It’s no secret that the Big Apple can be a difficult place to live.
So when a post on Reddit’s Ask NYC subreddit implored New Yorkers to share their ‘worst day of New York City-specific mishaps,’ hundreds of people took to the comments to regale each other with their most horrific stories. of life in the five boroughs.
The original poster (OP) started the sharing marathon with a story of his own.
After a “good” day at work, the OP went to a doctor’s appointment, only to take the wrong train, and when they finally got to the doctor they received “bad news (nothing serious, just annoying).”
One nervous Redditor took to the Ask NYC subreddit to ask about people’s “worst New York City-specific mishaps” to “feel better” about their own day.
It’s no secret that life in the Big Apple can get complicated, but for some of the city’s most unlucky residents, that concept has been taken to a whole new level.
From there, the OP stopped by Whole Foods to do some shopping and started walking home.
‘Right now I feel fine with my big bag and my 12-pack of Diet Coke, until I encounter a loose brick, a stumble, and a snail. Cans fly everywhere. My leg is bleeding and my hands are scratched,” they said.
‘Two good men help me get up and pick up my soda. At this point I’m sobbing as I assure them I’m fine, which must have been a confusing experience.’
Back at her apartment, OP goes to rinse off the cuts and scrapes from the fall, only to discover that the tap water is ‘colored’ from rust, and the water didn’t clear any longer. more than one hour.
“This seemed like a unique day in New York that, at some point in the future, when my leg feels better, I’ll be able to laugh about.” “I’m sure people who have been here longer than me have much crazier stories,” OP concluded, encouraging others to try to top theirs.
And they certainly did.
Among the highest-rated submissions was a tale of feces-related misfortune.
Arriving late to see a movie, “they ran up the stairs to the subway, I stumbled and caught myself with my hands.”
Hundreds of Redditors took to the comments section to share their “worst” days in New York.
“Only to see that someone had shit wet diarrhea at the top of the stairs and was… running down the stairs… the ones I was touching,” they recalled grimly.
Another story combined a run-in with projectile vomiting and more humiliation upon meeting the new neighbors.
“On an E train that was severely delayed for the night shift due to construction, a homeless man vomited a projectile on me and laughed lol,” the person wrote.
‘It was March and it was snowing, I had left my coat in the cloakroom in Manhattan by accident and at that time I had to walk 15 minutes home.
‘My building was family oriented so no one will be awake, we don’t have cameras in the hallway and the rubbish chute room is right in front of my flat.
‘I decide to throw the clothes (they were old) in the garbage dump. Boom, there are my new next door neighbors while I’m my bra and thong. I just looked at them and said, “A homeless man threw up on me,” and I went in and took a shower.
Apparently the neighbors “knocked on the door the next day to see if I was in danger or having some kind of mental episode that was sweet… The wife and I became friends for a while, but the husband was wary.” “he admitted. .
Some stories had taken place in recent years, while others dated back decades.
A third narrator recalled her time as a fashion intern, which got off to an embarrassing start on her “first day.”
After initially showing up at the wrong building, the then-intern had to “take everyone’s lunch order and pick it up.”
‘I forgot someone’s latte and I tell them straight away that I’ll bring it to them. She said not to worry about it and continued to say that she was fine. For the next 30 minutes she keeps repeating “I’m really thirsty” until I get up and say, “I’ll go get your latte.”
‘I open the door very frustrated and fall down the 11 cement stairs with a row of models outside. I get up and my hands are completely bloody. Try to stay calm and get some napkins when you have the latte.
‘I come back and they immediately order me to hang up all the clothes for the spring collection. They are white and my hands are bloody. Needless to say, I cried and cried that day, but now I tell the story and laugh a lot!’
Presentations ranged from catastrophic falls to unfortunate encounters with bodily fluids.
One man shared a particularly disturbing anecdote from 2007. Notably, this was years before Uber was common, and also long before most people had apps like Google Maps on their phones.
At the time, the man was a recent graduate heading to a job interview. He lived on the northern part of Roosevelt Island, a residential island in the East River between Midtown Manhattan and Queen, and his interview took place in Tribeca in lower Manhattan.
“My goal was to arrive 15 to 20 minutes early,” the man wrote. Given the limited transportation options out of Roosevelt Island, you were already looking at a public transportation trip of at least 45 to 50 minutes under the best of circumstances.
“I leave our building and miss the red bus that takes you to the train and streetcar a mile south,” he continued.
‘I decide to walk instead of waiting 15 minutes for the next bus to arrive. It’s a scorching heat. I’m also a pretty big guy (I played offensive line for a D1 school in undergrad).
‘I’m starting to sweat a lot, but I hope I can get a break from the air conditioning on the subway. I get to the train and there are no trains going to Manhattan. So I decide to take the tram and then walk a few blocks to the subway. With the train delays, there is a queue, so I have to wait a bit to get on the tram.
‘In the end I get on the subway but there is no air conditioning. To make matters worse, our train sits underground between stations for about 10 minutes.
‘I’m starting to turn into a puddle.
‘I get off the subway and I realize that I’m already 5 minutes late. Panicked and unfamiliar with the city center’s broken grid system, I turn around. In the end I achieve it. I’m about 20 minutes late, I’ve sweated through my clothes and sweat is dripping onto my forehead and forearms.
‘After a few minutes, the HR representative and one of the team people on the job were due to meet me. They ask me what happened. I tell you the truth. Her response was “well, you’re clearly not the right fit here, so you can leave.”
“And as I walk out, the team member condescendingly says to me, ‘You know, you should really try to be on time and be more organized.’
But the elusive story had a happy ending: “I finally got a job at a big account (Warner Bros.) and started working on movies like Harry Potter, The Hangover and The Dark Knight.”
On the other hand, a teacher recalled a day when she took her students on a field trip to MoMA.
‘One of my students stood in the way of a hot dog vendor setting up his cart. He started yelling and cursing at her and I could tell he was getting angry, so I intervened and said, “Hey, he didn’t mean to. Please watch your language in front of my students,” she said.
‘Good. Then he told me, and I quote, “Fuck you and screw your students, you stunk like an idiot.” IN FRONT OF MY STUDENTS.
‘I grab the arm of the student who was originally yelled at and move to cross Fifth Avenue (thank God the light is now green) as he continues yelling at me. I turn around to make sure I have my group and see two of my male students yelling “don’t you dare talk to my teacher like that” IN THEIR FACE, which was really sweet, but also please don’t fight with a salesperson of hot dogs. our field trip.
‘I had to go back and separate them; They were seconds away from reaching a physical state.
A man reported that after his girlfriend slipped on ice and broke her ankle in a park, he had “requisitioned” a “dolly” to transport her to safety.
One commenter offered a silver lining to all the harrowing (and often nauseating) stories about life in New York.
‘Best part? It couldn’t have been more than nine thirty in the morning.
Among the most recent stories in the thread, a man described how “today” his “girlfriend slipped and broke her ankle on the ice in a park.” I got to her, called an ambulance. I waited over an hour in 70-degree weather and said, “Fuck it.”
‘I commandeered a wheelbarrow from the park and two very kind gentlemen helped me carry it to the street like a drunk in an old movie. The good thing is that the Uber was much cheaper than the ambulance,” she admitted.
To this, one commenter jokingly responded: ‘Great story. I think we should start a medical rickshaw company to break the ambulance monopoly.
In any case, others commented with words of wisdom about dealing with the heartbreaking stories of life in New York.
“Everyone always says, ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,'” one wrote.
“But I like to modify that phrase to say ‘If you can get through your WORST day in New York, then you really can get anywhere.’ This city humbles you. Tomorrow is a new day, soldier.’