What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

[shehardlysleeps]

I’m in a reflective mood, and it’s got me thinking about something I did a few years ago which is probably the thing I’m most deeply ashamed of.

There was a coworker who really rubbed me up the wrong way. I was very unhappy at the time, and going through an awful time personally. She would make snide comments about me, do things with my family members (who were colleagues too) which really got my back up, I felt like she judged me harshly and was pretty rude. Along with another colleague they made three or four very nasty comments which still stick with me.

Instead of raising a grievance, which I should have done, I took to posting about her on another website (along the lines of Mumsnet), not realising she used it too. She saw the posts and reported me, and I ended up facing a meeting with HR and a senior partner of the firm I was working in. It damaged my reputation within the firm forever and I ended up leaving after not being offered a promotion. I still feel ashamed of it now, nearly half a decade on, and feel like it’s tarred me forever.

Whats the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Blimey, I used to do that too, on trains and coaches until I was about 22. I don't know how my friend and I got to Ireland on the coach and ferry with child fares, travelling alone aged 19 and 20. She's nearly a foot taller than me and we are quite conspicuous together, but I did look about 12. And we were stoned out of our minds because we were too scared to smuggle an 8th of hash in our pockets, so ate it before we got on the coach. This is 100% "outing" if anyone we know is on here! But it's an old, old story, no-one cares....!

As a teen I did many things that I am deeply ashamed of, none of which I wish to share but... I grew up with alcoholic parents, I was extremely vulnerable and unfortunately ended up looking in the wrong places for a sense of belonging. I know that those years are not a reflection of who I am as an adult. Every single person in the world makes mistakes but you can learn from them and try to be the best version of yourself moving forward

I lived in a rough area and went to a horrible school, the majority were because people tried to steal stuff from me/ intimidating me to hand stuff over, generally older kids. Most of them were me getting beaten up if I’m honest but I would still consider it a fight because I was fighting back. One was with a girl in my year when I was 14 and that was just us being little shits. Me and her are friends now and agree it just got out of hand and there was a lot of people egging us on/ shit stirring. I think all of them bar the one when I was 19 were while I was school aged.

I wouldn’t fight someone now I’m an adult but in adult life no one has ever tried to take my stuff or intimidate me. I don’t think it would happen at my children’s school either, it was just the environment and the time. If you were to ask anyone who went to that school at the time you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t get into fights or get beaten up a few times.

Those are human reasons I suppose . I had a friend do something like this to me though it didn’t happen continuously. I forgave her eventually.

Sorry are you the hall monitor or something?

You’ve led a sheltered life then, if you can’t imagine that some people live in different environments with different values and challenges.

Sex with more than one person on the same day was pretty standard when I was at uni. My best friend and I had competitions. There is a medical term, superfecundation, for conceiving babies with two different men in the same menstrual cycle. We didn't do that, but we called what we did "super-fuckundation", which was seeing how many you could do in one day. I can't remember who won. I don't consider that a bad thing, it was fun and we were young. It didn't harm anyone. What WAS bad of me was that the competition stopped after she got a steady boyfriend, and I fucked him regularly for ages without her ever knowing. It's over 40 years ago and she still doesn't know.

Love this!!

Despite these things do posters consider themselves to be overall decent/good people?

Exactly. I have never been in a single fight in my 70+ years.

Mine was stealing cash from my mum's purse as a teen, and yes, I do.

I've never stolen since. My job involves a lot of ethical considerations, and I choose to take a more principles approach. I've always worked for non-profits or companies with an ethical aim, and couldn't do a job where I was furthering a bad end (even for double the money when offered). I've never cheated one anyone, cheated someone in business. I improved working conditions in my old office as soon as I got the power - introduced WFH flex, reduced working hours and increased pay as well as getting regular staff involved in things.

I'm pretty confident that as far as moral behaviour goes, I'm in the clear. I did a bad thing when I was a kid living in difficult circumstances. I'm not going to tie myself up in remorse about it.

Was made to have an abortion my by now estranged husband. Only told one friend. Regret it more than anything.

I was about 18 years old and at a party in the flat where a bunch of boys I had made friends with the previous year living in university halls were now living. There were four of them, and at the party I snogged three of them.

One was my ex who I had dated during for a few months first year who was still constantly trying to convince me to get back together, but I just wasn't interested.

Two was the quiet geeky guy who was a good friend who clearly had a crush on me, and I secretly had a crush on him but was too immature to realise what a wonderful person he was and was more worried about what my friends would say if we got together.

Three had no strings attached, we never mentioned it happened and are still in touch today.

I went to bed with my ex that night, and boy 2 has never spoken to me again. I was so drunk it took me months to remember what I'd done, but the damage was done. Almost 30 years on I still think about boy number 2 and regret that he wasn't the only person I kissed that night.

Personally yes, but I was a mug as a teenager. Part product of my environment, part hormones, part underdeveloped impulse control, but part just a bit of a mug. I don’t think my kids will be like me when they’re teenagers but they’ve had a very different upbringing and live in a very different environment. They’ll do stupid things for sure, but I don’t think it will be on the same level.

I don’t know if this will help at all, but I am often with a person when they take their last breath. I’m a chiropodist with death/dying experience and am often asked to attend to palliative patients. Sometimes, the family aren’t there when their loved one passes, because the dying person needs to feel their feet are “right” before they leave this earth.
I firmly believe that no hospital would ever leave a dying person totally alone, and I am sometimes asked just to step into a room when a nurse needs the loo or something, I can hopefully reassure you, that it is policy to never leave a dying person on their own.

I do

I was in a high stress situation and I did something foolish which cost me dearly. I regret it desperately so for so many reasons it lives with me.

I’m not a bad person, the person I did it to is entitled to think so though

@theworldisadarkplace I bet your mum would have wanted you to go to your son's play.

No.
I cannot think I am a good person. I do not even think I am an average person. Nor do I think I am evil.
I made a lot of mistakes in the past, alienated friends and family and have spent a long time trying to make up for mistakes.
Sadly to no avail.
I am in therapy, buy my self esteem is currently a bar in hell, and I absolutely cannot believe I am a good or decent person.

Im an ok person

This is too much of a dichotomy, I suspect.

I suspect there are very rare cases of people who are truly good or truly bad or evil. There seems to be no bottom to the depths of depravity human beings are capable of inflicting on one another. And very often it's in the face of these depravities that goodness emerges, with some people willing to risk themselves in order to spare others.

People are just human. Sometimes we're lovely. Sometimes we're arseholes. Sometimes we alter others' lives for the better. Sometimes we screw up. Sometimes we hurt people when we don't mean to. And whilst I like to think I wouldn't, some of us hurt people when we do mean to. Most people have also grown and learned a thing or two having made mistakes in the past that we'd never want to repeat.

I don't know whether I'm a 'good' person or a 'bad' person. I suspect if I added up my life, I'd turn out to be a bit of both, and some people might say one thing and others another.

But that isn't for me to judge.

Am I a good person? I dont think it's for me to say but I try to do the right thing most of the time. I never intentionally hurt anyone but can sometimes have a lack of insight which I am getting better at.

I know a lot of my bad behaviour was attention seeking or due to envy. I still get envious and still feel left out at times but I am better at recognising those feelings and stopping them impacting on my behaviour.

Like someone else said, it's cost me a lot of friendships and potential friendships over the years. I'm lonely and have no real friends but it's my own fault. Tough lesson.

Not especially, no. I went to a pretty rough school, endured my share of bullying from the gobby toughnuts who liked to intimidate the kids they saw as nerds or snobs. And when I was in my late teens I worked in a very ..er... 'lively' pub which i think left me with a bit of PTSD from some of the things I saw.

So I've witnessed a fair few fights in my time, but never been in one. The closest I got was when a girl in the year above took a dislike to me. She was big and mean and ugly and had a bad rep. She liked a boy who liked me, so that made me a target.

She came up behind me one time at the youth club and grabbed hold of my hair and yanked my head back really hard, clearly trying to start a fight. I was absolutely terrified but I just turned and looked at her like she was a bit strange and pitiful, and carried on what I was doing. If I'd reacted it would have ended in a fight and I'd have certainly got pummelled.

As it was, she just trotted out one of those stock in trade insults of the deeply inadequate bully; something along the lines of 'you fucking snob, you think your shit don't stink' or 'you are so fake, you think you are better than everyone else' or something in that vein, then just walked off. Perhaps I gave off an air of having more confidence than I actually felt. I don't know. The truth is I just didn't know how to fight and no part of me was going to indulge her. If I was going to be beaten up, then so be it.

Weirdly, she completely left me alone after that. She would always look me up and down and whisper with her little gang of hangers-on, but she never actually came near me again.

None of my friends ever had a fight as far as I can remember. I think you are either the sort of person who never has a fight, or the sort who frequently does.

Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve done many things I’m not proud of, and if I’m having a bad day I will think about them and what a terrible person I am. On other days I accept I can’t change the past, and just try to tell myself that I have now learned not to behave in that way.

If we were truly bad people, we wouldn’t feel so awful about our past misdeeds!

Not sure where I'm going with this but this sin is very mild compared to what local authorities get up to - they are totally corrupt and are meant to be; Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs deals with this. The smug tone of the confession grates, but some like social workers and safeguarding heads in local councils have a job for life anyway, and in Surrey they certainly don't deserve it. Training someone up for a job at the expense of others is not vastly different to promoting internally and putting out an ad for form's sake.

I think i over promise as a people pleaser then can act a bit like a dick when over extended so have done some crap things