Sometimes first impressions are misleading. Sometimes you just need to give that person a chance. And sometimes, sometimes… you should go with your gut.
This piece is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
1. My sister’s creeper.
My sister’s boyfriend. I just immediately found him to be very “fake” and disingenuous. But the rest of the family loved him and be found him very charming. He owned a running store franchise that was more successful than the original store and was also doing well trading on the stock market.
He sold the store back to the owners for a ton on money to focus on the stock market, but this was around the time of the market crash. So to help with that he worked at the store as a salesman. They eventually got married and bought a huge house.
And that’s when the cops came knocking at the door to their large home with a view. Turns out he wasn’t rich. He never owned the store. He was only ever a worker and had been stealing cash from the register/products and selling them on eBay. The divorce came quick after that.
saladada
2. Woman’s best friend.
Years ago I had a girlfriend who lived at home with her sister, parents, three dogs and a cat. One of the dogs was a big goofy lab that loved everyone, I mean everyone. Two year olds could climb all over him and he loved it.
Anyway, the sister had been seeing some guy for a little while, maybe a month and she’s bringing him home to meet the family for the first time. The guy hadn’t even come to the door yet. The dog was in the house and went ballistic. I had never seen anything like it. He went from goofball to apex predator.
Needless to say the guy couldn’t come in the house. They had to leave. About two weeks later the sister comes home, he had slapped her and she ended it. She also found out that he beat his ex-wife before her.
porkpie1028
3. Slippery slopes.
The girlfriend and I used to work at the same ski hill, and the place was pretty much full of seasonal employees. Revolving door status. Anyways she got this new dude in her department that everyone thought was a super nice guy. I did not trust him. There was just something about the way he talked to female employees that seemedoff. But nobody would listen.
He was trying to gain their trust way too quick. I made my sentiments known to my girlfriend and other friends and they thought I was just being jealous or something. I worked part time out of town at the time, and he’d aways ask me what days I was gone, it was weird. He also didnt have a car, so sometimes my girlfriend would give him a ride home and he’d ask her to hang out at our place when I was out of town. She declined.
So at the end of the season, a female friend of ours and this kid decide to rent a place together (they weren’t dating) and as they’re in the final steps, Federal Marshals show up and arrest him. Turns out he had been on the run for over a year for kidnapping and assaulting a girl in a different part of the country. His family had been helping him, and he took the name of his brother while on the run. Filling out the housing application somehow tipped off the Marshals. Trust your instincts.
hyphen8892
4. A little bit too friendly.
When I was a boy (7-8), at a coffee shop I would go to with my parents frequently, there would often be a middle aged woman hanging out. She was a regular, the baristas knew her, my parents were friendly with her. Sometimes I would play board games with my parents and her.
She gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. My parents knew I didn’t like her much but not the full extent of my feelings.
Anyway, the very first time I was with her without my parents there (they were starting the car or something like that) she tried to get me to come back to her house. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and got pushy. When my parents came back I told them what happened and we never went there again.
BulbaBooty
5. Keep your handball to yourself.
My former handball coach. Everybody liked him, but I had a weird feeling about him. After training, he would come into our showers and give out shower caps for us to use, or in the winter, he would bring us snow to play with. A few years later, he got arrested for assault, when he went to a training camp with younger girls.
aphelii0n
6. Home but not alone.
My mom was a single mom and did the best she could. However, she thought it might be better to leave me with the neighbor than at home alone. From the age of 6, I pleaded with my mom to let me stay home alone until she got home from work, that I would be okay. I knew there was something very wrong with this guy. My intuition was right.
The neighbor was convicted of multiple murders of single mothers one and two towns over when DNA evidence came out.
Seagullhunter
7. Volunteers in a prison? This guy should live there.
A pastor who was involved in the community outreach program for a prison (where I volunteered at the time) seemed very friendly on the outside but seemed really creepy to me. He kept putting his hands on my shoulder on that day and got my number from one of the volunteers and called me non-stop that night to say he is lonely and wants to talk. I was 14 at the time.
tasietashiecan
8. Couch potato.
One of my brothers was dating this girl, and everyone else had met her several times before I did since I was off at college.
So the first impression I get of her is when she shows up at our house and just walks right in. Doesn’t knock, doesn’t let anyone know she’s in there. Just walks inside and sits on the couch. So then when I come down the hallway into the living room, she had this super vapid smile on her face.
I just had this weird gut instinct that she was hiding something from everyone and was going to fight to the death to keep it hidden. I expressed to my mom that she gave me a weird vibe and I got told to stop being jealous. But long story shorter, she ended up having an entire other relationship and secret life with another guy three hours away.
NC_DE336
9. First and (hopefully) last impression.
I’m a chef and within one minute of hiring someone I know if they are going to work or will need to be replaced. First impressions mean a lot, so if you bring up killing your wife (happened last week) or pain pills (yesterday) within the first 5 minutes of your first shift its not gonna work out, because you’re an idiot.
Buck_Thunderpumper
10. You really never know anyone, do you?
When I was about 18, a girl started talking to me on the bus ride home. I thought there was something off about her, but my parents, who are inherently optimists, told me to be nice and hang out with her. They even invited her over for dinner a few times. She lived about a 4 minute walk away from me so it was hard to come up with excuses not to hangout.
We eventually hung out a few times and I found out that she was a foster kid and had gotten bounced around a lot. She was also on a lot of medication for bad joints, bipolar disorder and a few other things (she was almost 18).
But that wasn’t the issue. There was something much, much worse going on.
It turns out she was having an affair with her foster father and they plotted together to kill the mom so that they could be together. They made sure to plan it during a time when the dad was out of town. The girl ended up stabbing her foster mother to death and the familys biological daughter is the one to call 9-1-1. They put the 9-1-1 tape up online and it was the worst thing I’ve ever listened to.
rndmusername
11. Jogging saved her life.
Apparently, when I was 4 or 5, my grandma introduced me to some new boyfriend. Everyone liked him, but I would have nothing to do with him. Wrinkled my nose, wouldn’t be left alone with him.
I guess he just came into her apartment one day and walked at her with something behind his back, said nothing. She got an eerie feeling and said, “Are you going to kill me?” With a dead faced stare he came at her. She managed to jump over some furniture and get away (she’s always been in great shape, running 3 miles a day until age 80). She got somewhere safe, called the police and never saw him again.
TurboVeggie
12. Internal affairs.
I knew someone like this, but I suppressed my instincts, because I felt like it was horribly ungracious since she was being so friendly. Over the next couple years, she became my closest friend in the new town I had moved to. Then the following couple years it vacillated between us being close, but just feeling like she really didn’t want me around or was messing with me a little bit. Turns out she was having an affair with my husband and was literally intentionally driving me crazy.
AllysWorld
13. Step (off) dad.
My stepdad. On the surface, he seemed like a good guy. Went to church twice on Sundays and once on Wednesday. Always helped out when someone needed help, whether it was something as simple as loaning 5 bucks, to something as complicated as roofing a house. Had a good paying job. When him and my mom went out on dates, he always made sure to bring home food for all of us, and toys for the younger kids. Would randomly take everyone out to dinner, or to the theatre.
Despite all of that, I disliked him from the moment I met him; even before he showed interest in my mom. People told me I was being paranoid, not to worry about.
Fast foreword a year.
Him and my mom are married, I just got a job and was waiting on my first pay-check to move out on my own. My manager gets a frantic call that I need to come home pronto.
My stepdad had been secretly spending all of our money on pot; we were about to be evicted, the power had already been disconnected, water service was about to be, and stepdad tried to kill my pregnant mom. Later on during the restraining order court hearing, he threatened to cut the baby out of my mom’s stomach, and leave her and the fetus in an abandoned fridge in a field.
mysterious_baker
14. The golden boy.
A few years ago, when I was still in college, I took a summer job at a movie theater. I met a lot of really cool people there, including my boyfriend. But there was this one guy who always gave me the creeps. We’ll call him Drew. He was friends with almost everyone, including my bf, and had been for years. We’d attend the same parties and he’d do all these little things that would feel like red flags to be, but apparently not to anyone else.
Fast forward about a year. I no longer work there, and my bf has been promoted to manager. Drew has also been promoted to supervisor. It should be noted that there were a lot of teenagers employed at this theater.
One day, two of the younger girls come into the office to talk to my bf. The younger one tells him that a few weeks prior, she was sitting alone in the break room, eating her lunch. Drew walks in and says to her “Do you touch yourself?” She doesn’t answer. He says “Because if not, you should.”
My boyfriend fills out the report for the poor girl and passes it onto the GM, who then informs him that Drew had five counts of sexual harassment on his file already. But corporate loved him. So they could never fire him.
My bf never spoke to Drew again. Last I heard, he was fired from his job at a brewery for sexual harassment. Many of our other friends are still very close with him. I don’t understand it.
KitchenSwillForPigs
15. Friends never say goodbye.
My best friend in high school was a girl who didn’t have the best taste in guys. She started dating a new guy, who was 20 when we were 16. The dude was a classic jerk. He didn’t have his license, and just sponged off of everyone around him. I immediately had a bad feeling about him, and voiced my opinion to her. Well she got very angry, and said a lot of very nasty things about how I was just jealous, and pretty much burned a ten year friendship down in one fell swoop.
About a week after that happened, she found out she was pregnant, and he didn’t take it well.
He hit her, threw her down a flight of stairs, and then left her. Luckily, I decided I didn’t want the friendship to end over something stupid so I went to try and find her to talk. After a while found her at his house in a crumpled heap. I drove her a few towns over to the nearest hospital, and sat in the waiting room all night with her family. She lived, but was so badly injured that I couldn’t even recognize her at first.
The boyfriend was found three days later at a relative’s house. I think he gets out of prison soon though.
TruthinessVonDee
16. Stacy’s mom.
My older brother’s best friend in high school was considered to be a “cool guy” – well-liked and fun to have around.
Except that I suspected him to be devious and something of a perv.
He had this “obsession” with our Mom that was obvious to me, but no one else picked up on it. One day, after school, I caught him going through Mom’s drawers, checking out her personal clothes and underwear … and doing stuff I won’t mention here.
After he got his motorcycle (age 17), he asked her if she’d like go take a ride. That’s when I told my brother the truth about his so-called best friend – and asked him to put a stop to it or I’d tell Dad.
Back2Bach
17. Showing your work.
Interviewing a guy for a job. Something doesn’t feel right but my interviewing partner really seemed to like him. We get to his portfolio of work, and I see a side project that I worked on alone as one of his websites. So I start asking him questions about it. What challenges he had, how the client was, etc.
I let him go on and on then I say, “I have to level with you. This is my work. You are showing me my own work. Look at the source near the footer. It has my website in the comments.”
He went ghost white and I just sat there.
___Fresh___