teamed up with the bank they borrowed funds from and cut off the rent in order to get her staff evicted. He also filed multiple false complaints to the court and bribed the judges in the bank’s favor. I’m constantly baffled at the extent to which people will stoop out of spite and jealousy.
Blind to the Heinousness of Such an Act
I once saw this lady stealing money from a blind man. She was selling some things on the street, and when he paid for his items, he asked if she could count his money for him. She got a $50 bill and said it was a five.
Luckily some people nearby noticed what she was doing and helped the blind man. One woman said that she would call the cops, and the lady was quick to get out of there. I was fuming for the rest of the day.
Down, Not Out
One of our patients had a cardiac arrest with unknown downtime. He was brought to the ER, and we did CPR for 40 minutes, but it didn’t work. The doctors were about to pronounce him dead when, 15 minutes later, he started breathing again! He was hooked up to a vent and sent to the ICU.
After some time, the neurologist told the family that he had suffered from an anoxic brain injury because he was down for so long. Though the man was essentially brain dead at this point, the family still wanted the doctors to keep trying to bring him back. I thought that was unfair because there really wasn’t anything else the doctors could do. He was basically a dead man on a vent.
Not the Kind of Game We Wanted to Play
When I was younger, my brother and I both wanted to play different video games on our new game console. My dad had us each make paper airplanes, and whichever one flew the furthest got to choose the game to play. My airplane ended up flying further, but my brother started to throw a fit, so my dad just took both of the games and snapped them in half.
Set Up for Failure
I’m an American who immigrated to Canada. Part of the process for getting permanent residency involves taking a test called the CELPIP to prove that you are fluent in English. The test is unbelievably hard, and I didn’t do as well as I should have on it. I can’t imagine how everyone else who was in the same room as me must have felt while taking it.
Here’s an example of a type of question you’d come across on the CELPIP:
“We decided to travel to the large, blue building. What best describes the building?”
A: Large
B: Blue
That’s not an actual question, but it should give you an idea.
Too Little Too Late
My fiance told me a story about how he flew to see his parents some years after he had moved out. He wasn’t super close with his family, but they still kept in touch. He mentioned how excited he was to see his childhood dog again.
When he got there and asked about him, the mom said, “Oh, Buster? We put him down last summer.”
He’s somewhat patched things up with his mom in the years since, but he still won’t forgive her for not even telling him about the dog. He’s still upset that he never got the chance to say goodbye. I think it was just how flippant she was with the information, like, “Oh, that dog you loved? He’s been dead for months now. Anyway, see you next week!”
Put Down in More Than One Way
I was adopting my dog from animal control, and I saw this guy come in asking about a couple of cats he dropped off the day before. He had changed his mind and was going to keep them.
The shelter has a policy that they don’t put down animals that have been surrendered until at least three days have passed. I guess it gets really overcrowded or something, I’m not sure. Point is, he had 48 hours until that could happen to his cats.
Anyway he was explaining this to the front desk lady, and she was looking up records for him.
She told him both cats were already put down. The look on his face still hurts my heart today. It was this look of hurt, guilt, anger, and sadness, simply gut wrenching, and he cried over those babies, too. He was going on about how he had more time and they said they wouldn’t for three days!
Absolutely was not fair to the animals or him.
Where Was the Credit Due?
I watched someone who didn’t know how to do their job get promoted, while other, more deserving workers who actually did their jobs correctly and always went above and beyond got nothing.
Welcome to the army.
Not Fired, Burned
When I worked at at a major bookstore chain, I was fired because the person who was covering for me while I was on vacation was fired. On top of that, they didn’t even notify me. I got a text message from his girlfriend that still worked there, and she told me that I should call them.
