Have you ever been in a situation where you had a wild idea, took a leap of faith, or simply went with your gut feeling, only to be pleasantly shocked when it actually worked? If so, you’re in good company, because that’s precisely what we’re here to explore.
From clever tricks that defied logic to quirky decisions that led to remarkable outcomes, and the occasional stroke of luck that felt almost too good to be true, these stories showcase the ingenuity, audacity, and sheer serendipity that can lead to those unforgettable moments where you can’t help but exclaim, “Holy Moly, It Worked!”
I work on costumes in theatre in NYC. About 2 years ago I was sitting in the front row of a show, and a button popped off one of the costumes. The next day I took it back to the stage door with my resume and a little note that said “This came off one of the costumes yesterday, and I thought you might want it back. And while I have your attention, here is my resume”.
And that is the story of how I got my first job on a Broadway show.
Back in secondary school, I had to take Business Studies, which was easily my most hated subject. I just found it so intensely boring, that I couldn’t help but fall asleep in every class without fail.
This was a small country school in rural Ireland, so our class only had about 20 students. Falling asleep was pretty risky since it wouldn’t be difficult for someone to notice. On top of that, I sat in the first row, right in front of my easily agitated teacher, who regularly lost her temper with students and would often loudly discipline them for even the smallest infractions.
That day I’d nodded off as usual, only to be jarred awake by my friend sharply elbowing me in the rib. I didn’t have time to express my surprise before I realised that the teacher had asked me a direct question and was waiting for a response.
Since I’d not heard her query at all and therefore had idea what her question even was, I snapped out of my dream and groggily mumbled “Uh, it means… they’re not… doing their jobs… properly?”
My teacher’s face lit up as she broke into a rare smile. “Yes, exactly! I’m so glad someone here has been paying attention.”
Over 15 years later and still amazed I got away with it.
I went to NYC for fashion week with a boutique I was working for. After the fashion show we attended everyone wanted to go out clubbing. Me, being young and new, I didn’t want to be the buzzkill. So I went with them even though I was only 18. Arriving at the first club we were allowed to skip the line because we knew people and we got to the bouncer. He’s going one by one checking everyone’s IDs and I’m sweating bullets. When he got to me we just looked at each other…. He goes “ID” and I freeze and for some reason, I say “Man I already showed you mine” and To this day I don’t know if he was being nice or just didn’t want to look stupid but he let me in. Needless to say, I got hammered off 18$ mixed drinks because f*ck it right?
One time a bird got caught in our chimney and while me and my roommate discussing how to get it out he suggested we stick our hand up there and the bird would just land on our finger. I laughed at him and said it would never work…. within 30 seconds he was walking to the door with a bird perched on his pointer finger.
I once showed up eight hours late for work. My company was trying out this crazy three-shift schedule that would change every day, but there was no order to the scheme. If you didn’t check what the manager put out that day, no one knew when they should be at work the next day. So after a hard shift, I forgot to check that bad boy, and when I came in the next day expecting to arrive at the shift change, everyone was at their desks working away. Someone sees me and asks, “Hey did you get moved to this shift?” I picked up a clipboard and said, “No, just here to…inspect.” I spent about ten minutes walking around the office just nodding or scribbling notes before I went home. Not only did I not work that day, but one of the managers thought it was awesome that someone was checking up on projects.
The time I avoided getting in trouble by being really boring.
About 6 years ago I was at my ex-girlfriend’s house on a Sunday. Behind her house was a service center for city vehicles. So since it was a government building it was closed on Sundays. Behind the main building was a trail that you could walk down for a couple of minutes and get into a subdivision.
so me and my ex decided to drive down to the head of the trail behind the building and try out the mini bong I had recently purchased. So we pull up and I take the bong out and I am holding it out the window pouring a bit of water into it when I look into my mirror.
There is a f*cking cop car 15 feet behind me flying up and here I am dangling a bong out the window in front of them.
I bring the bong back in and throw it under my seat and push a sweater on top of it. The cop car has now pulled up right behind me and two cops are dashing up to the side of the car.
“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE, you can’t be back here. It is trespassing” said the cop on my side of the car.
“Oh hey officer… we were just.. going geocaching”
“what’s that now?”
“geocaching sir.. umm here look” and I take my hiking GPS out of the dash and show it to him.
I then go into a 10-minute long spiel about geocaching and what it’s all about and I am super dry about the whole thing.
my speech ends and I’m looking at him and he just says.
“OK then…. welp.. have a nice day”
“uhhh should I leave sir? you said this was trespassing”
Applied for a job at a French fry factory. The online application asked what makes you want to work for us? I simply put “Potatoes are my favorite food”. The HR lady and engineering manager loved it, been working there for 10 months now.
In school, I belatedly realised I had an essay due the next day, which I simply didn’t have the time to do.
What I did have time to do was write slightly more than a page. I then printed only the first, full page, and handed this in, inside a plastic wallet. I then finished the essay at home that night.
So, the next day, when my teacher grabbed me in the corridor and said “You realise you only have me the first page of your essay, right?”, I was able to say “Oh, shoot, the rest must have fallen out or something. I’ll go print it out right now and bring it to your office.”
I was barely out of high school and I heard a rumor that the first girl I had a crush on in college was into me. I went and introduced myself to her and asked her out to lunch at a nearby Mexican place. After lunch, I made a not-so-smooth attempt to kiss her and was promptly rejected with little explanation.
That weekend there was a function that a bunch of my friends were going to and I asked her to join me. She agreed. In the process of introducing her to my friends one by one, my friend Phil came up and said “Hey man, who’s this?” I replied “This is my…” and looked at her “Girlfriend?…” To my surprise and Phil’s, she shook her head yes.
We’ve been together for over 9 years now and have been married a little over 5. Turns out when I attempted to kiss her, she didn’t want me to kiss her “Taco breath.”
My son was living nearby and had locked himself out of his room. He called me for help. During my many assignments in the military, I was once stationed with a guy who was also a locksmith. Incessantly told me about locks, lockpics, tumblers, etc.
So I show up at my son’s apartment, armed with a basic knowledge about how locks work and two paper clips. I half-straightened them out. Used one to flick the tumblers and the other to pull at the bottom of the lock to turn it. Two minutes later, I was in.
My son says ‘Holy sh*t, you did it!’ Got serious dad points for that one.
A guy we’ll call Bob left the company I was at. A year or two later he started recruiting people from our company, I was interested so I flew out for an interview.
The first five interviews went great. Seemed like a good group to work with. The final interview was with the HR director. It went okay and then we got to the pay part. I said I wanted X amount. She said the average pay for my experience and position was X – 20k.
My response was “Bob didn’t fly me out here because I’m average,”
I have no idea why I said that, but I got the job and the pay I wanted.
Months later when we were getting drinks Bob brought that up. Apparently HR director thought I was very quiet and introverted during our interview so my response caught her even more off guard than it caught me.
Chicago, 2004. At a tech conference and have been dancing with this amazingly hot woman at a bar near the event hotel where we are all staying. We get into the elevator after closing time with 8 other dudes, all of whom have been working to get time with her.
I’m on the 4th floor of a 30-story hotel. She’s somewhere in the high 20’s.
The door opens on my floor. I say, “This is me” as I am in the back of the elevator with her. She says, “I’m really thirsty” and I immediately reply “I have water in my room”.
“Great, let’s go!”
Married 13 years now, together from that night forward. I woke up the next morning and we decided to spend the rest of our lives mornings together that day. She moved states three weeks later and we wed 4 months after that.
Two kids and a very happy life followed that cheesy line.
When I was younger I was into magic and thought I invented a magic trick that used subliminal messaging to get someone to pick a card.
I secretly turned the two of hearts over in the deck and handed it to the kid my mom was watching.
I asked my mom to name any card, then I said to the kid:
“You too, [name of kid], whatever card is in your heart.”
Trying to get him to say the two of hearts.
To my disbelief, he actually said the two of f*cking hearts. I didn’t touch the deck for the entire trick and told him to go through it and he saw his selection turned over. I was in just as much amazement as he was.
I left the office at lunch every day during the first three weeks of training at my first job after college. It was useless, and disorganized, and nobody ever checked on us except in the morning so I’d go home, smoke pot, play video games, and take naps. Didn’t stop until one Friday afternoon when I woke up from a nap to see a new voicemail from HR.
I swallowed hard before checking the message, sweating bullets and sure I was both busted and fired.
Instead, it turned out they were handing out our first paychecks at the end of the day and were just calling because they couldn’t find me. I drove back to work, picked up my check, and left. Nobody said a word about my absence.
In college, I had one class where the professor was very disorganized. He was always losing sh*t and forgetting to grade stuff.
It was a small class so there were only 7 of us and we decided to do an experiment. On the day of an exam we asked him if he had graded the exam already and being the disorganized mess that he was, he said yes. So that day we never took the exam and a few weeks later everyone received a 100.
His explanation was that he couldn’t find the exam papers, but was sure everyone studied hard and did a good job.
Back when I was 8 or something I was waiting for my parents to pick me up after a movie in the wintertime. There was a hill of freshly plowed snow I was dying to play in, but I knew the minute I went over there, my parents would show up to come to get me.
But as the wait dragged on, I started to get cold and really wanted them to come get me. So I figured to myself, ‘Well, if the minute I hop into that snow pile they’ll be here, and I want them to be here, I guess I should hop in.’ Lo and behold, within 3 minutes of me hopping into that snow pile, the car showed up.
That moment has stuck with me for the rest of my life. To this day, whenever I want something to happen that I’m waiting for – a friend to come over, a parcel to arrive, etc – I just start to do that thing I’ve been putting off because I don’t want to get interrupted and like magic, it makes the thing I’m waiting for happen within 10 minutes.
Happened on Saturday actually. Was waiting for a friend to show up so we could go to a thing and after I got impatient with the wait, I figured, ‘I’m going to boot up a video game. That’ll make him get here.’ No sooner had I loaded into the game, than my doorbell rang. Like a charm.
Back in college, I was walking to a lake and saw a very attractive girl kinda pouting next to her car with the hood up. I stopped to see if I could help even though I had no knowledge of cars. I kinda faked looking around the engine and said something like “probably a fuse”. I opened the fuse box and just kinda fiddled with them all willy-nilly-like. The d*mn car turned on the first try. I tried not to act surprised at all and she totally bought it. Went out a few times and stayed friends after. Still have no idea what I did.
I was at a concert a few years ago. As a poor college student, I had sh*tty seats and was super jealous of people who had general admission tickets and could be right up close to the stage. The people with “general admission” tickets all had red wristbands to get onto the floor. I was angrily eating a bag of Doritos when I suddenly had an epiphany. The color of the Doritos packet is almost the same as the color of the wristbands and it’s very dark. So my sister and I cut up the Doritos packet and fashioned ourselves “wristbands” with it. Then we joined a large group of people entering the general admission area. I coolly just flashed the “wristband” at the security guard without pausing and kept walking. He didn’t stop me. It ended up being one of the best concert experiences of my life!
Once in college, I stole a fire extinguisher from a dorm where I was partying. My friend and I left, solo cups in hand and started walking home.
A cop turns the corner and my friend says nothing, but turns around and walks away. I keep on walking straight, and get stopped by the cop with a fire extinguisher in my hand (we had tossed the cups). Here’s the exchange.
Officer: Hey, how are you?
Me: Pretty good, how are you?
Officer: Alright. Have you been drinking tonight?
Me: uhhhh
Officer: Don’t worry, I don’t really care about that, I was your age not that long ago. Just want to know for some context.
Me: well yeah, had a few drinks
Officer: Why’d your friend leave? That’s pretty suspicious.
Me: Well if you were out drinking and you were under 21 and saw a cop, wouldn’t you try to leave?
Officer: Makes sense, I’ll allow it. Is that a fire extinguisher? Where’d you get it?
Me: I found it.
Officer: Found it? Where?
Me: Oh, just out and about. Why?
Officer: You didn’t steal it? It was just lying around and you found it?
Me: Yeah
Officer: So why’d you pick it up?
Me: Well if you just found a fire extinguisher, wouldn’t you pick it up? It was just there.
Officer: Hmm, Ok. Did you set it off?
Me: I tried, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Officer: You know it’s illegal to set off a fire extinguisher at random, right?
Me: Yeah, I know.
Officer: So why’d you try to set it off?
Me: Well I mean, I got a fire extinguisher. Why would I take it if I didn’t mean to set it off? It’s not like good for decoration or anything.
Officer: Fair enough, well good thing you didn’t actually know how to set it off because you could get in trouble. Just so you know in the future if you do need to set one off, you have to pull that ring out first.
Me: Sweet, thanks. I’ll definitely remember that.
Officer: No problem. Alright well, you should get going. Don’t drink any more tonight and try not to take anything you find on the street.
After I dropped out of high school and took my GED, I told myself I needed to get my sh*t together. When I was 17, I resolved to do the following: build a computer and install Linux on it myself as an intro to learning programming, study for my network certification so I’d at least be around programmers if I couldn’t be one, find a programming internship in my city via job boards, work up the ranks, do some contract web development, and eventually end up with a regular programming job you’d usually have to go to college to get.
I never actually believed I’d accomplish it, and even as I was going through the steps of my plan, I figured I’d fail eventually; however, ten years of many sleepless nights and panic attacks later, I made it, and it happened in exactly the way I pictured it when I was 17 (except I never needed a network admin job). When I got to the end and was amazed I got my dream job, everybody said, “Isn’t that what you’ve been saying the whole time?” Yes, but I didn’t know I actually meant it.
I once got fired from a job at the grocery store. I really needed money though, and no other place was hiring, so a week later I just showed up and started doing my job as usual. No one said anything, and I got my pay at the end of the week like normal, and I stayed at that job till I quit a year later.
To get out of an after-hours work event, I came up with the quickest thing I could think of and told my boss that my iguana was sick and I had to get to the pet store to pick up his medication before they closed.
I don’t have an iguana.
The next day I changed my desktop background to a photo of someone else’s iguana. People kept asking me for weeks how my iguana was doing.
About 10 years back, my husband (boyfriend at the time) and I were super poor. Out of the blue, a family friend offered us free tickets to a concert we wanted to go to, but couldn’t afford. We accepted the tickets, but we didn’t have the gas money to get there. It was about an hour’s drive from home. So we scoured our apartment for loose change in the furniture, and I even found a five-dollar bill in an old coat. Yes, we were desperate.
We gathered up just enough to get there and back. No money for anything else. On the drive there, we realized we didn’t eat, and were getting pretty hungry. So we devised a plan. I called the nearest Taco Bell and lied, and told them that I just left there with the food that I’d ordered for dinner for the family and that half the food was missing. I told them that I couldn’t make it back to pick up the rest of it, but that my husband was on his way home from work, so he could swing by and grab the rest. They asked what was missing from the order, and I don’t remember exactly what I said, but basically, it was an entire meal for the both of us. They told me it would be ready, and I said my husband would be there.
We found the Taco Bell and decided to park the next lot over. I think it was a gas station. My husband happened to have a collared polo in the car and threw it on for believability. Otherwise, he would have walked in with a Tool shirt on. So, I sit there waiting for him to come out empty-handed, but after only about 5 minutes, here he comes with a bag full of Taco Bell. It was a proud day. Also, I’m happy to say, that we are no longer that broke and desperate.
I emailed my boyfriend a link to a couple of wedding bands that I liked (we were not engaged and had never talked about being married) and said something like, “I picked out our wedding rings, do you like them?” When I got home I asked if he got my email and he said he did and asked if I was joking. I said, “No. We’re going to get married right? So I picked out some rings.” He was just like, “Yeah. I like them.” And we got married about four months later.
I was on a night train coming home from a music festival. The only wagon that had seats available was with 2 girls from Norway and an old dude.
My friend and I entered and soon fell asleep as we were exhausted. I woke up in the middle of the night and had one girl sleeping on my shoulder. I left her there cause she felt really warm.
Several minutes passed, and she woke up too and immediately raised her head. I looked at her and she smiled back.
I don’t know where I got the courage from but I took my phone out and wrote
“Hi :)”
The conversation somehow got going and I “won” some argument and she asked me what I wanted as the prize.
“A smooch before you leave.” – I said.
She looked at me and I simply leaned forward and kissed her. Everybody else was asleep at that time.
It was the most passionate and sensitive and warmest and nicest kiss in a loooong time.
I got a practice run at the conversation that landed me my husband. We met at a bar that I worked at so I was sober and he was less so. We chatted and hit it off but I made a rule not to date customers. He asked me out and I declined and we went our separate ways. A few months later he came back in, this time sober but it slipped his mind that we had met before. This time I had extremely witty responses to his opening pickup banter. I ‘guessed’ where he was from, his religion, political leanings, his schooling, and his job “just by looking at him”- he thought I was some kind of cold-reading wizard but really he just didn’t remember telling me a few months back. He was so cute and charming and enamored with the mad mind-reading skills that I said yes to the date the second time. We were dating a few months before I told him about our dress rehearsal. He thought it was hilarious.
Usually, it involves a beautiful woman that I happened to hook up with. I literally stop trying to impress them, and then it works.
Seriously, there was a hot girl in my college class who invited me over to her house to study since we were in the same class. I thought, okay, she’s better at the class than me, might as well get some help. I was into her, but she was literally a Barbie doll-looking girl. Blonde, former cheerleader, does modeling, acrobatics… the whole 9.
She answers the door wearing a long shirt with no pants on. I was like huh, wow. I sit on her couch and open my book to the chapter we were on. She asks me if I want a beer before going into her kitchen. I say sure.
I sat there thinking “How the heck did I pull this off?” Apparently, when you show no interest knowing you don’t have a chance, you definitely have a chance. It’s the same thing when I’m in a relationship. I show no interest in any women because I don’t cheat, so I look at other women with no interest. Then comes an onslaught of me getting hit on. It’s so weird.
I am in no way bragging. This is just something I noticed. If I try to hit on women, it’s a disaster. If I show no interest, it happens. It happens so much that I’m confused about how I managed to get with some of the most beautiful girls. Girls I was in love with in high school who paid no attention to me. Years later, after I have given up completely, I see them and boom, in my car and back to their place or mine.
My parent’s house has a high front porch that was always infested with wasp nests. There were usually half a dozen smallish nests at any given time. They were high up enough that you needed a tall ladder to get up there and spray them, and they would just return the next day anyway. I decided we needed a better way to get rid of them.
I rummaged around in my dad’s garage for a bit and found a 20-foot length of pipe. I ran some bailing wire down the pipe, made a loop, and ran it back through the pipe. I formed the loose ends into some rough handles and taped a trash bag into the loop at the other end.
Standing under the porch, I slowly moved the loop towards one of the nests being careful not to scare the little f*ckers off. When it was about a foot away from the nest, I slammed it against the wall and pulled the two handles retracting the loop and closing the bag. It worked! Not only did it break the nest off into the bag, but it trapped every single wasp on it.
I dropped the pole and retreated while the wasps on the other nests buzzed around for a bit. When they settled down I returned with a can of bug killer and sprayed it through a hole in the bag, killing everything inside.
I was walking home after work, late at night, by myself when I saw a group of 4-5 dudes all beating up one single guy. It was really bad and I thought to myself “Holy moly, they are gonna kill that dude!”
This was before cell phones and I, being alone and female, felt like there was little I could actually do. So I scampered across the street, hid in some bushes and yelled as loud as I could “COPS!!!! THE COPS ARE COMING!!!”. The attackers all stopped dead, looked around in a panic and then ran away. I was still hidden in the bushes, scared out of my mind trying to decide what to do about the beaten-up guy, but then that dude also got up and limped off, too. So I waited till he was gone, too then ran the rest of the way home as fast as I could. And then I thought to myself “Holy sh*t, that WORKED??
Back when I was in college at the age of 20 I managed to get a friend of mine’s older brother’s ID, who was 28 at the time. I scanned and printed my driver’s license picture on photo paper and laminated it over the brother’s picture on the ID. It was poorly done and if you had it out of my wallet it was very obvious since the picture was raised and you could feel the loose laminate on the back. However, it worked like a charm as long as I didn’t have to take it out of my wallet.
Anyway, one day I was going to a bar with some friends and as I was showing my wallet to the girl at the entrance of the bar she reached into my wallet and pulled out the ID before I could stop her. She stares at it and then at me, examining both closely. In my mind, I’m thinking I’m completely f*cked. Then after a bit, she states “It says here your eyes are blue.” (Mine are hazel) Not knowing what to do I pulled this out of my a**. “Oh, I wear contacts.” She then handed my ID back, smiled and said “Okay, come on in.”
I was shocked that it actually worked and shocked that she was that oblivious.
There was this cute girl at a coffee shop I went to most mornings during the work week. She always got a banana muffin and vanilla latte and sat in the back corner by the bookshelf and read her book while having breakfast. One morning I took a little craft I had made and placed it where she normally sat; it was a random book I had but I replaced the cover with the made-up book titled “The Unlikely Coffee Shop Couple”. The first page was just “Written by The Guy To Your Left”. She opened it and looked over and waved, then grabbed her stuff and sat next to me and we chatted over breakfast.
Our next chapter, “The Married Life” starts next August.
In college, I had set up a job interview in another state but the timing meant that I was going to miss a final exam for one of my courses. I explained my situation to the professor and asked if I could take it early but he said that he hadn’t created it yet. I thought for a bit and said, “How about if I create the test for you in exchange for an A in the course? You’ll know I’ve learned the material based on the questions I create and it’ll save you the time of having to create the test and there will be one less test to grade.” I was stunned when he agreed. Turns out it was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I gave him the test. He liked it and I got an A. I always wondered if the other students had an easy or hard time with it. I never found out because I had the interview, got the job, and moved three weeks later.
Working at a call center, an angry customer starts with the customer’s pre-emptive forgiveness of their soon-to-be sins” “sorry in advance…nothing personal…I’m gonna verbally abuse you knowing you don’t deserve it…just taking this time to reassure myself I’m a great person.”
And on a whim I awkwardly responded, “…as long as we’re both respectful, neither of us will have anything to apologize for” AND IT WORKED! He was surprised and excited like I’d revealed unto him the secret word of God. And then we managed to have an extremely pleasant and productive conversation. It worked out so well that I tried the same thing several more times with other customers. Never worked again, though.
I once knew a girl who a lot of guys really liked. She was very outgoing, friendly and fun and guys would ask her our regularly or ask for her hand in marriage like every other week. Guys just had a strong tendency to fall in love with her. This list included some of my friends who appeared to be madly in love with her and many other eligible guys with elaborate proposals including really rich dudes who would book entire rows in cinemas or huts on a beach with a private chef to tell her that they want to marry her.
But she never said yes to anyone.
I was a good friend of hers for several years and I’m a very reserved and shy person with only a handful of friends. I liked her too, so one day I just told her during a conversation that I liked her and would be very happy if I was married to her.
We got married last month after almost four years of being together.
My friends and I were waiting for a cab after a night downtown of drinking. Of course, we all had to go to the bathroom, but since we closed down the bars, there was nowhere to go. I saw an underground bar with people loading up equipment into a van, so we walked over. A roadie tired to tell me we couldn’t go in so I said “I’m John’s girlfriend” and he said “Oh ok yeah go ahead.” So we went inside and went to the bathroom. I had no idea there was anyone named John there closing up the bar, I just took the chance.
It worked… until John’s actual gf came in and asked “Which one of you is dating my man” and I had to explain what happened. I don’t think she believed me and probably still thinks John was a cheating a**hole, but we hightailed it out of there and got in a cab comfortably.
