There is nothing more unsettling than realizing you might not know someone as well as you think you do.
Even some of your closest friends or family members, who you might have known for practically all of your life, might say or do something that will forever change their opinion of them.
And not for the better.
True, some people might simply be having a bad day, and will later go out of their way to apologize or set things right.
In some cases, however, their words and/or actions might have proven so severe, that there is simply no hope of any kind of reconciliation.
Redditor lesdommed was curious to hear stories of how people's opinions of others they knew changed in what seemed like the blink of an eye, leading them to ask:
"What’s the fastest way someone has ruined your opinion of them?"
Always Treat Others As You Want To Be Treated
"Dated a woman a while back, we were talking on the phone as she was driving home."
"She pulled into a fast food place to get something, and I got an earful of her treating the employees there like sh*t."
"How you treat people you don't necessarily have to be nice to says a lot about you."
"I hung up on her and never spoke to her again."- Bionic_Ninjas
Enablers Always Make Matters Worse
"I met some (now former) coworkers out for dinner one night, and after the first round of drinks, one of them's husband showed up to join us."
"I had met him a few times before and had always thought he was a nice enough dude."
"Laid back, good conversation, chill."
"He ordered lemon pepper wings, and the server brought out ones that had dark red sauce on them, so clearly not the correct flavor."
"No big deal, right?"
"Well this guy acted like the server had spit in his face or something."
"He made a huge stink, demanded the manager, and was being so loud that half the restaurant was looking at our table."
"It was incredibly embarrassing."
"His wife, my coworker, just sat there rubbing his back and saying 'Oh, baby, I'm so sorry' to him while he had his tantrum, like he had just watched his dog die or something."
"It totally put me off both of them."
"She was not invited to any subsequent dinner meetups."
"No one wanted to risk that happening again."- jeanneeebeanneee
Maybe There Was A Reason She Had No Friends
"I met a girl in college and we became friends."
"I felt sorry for her that she didn't have any friends and was kind of awkward, because I'd been in those shoes too, so I introduced her to my friend circle and things were cool."
"Then, she calmly informed me that all of them were creeps..."
"I asked her what the f*ck she meant by that, and she told me that they must be because they were adults (keep in mind, we were all sophomores in college) who liked comics and cosplay, so they had to be creeps."
"I turned the car around and brought her right back to her dorm and immediately told my friends."
"The irony of it was, she was, and still is, a decade later, obsessed with a certain YA series."- starlet2
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A Grown-Up Is Someone Who Lives Up To Their Mistakes
"A girl I was dating screamed at her mom."
"We were about to get down to business (sex), when her mother called."
"I could hear both sides of the convo."
"Her mom wanted to know if my girlfriend had accidentally taken her mother's house keys the last time she was staying over at their place."
"Girlfriend says no, annoyed, without hesitation."
"Mom asks if she could just check her purse when she had a moment because she couldn't find them anywhere."
"Girlfriend erupts out of nowhere screaming at her mom, accusing her mom of accusing her, which wasn't what was happening."
"She hangs up on her mom, who I hear audibly sobbing."
"Girlfriend then checks her purse and finds the lost keys."
"Instead of calling her mom, she calls her dad, tells him to come get them on the condition that he doesn't say where he found them."
"I could barely stand to be in the same room as her after that."- ayoungtommyleejones
Always Inexcusable
"Abusing their pets."
"Neglecting their kids."- Echo831
Racism Is Never Casual
"A girl I was seeing casually called my former roommate a racial slur while I was driving the two of us to dinner."
"I pulled over, dropped her off on a street corner, then went and got dinner on my own."- Chavestvaldt
First Impressions Are Never Forgotten
"I was hanging out with friends once and got introduced to a friend of a friend and within minutes this dude was talking about how nice it is to get a break from his annoying wife."
"Lmao."
"Like brother, I have barely known you for five mins and you're telling me what a b*tch your wife is?"
"Off the get go I knew this guy was an a**hole."- realfakejames
Misogyny Is Never Welcome
"I'm often welcoming to new employees at the company I work for on trips, just to be hospitable."
"I had a coworker who was the new guy at the time suggest we go get some hookers while on a work trip."
"He had already creeped out several female coworkers with staring and inappropriate comments and then he dropped that on me."
"I could never look at him the same way and he ended up not lasting long at the company, thankfully."
"It was weird and I'd never experienced anything like that before or since."- mattbnet
Integrity Should Always Be A Priority
"Was at a ballgame for a birthday with some work friends I’d known for years, the kind of guys that a certain amount of my future job success depended upon (one manager, one assoc director)."
"I’d been at this company five years, and by this point it was listed by Forbes as one of the top ten mid-sized companies to work for in the entire US."
"One of them sat down and started talking about how he’d felt the a** of the woman sitting in front of us a few minutes before."
"She hadn’t responded well, so then he went on to describe how it wasn’t that good anyway."
"I had this moment where everything in my head went quiet."
"Like an almost out of body experience."
"I could see my credibility with these guys, built up over years, hang in the balance against my self-respect and character."
"I took a really hard swallow, then proceeded to berate this guy VERY loudly and tell him he should apologize."
"Everyone went dead quiet, then pretended like nothing had happened."
"The rest of the day went on like normal."
"Never got invited out again."
"Two of them went on to direct sun-divisions of their departments as a part of an old-boy’s in-crowd."
"I left the company a year later."
"I regret nothing."- BonfireMaestro
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Metaphor Or Not... YUCK!
“'Just cuz there’s a goalie doesn’t mean you can’t score'.”
"Aaaand you’re gross."
"Cheating is pathetic."
"You were cute but nvm thanks."- awakami
You Should See The Other Guy...
"Her: 'Once I was fighting with my boyfriend and I punched him multiple times in the arm'."
"Me: 'What? That's not nice'."
"Her: 'No, no, it was fine, I felt better afterwards!'"
"I had no words. It soured my view of her in an instant."- Haebak
Beauty Justifies NOTHING!
"Being a complete b8tch to servers at a restaurant."
"I don't care how hot you are."
"Treating service workers poorly and with entitlement is such a turn off."- Yak-Fucker-5000
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Seriously Though, This Guy Needs Help!
"I've always been a big believer in when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
"I went to play D&D over at a friends house and there was a dude there who was one of their mutual friends and within the first few minutes of general, get to know ya questions, one of which being."
"'Where did you move here from?'"
'He responded with like 6 cities and states from across the USA, saying that he's been everywhere and ended that statement with, 'I don't know what happens but eventually I always seem to wear out my welcome and need to move every few years'."
"That first meeting and response immediately made me super wary of him and I didn't particularly like interacting with him afterwards."
"Because like, he knows what happens, 6 different places in only twice as many years is an obvious pattern, there's no way that's somehow everyone else's fault."
"He was around for about 6 months and was relatively chill but then at a mutual friends wedding, he showed up wearing an odd Mrs. Cleo costume, like a straight up bedazzled turban and bedazzled women's dress jacket with like a bright red tank top underneath, flat black culottes, and again bedazzled kitten heels, and then he started a fight with one of the wedding party members."
"Afterwards he threatened to sue everyone for emotional damages for not having his back and how the fight was a hate crime towards him, in the fight he very much started."
"Just to avoid any hate, he was and still does identify as a Cis white man."
"I have trans friends and am completely supportive of them."
"What he was wearing wasn't a fashion choice or a coming out, it was very much a costume he decided to wear that day."
"I watched and heard the fight from beginning to end, he was the initial aggressor, escalated the fight despite the actual bride trying to separate them and calm them down, and he put hands on the other guy first."
"It was a sh*t show."
"On the way home I seriously said to my wife, huh I guess we know why he has to move so often now."- lordbearhammer
Colleagues Don't Always Have To Be Friends
"Well for me, I was starting to make friends with this girl from my job."
"It was great at first because we had a lot of things common, and I was thrilled to have a new friend."
"So, I planned a hangout with her off work."
"She told me that she had her brother at home and didn't want to leave him by himself."
"I didn't find anything wrong with that."
"I told her that she can bring him along then."
"It was the worst decision because if I knew, I wouldn't have asked her to."
"Through out the whole hangout, she kept trying to set me up with her brother."
"I just felt uncomfortable because she would high light my ethnicity and constantly say that her brother always wanted a Spanish girlfriend."
"She would also encourage us to talk alone, and that we had so much in common."
"I kept telling her I wasn't interested but she didn't listen."
"The night got progressively worse, when we stopped to eat at a restaurant after hiking."
"Her and her brother ordered a lot of things."
"I didn't order as much, only one thing from the menu."
'When it was time to pay, they forfeit the bill."
"Pure silence."
"Her intention was obvious."
"She wanted me to pay for it all."
"I asked to split the bill and she started to complain how expensive it was."
"Never again."
"I decided it was best to remain as coworkers instead of friends."- Ghastly_Golden
Jane Austen famously taught us in Pride and Prejudice that we can't always make assumptions on people based on a first impression.
That being said, in some circumstances, it's probably wise to follow the advice of Maya Angelou: "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."
@IrnaEnglish/X
